Industry Dynamics
It’s taken over a century to get to this point: The Lifestyle Economy – and there’s no looking back. The Lifestyle Economy is the age of customers who expect businesses across industries to integrate hyper-personalized services and superior, contextual experiences with their lifestyle journeys through tech-enabled integrations with ecosystem partners. Businesses such as Uber, WeChat, Kakao and Grab are ahead of the game and have effectively mobilized strategies to capitalize this lucrative and revolutionary era.
The Evolution of Finance
The finance sector has experienced a myriad of transformations over time, but nothing as significant as what is currently transpiring. There are various critical factors fuelling the prevalent financial era, namely the re-bundling phenomenon; new non-bank entrants into the financial services industry; COVID 19’s overwhelming impact on the rapid digital adoption of consumers and businesses alike as well as regulatory facilitation to promote competition and lower barriers to entry in the traditionally concentrated financial space.
Shifting Business Models
As the finance sector evolves at pace, business models have subsequently undergone major changes and continue to do so:
- The Legacy Finance business model (the past) entailed traditional ways of monetizing physical assets and revenue streams linked with credit products, hidden charges and penalty fees.
- Digital Finance (the present) involves virtual banks delivering superior customer experiences through data-driven personalization and lean operations.
- Lifestyle Finance (the very near future) will include leveraging key capabilities, namely open APIs for partner integrations and enabling product curation and lifestyle experience adaption through advanced analytics.
Finance-as-a-lifestyle can be applied to both consumers and enterprises:
For consumers, finance-as-a-lifestyle means delivering products and services that consumers desire when they need them and where they want them, thereby always prioritizing their welfare.
Finance-as-a-lifestyle for small & medium enterprises means assisting entities with core objectives of driving business growth, achieving employee wellness, and driving customer engagement along with automating non-core objectives.
The Way Forward: Finance-as-a-Lifestyle
Finance-as-a-lifestyle merges financial services into non-financial services and in turn, lifestyle services into financial platforms. The outcomes of such innovative integrations serve to elevate customer experiences, unlock value creation exchange among financial and non-financial players, as well as offer contextual and personalized experiences to ensure customers have access to the desired services at their engagement touchpoint.
Finance-as-a-lifestyle is rewriting the history of finance as we know it. Businesses who proactively adopt and adapt to these innovations will not only survive a volatile post-pandemic era but thrive, and customers will return the favour with immense and long standing brand loyalty.
Download the full report to capitalize on this ground-breaking technology.
Great report! Well done, Sam and thanks for sharing! :)