The four decades after the internet made information readily accessible has led to inventions and innovations like smart devices, mobile apps and the ability to be constantly connected. Today, companies are focusing on harnessing technology to build smoother, richer and deeper customer experiences.
As the information age evolves to the experience age, the next digital revolution will be embedded finance. Embedded finance enables any brand, business or merchant to rapidly, and at a low cost, integrate innovative financial services into new propositions and customer experiences. Embedded finance is driven by consumers’ desire for more convenient and frictionless financial services. Several use cases that underline the demand for embedded financial experiences include:
- Billing payments as part of the experience. Businesses are already using payment options, like buy now, pay later, to differentiate their offering, increase sales and empower buyers at checkout.
- Growing popularity of Point-of-Sale financing. The volume of installment-based, flexible payment and instant credit options has increased significantly in the past five years, indicating a desire for instant access to short-term borrowing.
- Mainstreaming of digital wallets. As more people use their mobile phones to purchase products and services, it makes sense that consumers want to access other financial services seamlessly within apps.
There is potential for embedded finance in almost every sector; in the U.S. alone, embedded finance is expected to see a tenfold revenue increase over the next five years. Financial institutions are in a position to provide branded or white-label products that non-banks can use to “embed” financial services for their customers. Banks must evolve rapidly to take advantage of this new market opportunity.
The front-runners will be institutions that can offer digital real-time payments or instant credit with minimal friction and optimum convenience to customers. But providing this requires new core technologies, cloud capabilities and flexible application programming interfaces, or APIs and other infrastructure to support new business models. Banks will also have to become much more collaborative, working closely with fintechs that may own or intermediate the customer relationship.
Embedded finance allows nonbank businesses to offer their customers additional financial services at the point of decision. Customers can seamlessly pay, redeem, finance or insure their purchase. This can look like buying, financing, and insuring a TV from a store’s shopping app, securing a mortgage through the estate agent’s website as part of a house purchase or obtaining health insurance from a fitness app. This does not mean that every retailer or e-commerce business will become a bank, but it does mean that many more will be equipped with the potential to offer more financial capabilities to customers as a way to compete, differentiate and engage more effectively.
In May 2021, Mambu surveyed 3,000 consumers and found the following:
- 81% would be interested in purchasing health insurance via an app, and almost half of these would pay a small premium.
- 60% would prefer to take out an education loan directly from their academic institution rather than a bank.
- 86% would be interested in purchasing groceries from a cashier-less store.
How these capabilities are delivered and consumed is changing constantly. Consumers want to use intuitive and fast financial services via online and mobile banking channels. Digitalization and cloud services are reinventing back-office functions, automating and streamlining processes and decision-making. At the same time, legislation, open banking and APIs are driving new ecosystems. These changing markets and increased competition make it more difficult for banks to meet evolving customer demands, prevent churn and sustain growth.
We are living in the world of the continuous next. Customers expect financial service providers to anticipate and meet their requirements — sometimes even before they know what they want — and package those services in a highly contextual and personalized way. At the same time, new digital players are setting up camp in the bank space. Tech giants are inching ever closer to the banking market, putting bank relationships and revenue pools are at risk. On an absolute basis, this could cost the industry $3.7 trillion, according to our research.
Incumbent banks need to adopt a foundation oriented toward continuous innovation to keep pace with changing customer preferences. Embracing innovations such as embedded finance is one way that banks can unlock new opportunities and raise new revenue streams.
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