An emerging area that is growing heavy support from customer demand for change is real estate, specifically in solving the critical issue of homeownership.  Plagued by slow, inefficient, and restrictive processes from lending institutions, users are looking for solutions to solve this major financial need.

Robinhood’s Value Proposition:

Democratize the American financial system (through a commission-free service for transacting stock, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies).

Industry growth in FinTech has been attributed to a handful of maturing companies — but has now dramatically spread to a larger pool of firms (including startups) that have reached the level of unicorns, more than any other business sector worldwide.

As 2018 comes to a close, what industry-wide trends can we look forward to in 2019 on the FinTech front? 

Ripple’s Value Proposition: Help financial institutions process customer’s transfers (payments) anywhere in the world reliably, cost-effectively, and instantly.

The FinTech100 is an extensive annual report created by KPMG and H2 Ventures, showcasing the industry trends and innovative global companies in FinTech that are driving the most disruption through technology.  The 2018 FinTech100 was released earlier this month and marks the fifth edition of the report (going back to 2013), which continues to discuss indicators of change, and potential strategic opportunities for growth.

There was no standard infrastructure that allowed a customer to securely authorize viewing of bank account information in real-time — until the launch of Plaid, a fintech that has become the industry’s  “super-connector” by creating a secure portal and process to exchange financial information back and forth between customer, applications, and banks.

Numerous trends and technologies are intersecting now that will take payments past a future state of a cashless and paperless transactions, to a completely open, digital world marketplace.

From online banking to healthcare and social media, personal information is widely available and easily exposed more than ever before.  The trend of  smartphone applications tracking location, financial, and biometric data to make common day-to-day activities easier and convenient, has only intensified the debate on privacy.  With higher risk has come an increasing rate of privacy breaches that have prompted blockchain projects to be developed as a solution to address this issue with security and transparency.

The biggest catalyst for the birth of today’s cryptocurrencies came from a 9-page white paper published by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym name for an anonymous person or group, in October 2008.

As an emerging technology seeking mainstream acceptance, blockchain continues to build applications and use cases towards solutions that can have an immediate impact on industries in need of innovation, efficiency, and/or disruption.  One industry that easily fits these criteria is insurance.