The evolving landscape of South Korean retail banking is pushing banks to invest in financial technology to retain and attract customers, even as traditional brick and mortar branches give way to specialised branches.

In the quest to create financial ecosystems, banks believe they can stay relevant to a customer’s financial needs.

Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) is driving the country’s banks to move to digital platforms through its “Bank 3.0” vision as banks have an urgent need to differentiate themselves in the crowded retail banking market.

With more than 70% of Southeast Asia being unbanked, fintech possesses tremendous potential to widen financial inclusion and spur economies. Advances in the industry mean more people and companies have the ability to save, borrow and transact. Yet with such a wide and sensitive remit, regulations need to keep pace with the constant innovation.

Financial institutions are starting to use APIs to create important linkages between their products and services and their customers and important third party value providers. Early movers to stand to gain mindshare of both customers and the wider application developer community.

Fintech, the latest buzzword in the peer-to-peer lending sector, has carved a niche for itself in a short span of time. As banks tighten their seat belts for the new-age disruption, they are showing strong affinity towards collaboration with the marketplace lenders to secure their customer proposition.

Customised financial advice had, for many years, been available almost exclusively to private banking clients or to the mass affluent. However, robo-advisors are offering the same advice to many more consumers. Customers in Asia, from the man on the street to the ultra-wealthy, seem ready to embrace these new robo-advisors.

Digitisation in the cross-border money transfer industry might leave fewer opportunities for incumbent banks and operators to grow. How they cultivate alliances and digital innovation to stay ahead of competitive will be critical moving forward.

New proofs of concepts have emerged in blockchain as the industry tackles various impediments to its successful adoption. The technology initiatives would need to be complemented with stronger collaborative efforts and interoperability for future growth.

Wide discontent with conventional banks have led to the emergence of mobile-only fintech banks. However, these challenger banks are struggling to expand their customer reach, putting doubts whether they can stand against bigger traditional banks.

It is not often that a technology comes along that forces a rethink of traditional business models. Blockchain, a technology that originated from an anti-establishment alternative to fiat currencies, is fast finding applications in a myriad of financial use cases

The incumbent outlines its response to an increasingly fragmenting payments landscape offering to support old and new customers alike by helping them de-risk major technology investments with the provision of a gateway service.