How will Fintechs and DCM Markets Mature in 2023?

The festive break, even with the chaos of entertaining kids and family, was a good opportunity to reflect on the path we forged at Finsmart in 2022 and what lies ahead in 2023.

Clearly 2022 was the first year of normalisation coming out of the pandemic. Much was learnt and subsequently put into practice as we realised that being professionally productive has “no borders” and that spending quality time with your family doesn’t need to be compromised – possibly something that had been missed or de-prioritised for a number of reasons over the years, particularly in banking!

Last year’s normalisation had a big impact globally on many levels, reversing the upward trend of the markets and threatening global economies with recession. This also hit fintechs and their valuations, although this normalisation felt more like a rationalisation of the previous two years.

Despite this, 2022 has been very potent within the debt capital markets space. The fintech community has further matured and focussed even more on addressing clients’ pain points and a number of live products were launched that will further re-set the stage.

“Maturity” will be the keyword in 2023. If 2022 was a year of rolling out new products, making them stable, adding value in each step of the origination process then 2023 will be the year where a number of these products will grow strong roots in an industry that is very keen to resolve its challenges.

Fintech maturity and further momentum in 2023 will be based on the following trends (among other things):

• It’s all about the people. You need market professionals involved within fintechs in order to build trust with bookrunners, issuers and investors. At Finsmart this has been one of our key principles right from the start, building our products leveraging the collective deep industry expertise from founders and senior advisors like Bryan Pascoe, Jean-Marc Mercier, David Dunnigan, Oliver Hawkins and others.
• Data is still king. While this may sound like a cliché, a lot of deal-related information is still not captured or re-used and certainly not linked in an intelligent way. At Finsmart our product roadmap in 2023 focusses on capturing more information from multiple sources that will provide deal context faster and more accurately.
• Partnerships will be key. Can adoption be expedited? Can fintechs face their daily challenges and prove their innovative ideas have a place in the market? By developing strategic partnerships, exchanges, data vendors and fintechs will all be able to leverage each others’ strengths and offer complementary solutions. This is a key focus for us at Finsmart for 2023 – further announcements to follow!

Critical mass behind DCM digitalisation will be a priority for fintechs during 2023. If we learnt nothing else last year, the banks are hungry for more intelligent, efficient and seamless deal management tools. Finsmart will be leading this charge, listening to the needs of the market enriching its products further.

By Sotiris Manderis, Co-founder and CEO, Finsmart

For more details about our plans and information about DealPro, get in touch via info@fin-smart.co