What are the key trends for Fintechs and DCM markets in 2024?
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 2023 and what lies ahead in 2024.
Clearly 2023 was a year of “maturity” for fintechs within debt capital markets. Products became more sophisticated attracting further attention from market participants and boosting the much needed digital transformation even more. At Finsmart our latest DealPro Data module went live in Q4 providing bookrunners with instant access to reliable data and analytics to support their everyday needs, when pitching, during a transaction or post-trade.
Maturity was also the keyword for bookrunners in 2023 as they are getting better prepared to deal with change by appointing digital specialists with business background that can ensure technology internalisation that is beneficial to the DCM business and in line with their priorities.
2024 has started with a big bang as measured by capital markets activity. €140Bn has already been issued in the first 10 days of the new year and many more transactions are lined up to be executed. It will be a busy year on the business and fintech side. What is the keyword for 2024? In 2023 we said it was all about “Maturity” this year though it is all about “Momentum”!
Based on the “Momentum” theme, here are the trends for 2024:
- Further momentum is needed in DCM in order to push forward with long-lasting transformation in the bond issuance workflow. Market participants have voiced the need to automate bond issuance and remove inefficiencies once more via OMFIF’s survey. At Finsmart modernising the workflow has been a key objective right from the start, a critical part of our product that we keep improving thanks to feedback from bookrunners and issuers.
- New technologies like Gen AI need to be looked upon with an open mind, this is not about replacing jobs, it is about enriching them and putting more time and effort into client-facing tasks. Lets start small and build on this capability; natural language processing (NLP) and auto-generated insights are a few of the aspects on Finsmart’s roadmap for this year.
- Even though a lot has been said in the past couple of years about establishing strategic partnerships, limited momentum has been realised in this space. Incumbents and new entrants together with sell-side/buy-side need to be more active; note that partnerships can take many shapes, so let’s be innovative!
Critical momentum behind DCM digitalisation will be a priority for fintechs during 2024. If we learnt nothing else last year, bookrunners and issuers are hungry for more intelligent, efficient and seamless deal management tools. Finsmart will keep leading this charge, listening to the needs of the market and 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
