An exciting FinDEVr 2017 New York event was held on March 21st & 22nd in New York. This conference was focused exclusively on the technology that is enabling innovation in the Fintech industry. Technology startups and bigwigs – such as IBM, Google, Box, Citi, Capital One – showcased their latest tools, technologies, APIs, platforms, and case studies that developers, software architects, and other technologists will use to create the next wave of Fintech innovations.

TokBox has presented at FinDEVr since 2015, previously introducing WebRTC technologies and showing the video-enabled online branch. This year we felt it important to discuss the impact we are seeing of social applications on customer expectations, and show how live video platforms, such as TokBox, are making it easier for financial services organizations to keep up with the rapid social evolution of customer experience requirements.

Our message about the increasing impact of social app expectations resonated well with the audience and was covered by TheStreet.com in their appropriately titled article When Banks Develop Snapchat Envy, This Firm Is Ready to Help.

Watch our 15-minute Presentation

Key Presentation Points for Fintech

As you can see in the video of our presentation above, our talking points included:  

• TokBox is putting to rest the notion that  live video is ‘scary’ to deploy by working with Banks, Insurance companies and other financial services organizations, who are not video experts, and enabling them to easily use video to deliver high-quality, high-touch, face-to-face customer experiences
• Live Demonstration 1 – We showed how to add video chat to your existing fintech workflow in less than 1 minute with TokBox Video Chat Embed
• Live Demonstration 2 – Then we expanded this to a complete financial services workflow – showing a virtual interaction between advisor and customer on a mobile device using video and advanced collaboration features such as co-browsing and annotation.
• The challenge for financial services is to deliver a human touch when more and more of their customers are interacting with them indirectly using ATMs, mobile apps, websites & chatbots. TokBox customers have turned to video communications to deliver that in-person experience and personal touch at the most important moments.
• Social Expectations – Social media platforms and apps are changing consumers’ expectations and shaping behaviors, especially for Millennials and Post-millennials
  • Over three billion people using social apps around the world today already expect one-click global video/voice communications from the palm of their hands
  • Rich social and visual experiences are growing exponentially
  • As more and more people perform financial transactions inside social chat applications, financial services should be aware that they are not only competing with innovative incumbents or fintech startups but also with social apps and social media platforms
  • We are already seeing this emerge strongly in Asia, where you can get loans through WeChat, trade stocks on Baidu, and pay the rent at Alibaba
• Live Demonstration 3 – We rapidly embedded TokBox Interactive Broadcast into our app to enable financial education and smart media publications, including integration with social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch.

The open availability of proven communications platform as a service (cPaaS), like TokBox, makes it easy to quickly build and deploy new video and social experiences on any mobile, web or social platform and then scale them massively. This allows financial services innovation teams to focus on their core competency and create rich immersive experiences that will deepen engagement with customers and drive value.

FinDEVr Conference Highlights

There were a total of 35 presenters that delivered 15-minute TED-style presentations at the conference and some of the recurring themes included:

• Contextual Communications and Customer Experience
• Machine learning and AI (Capital One, Google Cloud) along with Chatbots (Blue Metal)
• Big Data, Data Analytics and Insights
• Visualization and Data modeling for Risk analysis
• Blockchain applications (SoftJourn)
• Security & Authentication
• Payment
• Banking as a Platform (Citi, Barclaycard)

Particularly interesting for us was IBM’s announcement of the launch of the new developer platform or marketplace for financial services with the goal of helping FinTechs and financial services companies build and monetize cognitive-enabled apps quickly. We see this as an opportunity for platforms like TokBox to make it easier for organizations to embed their APIs and starter-kits into Fintech projects.

Next Steps

We look forward to talking with you, and continuing to push the fintech customer experience envelope, at future FinDEVr and Finovate events around the world.

To learn more about how TokBox can help you, please download our white paper on How Interactive Live Video Is Making Banking Personal Again. Then contact us to arrange a meeting and a demonstration.

The post FinDEVr: Social is Eating the World, and Fintech Too appeared first on TokBox Blog.