Although the latest disruptive technological forces in form of Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, etc are gradually gaining popularity amidst Financial and Banking arena and thereby making “Fintech” a popular keyword used generally, there still seems hardly any groundwork regarding it as almost less than half (48 percent) of working finance professionals have very little or almost negligible idea on what is Blockchain Technology and thus, they lack the general awareness and fail to understand the key utilization of it in Financial Arena.
These startling and harsh reality has been brought in and shared by order-to-cash specialist Onguard in its Fintech Barometer, wherein an annual survey was conducted on 1,000 working finance professionals and it was found out during the survey that 19% of finance professionals are completely unaware of its utilization within the finance sector and 29% have absolutely negligible idea on what blockchain is.
The biggest influence on the finance sector in terms of the latest trending technologies is Cloud (38%), Artificial Intelligence (32%) and the Big Data (At 30%), etc. However, blockchain was seen as the least disruptive technology still just hovering around paltry 10%.
The lack of blockchain technology amongst financial professionals is quite evident from the fact that almost more than half (52%) of finance professionals conceded it to be never ever mentioned during any core meetings. As well even its vitality is completely neglected by top-level officials as 29% of the finance professionals who either already utilize or are planning to utilize blockchain and this figure rises to 57% when these professionals are opting out for CFO roles.
Thus, this as well as describes the callous attitude presented especially by the senior level management as although most of CFO’s are aware regarding the Blockchain’s vitality, it is still not been communicated or lacks knowledge sharing with the lesser senior officials.
However, when it came to CFO’s to have questioned regarding the Blockchain awareness, they sprang up a surprise by unanimously 45% of them stating that they have at least spoken about blockchain technology at least once in every week and 17% stated that they discussed about it every day.
The positive feedback is that despite the huge ground to be cleared viz the present-day lack of awareness to be covered, finance professionals have nodded for accepting the latest technologies inclusive of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as blockchain, with 67% either planning its deployment or already propagating them to their best utilization.
Financial service suppliers rework into IT firms
When these technologies are enforced, financial service firms are needed to update their business models. This is often a sentiment echoed by quite more than one-third (38%) of finance professionals who expect monetary establishments to be absolutely reworked into IT firms at intervals ten years.
Whereas finance professionals aren’t afraid that their leader can disappear, with 78% assured that their current leader can still exist in 10 years’ time, 39% believe that the arrival of blockchain and computing can have a significant impact on employment.
Marieke Saeij, the CEO, of the Onguard, commented: “In 2018 technologies like blockchain and computing were largely discredited and tagged as ‘hype’. However, we will currently see that organizations have truly started adopting them. At Onguard, for instance, we tend to use computing to optimize the complete order-to-cash method for firms. This makes it for the organizations to predict whether or not and once their customers can pay.
Blockchain conjointly offers an answer for monetary services. for instance, it makes the origin of payments clear and a great deal safer, so there’s no risk of fraud. However, additional awareness has to be raised regarding the advantages of blockchain, as this analysis shows its uses aren’t wide illustrious.
“While the precise uses of blockchain aren’t nevertheless outlined, the amount of activity exploitation this manner of technology is merely attending to increase. Businesses are already benefitting from increased information security and also the ability to automatize admin processes. With nearly two-thirds of CFOs already making ready associate initiatives associated with blockchain, we can expect that this is often simply the dawn of a blockchain revolution.”
