Fiserv's Future-Ready Solutions for the Financial Landscape

Despite the advances made in recent years, a significant portion of Mexico's population remains excluded from formal financial services, with 53% of adults lacking bank accounts as of 2021, according to the National Baking and Stock Commission (CNBV). Amid these challenges lies an opportunity fueled by the emergence of fintech platforms. 

The Mexican financial landscape is undergoing a transformation driven by the convergence of fintech innovation and traditional financial institutions. The CNBV reports that fintech platforms are driving a 32% increase in the adoption of digital financial products, presenting a promising pathway toward broader financial access. Cutting-edge technology will play a key role in fostering financial inclusion and enhancing consumer experiences, says Luis Brauer, Director of Business Development and Strategy, Fiserv.

With seven out of every ten people lacking access to credit and over half of the population without a bank account, according to CNBV, the adoption of electronic money becomes imperative to drive up transaction volume. The emergence of aggregators, players, and comparators has accelerated financial inclusion, making services more accessible and relevant to an increasingly active population. However, open banking regulation will be key in fueling financial digitalization, says Brauer. 

According to a study made by the Fintech Association of Mexico, three key verticals drove the evolution of fintech and financial institutions in 2022, explains Brauer. The first, "Fintech as a Service," pertains to the essential infrastructure and digitalization solutions for financial entities. The next is the "Digital Payments" vertical, facilitating seamless money transfers and transaction processing across digital platforms. Finally, the "Lending" vertical leverages online platforms to streamline credit access for individuals and businesses, catalyzing economic growth and entrepreneurship.

The Fintech Association of Mexico surveyed 700 fintechs and found that between 13.4% and 17.6% of their growth in clients and market share came through strategies focusing on operational agility, profitability, and data analytics.

“Data analytics empowers and enables hyper-personalization. What a fintech company is seeking, in addition to profitability, is to provide experiences that differentiate how to reach a market. Moreover, customers are becoming increasingly demanding, requiring that such experiences be accompanied by agility and precision,” says Brauer.

User experience is of paramount importance in shaping strategic initiatives within fintech, says Brauer. From seamless digital interactions to personalized services, consumers demand agility, reliability, and innovation in their financial engagements. Fiserv leads the charge in global processing and core banking solutions, says Brauer, delivering unparalleled reliability and efficiency. 

Through signature offerings like the FirstVision platform, Fiserv enables end-to-end management of payment products, bolstered by real-time data analytics and adaptive AI models. Aligning with these expectations, Fiserv champions a customer-centric approach, epitomized by its cutting-edge FirstVision International Payments-as-a-Service Platform. This platform currently handles over 200 million transactions in Mexico, and is available in 33 countries worldwide.

Cloud banking solutions also play a pivotal role in driving operational agility and customer-centricity. Fiserv's Signature Next International Cloud Banking Solution thus emerges as a game-changer, says Brauer, offering a modern technology stack equipped with RESTful APIs and microservices. With seamless integration across public, private, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments, Fiserv empowers financial institutions to deliver unparalleled digital experiences tailored to modern consumer expectations, he adds.

“In the technological and financial ecosystem we find ourselves in, agility is key, finance needs to be embedded, and openness should prevail. This fully cloud-based core banking ecosystem represents over 37 years of evolution since Fiserv began its services in Latin America. We are very proud to present for the first time the evolution of this platform because it signifies the evolution of the digital bank into a completely new stack. Everything is already supported as processing as a service through a mechanism that, being fully native to the cloud, will allow a fintech, financial entity, or bank to offer differentiated values by embedding finance and services focused on investment and loans of all kinds to integrate with any processing platform,” says Brauer.