We have presented a lot of arguments about this matter and it seems that great insights and predictions are endless coming from various globally renowned experts. Some are saying these industries are now separating, departing on their separate ways – but not today.
Let us present Xavier Gomez, Co-Founder of Invyo a specialist, actually operating with fintech in providing solutions, innovations enabling digital transformation in the finance industry – and yes, enabling the insurance industry.
How would you explain to 10-year-old, what is FinTech and WealthTech?
Fintech is to spend and save your pocket money via a smartphone.
As one of the renowned influencers, can you please share your visions about Fintech and what are your objectives for the insurance and finance industries?
I am not considering myself as an influencer. I am tech-savvy regarding financial services. I like to share insights and debate with people about innovation.
In my opinion, Fintech is one of the most important megatrend with robotization, Digitalization, Mobility, 5G, Artificial Intelligence… I am sure that we can drastically improve the level of services regarding clients needs and SME for financial services. I strongly believe to “co-optition” concept. Banks face huge barriers : old-fashioned culture, low-interest rates, acceleration of innovation trend, external competitors (GAFA and BATX and customer requirements. This is the reason why they need to partnership with fintechs to be more agile and start their digital transformation. In coming years, you will see financial services become a commodity with the development of Fintech solutions. Therefore, you will see also a lot of new competitors to banks and insurance companies providing financial and banking services (Telecom, Energy, automakers, etc…).
My personal goal is to influence the development of innovation in Insurance and Finance sectors in order to reduce costs, simplify using, improve services and time saving for customers.
You’re an expert on the French Market, can you share with us great updates and successful use cases that impressed you the most over the last 12 months?
I am a global expert with special focus on Europe, Africa, and Latam. The French fintech market is booming with more than EUR 350 raised for only H1 2019. This is the total amount of funding in 2018. According to INVYO, the most invested sector is Insurtech and Business Cash Management in France.
I was impressed by the development and the service provided by Alan – a digital health insurance platform with a focus on user experience with an excellent price-quality ratio health plan. Alan has a great value proposition, good story-telling, and client-centricity obsession. It succeeds to create a common offering named Sésame dedicated to freelancers and entrepreneurs in order to facilitate the life to freelancers startups. The sésame offering has been launched to cover from banking services to Insurance with Qonto (French neo-bank), Malt (freelance platform) and Alan.
Can you excite us more about Invyo? What are your visions and what developments are making you excited for the next 5-10 years?
I am the co-founder of Invyo. We create a tool that we do not have when we worked for banks. A business intelligence tool to support the digital transformation of financial services (Industry centric platform, Adaptable SaaS solution, data provider, AI-powered tools).
INVYO is the first market intelligence platform in the Financial Services in Europe powered by Machine Learning. The company offers a SaaS solution that leverages proprietary Big Data analytics and Natural Language Analysis (NLP) technologies to help financial institutions drive their digital transformation strategy. INVYO provides its clients with predictive analysis, sourcing, market intelligence and competitive intelligence tools, and conducts targeted analyzes accessible on request or from its research portal. The first one-stop-shop for all the market data in your sector.
The usual data provider that provides its customers with a standardized platform (not scalable or customizable). The usual data is also transactional data (mainly focused on one activity). Also, teams still have to spend time looking for the data within the database. The heart of Invyo’s activity is rather centered on the contextualization of the data. In other words, thanks to our tools, we are able to share actionable data that adapts to the uses of your teams.
In next 5-10 years, all economic sectors will need market intelligence insights to take strategic decision safely and quickly (Talent, Resources, Budgets, new offering) I am pretty sure Invyo is in the right side (BtoB, SaaS, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing). Invyo provides Data analytics to empower human intelligence and reduces research time while improving team performances (Strategic, Innovation, Research departments, and executive committee)
In the software industry, the purchases of Tableau by Salesforce or DataFox by Oracle prove the strategic interests of Data, and in particular, the development of predictive data analysis (Data as a Service).
What key factors are you looking for a client or a partner?
We take time to understand the culture of innovation inside the company and analyze the pains that client’s faces. Moreover, we check the quality of data, API platform, the open banking policy produced by ours clients in order to integrate its data and leverage in using Invyo SaaS platform.
Do you agree about the greying the connection between insurtech and fintech – why?
I consider that Insurtech is an inseparable component of fintech such as Regtech, Payments, Crypto, Blockchain and Neo-banks, etc…. Insurance is a big part of Financial Services in the economy. In the financial sector, the banking sector works closely with insurance sector for years. Fintech solutions will definitively improve the client services in insurance sector with the support of IoT, 5G and Artificial Intelligence to reduce costs, define a tailor-made service and save time.
What is your must-know fact about Fintech that will promote the future of banking and finance?
As you know the banking sector is facing a challenging environment for years: Low-interest rates, digitalization, regulation, the hard competition of tech companies. The future will tell us soon, but I think the biggest challenge is to master technology (with development Cloud computing, 5G technology, and Artificial Intelligence). Moreover, financial institutions massively invest on digital transformation, new research shows a minority of consumers report any significant improvement in the experiences offered. One reason is that most institutions focus on internal, not consumer, goals.
The most compelling advice you may want to share with young people and startups who are planning to enter the fast-moving worlds of fintech and insurtech?
The impossible is possible with innovation and digitalization. Who dares win!
Your top 3 books everyone should read and top 3 gadgets everyone should have?
Books:
- The Fintech Book from Susanne Chishti (Available in Germany, in the US, in the UK, in Italy, and in Spain)
- No Ordinary Disruption From Dobbs, Manyika and Woetzel (Available in Germany, in the US, in the UK, in Italy, and in Spain)
- The Art of the Start 2.0 (Available in Germany, in the US, in the UK, in Italy, and in Spain)
Gadgets:
- Voice Assistant (Available in Germany, in the US, in the UK, in Italy, and in Spain)
- Flyboard
- Waterproof Jacket: ARCTERYX BETA AR (Available in Germany, in the US, in the UK, in Italy, and in Spain)
Digitalscouting and Dr. Kiera are sending the best regards to Xavier Gomez and his team for making this interview possible.
