We asked 900 consumers (across 14 emerging markets) to highlight where the fintechs in their country needed to improve the most. Five topics accounted for around two-thirds of responses:
Customer sign-up process
Convenience/ease of use
Transaction execution
Design of platforms/mobile applications
Customer education
Taking a broader view, 28% of the improvement areas relate to convenience, 23% to the customer experience, 17% to the product experience, 16% to trust, and 15% to the breadth of expertise.
How consumers want fintechs to improve differs by market
Indian consumers regard the biggest fintech improvement area to be convenience. Those in Russia think fintechs should focus on the product experience, especially transaction execution. Vietnamese consumers think the customer experience is the biggest area of improvement; in particular, fintechs should enhance the design of their online platforms/mobile applications. The breadth of service is where Brazilian consumers want their fintechs to improve. Indonesians want their fintechs to build trust through better customer education.
India
72% of Indian fintech consumers' responses matched the top 5 areas of improvement highlighted above. Indian fintech users are mainly looking for improvements to convenience/ease of use and the customer sign-up process. According to our fintech survey, Indian firms also recognise that the area they need to up their game is convenience. So far, fintechs have been more focused on offering economically viable product and service solutions but are now shifting attention to providing a more tailored user experience that customers prefer.
Saudi Arabia
The top 5 areas of improvement accounted for 69% of Saudi Arabia fintech users' responses. Particular areas of required focus include the customer sign-up process and the design of platforms/mobile applications. Only 10% of the fintechs in our Saudi fintech survey said that their focus in the next two years is on developing technology to ease customer onboarding. Potentially, therefore, many fintechs may be channelling their energies in the wrong direction.
Brazil
Only 54% of Brazilian fintechs' consumer responses matched the top 5 areas of improvement in other EMs. These fintechs should focus more on building trust than their EM peers; currently, they lag both in security and consumer education. We note that cybersecurity is an active area of expertise within the Brazilian ecosystem; fintechs could partner with such firms to better address consumers' concerns.
China
The five improvement areas mentioned above comprise 57% of survey responses in this market. In contrast to their EM peers, consumers want Chinese fintechs to pay more attention to transaction execution and security. For Chinese consumers, incumbent financial institutions score much more highly for the security of transactions.