It’s that time of year, friends, when we look to the best and brightest across the many sectors of financial technology and digital wealth to share their prognostications for what the New Year may hold in 2022. And we have some very bright stars quoted in this year’s line up. Read what they have to say because these are the influencers shaping the industry and what they are seeing and visioning is what will surely become reality for us all in 2022 and beyond.
As for us – what we see is an ongoing trend in marketing in the fintech sector that demands more value, more transparency and more accountability while still giving a voice to the entrepreneurial fintech founders who are shaping our industry and quite literally, our world. We have strived to provide exactly that with the launch of Digital Wealth News in November, 2020 and we plan to further hone that mission with more innovations and new joint ventures as we move into 2022.
Furthermore, we see education as an important area of growth for this new digital wealth marketing eco-system and will have more info on the launch of our new DWealth Education platform, under the leadership fintech thought leader Dara Albight in 2022 soon. Stay tuned!!
Aaron Schumm, Founder & CEO | Vestwell
In 2022 we’ll start to see embedded finance companies, resembling those of a Stripe, Shopify, or others, take steps to expand their offerings to the businesses they serve. I predict they will offer embedded solutions, like workplace savings, into their suite of solutions. In the coming year, we will also see more government involvement in state retirement saving programs. Currently, 14 states have enacted programs, and with dozens of others considering legislation, we should see a number of new states roll out their programs over the next 12 months.
Matt Belcher, CEO | CalTier
Regardless of what might be going on globally with the pandemic, I think 2022 will be a year we look back on and count as the biggest breakout year for FinTech and Alternative Investing platforms.
The upward growth in the last five years has been stratospheric. Now more than ever people want control over their finances instantly from mobile devices without feeling like someone else is dictating. There is a desire to be the master of their own financial destiny and Alt Investing platforms gives them that power.
Helen Yang, CEO | Andes Wealth
The recent deficiency letters issued by the SEC to robo advisors pointed out the inadequacy in using “just a few data points to formulate investment advice”. This is a wake-up call for not just robo-advisors, but also Registered Investment Advisors, Independent Broker Dealers, and Wirehouses, many of which are not doing much better in this area.
To address this critical gap, we see wider adoption of risk tolerance assessment and client profiling tools in 2022 across all segments of wealth management, to better defend their practices when challenged by the regulators, clients, and arbitrators.
Kelly Waltrich, Co-Founder & CEO | Intention.ly
In 2022, we’ll see the acceleration of a brand-new wave of fintech innovators already experiencing massive growth. While these fast, nimble players face an uphill battle to shift market loyalty from the OG fintech behemoths, they also have a major advantage because they aren’t built on 20-year-old platforms, nor are they influenced solely by traditional advisor software—they draw from top-notch digital user experiences across all industries. And because they don’t face the challenge of convincing advisors that they need technology in the first place, they can focus on proving why they’re the best choice for their respective use case.
Jahon Jamali, Chief Marketing Officer | SARSON FUNDS
NFTs are poised to be the catalyst for widespread consumer crypto adoption in 2022. Beyond digital art, NFTs stand to see continued expansion into areas such as certificates, licensing, personal data sovereignty, identity management, and beyond. We’ll see brands stumble perhaps out of the gate in their NFT forays, but as companies and individual investors start to recognize the utility of NFTs beyond the popular art appeal, the non-fungible token movement has the potential to compete with, and perhaps even eclipse, traditional digital asset tokens.
Mohsin Masud, Founder & CEO | AKRU
I predict that we will see blockchain adoption across a wider spectrum of industries and products. People will benefit from blockchain technology being seamlessly woven into more and more facets of their daily lives including payments, supply chain tracking, all things finance and investments. At the same time, we will start to see a pronounced divergence between blockchain and cryptocurrency. As the public’s understanding of these concepts grows, financial institutions will begin utilizing blockchain more than cryptocurrency.
Michael Partnow, Head of Wealth Management | Jiffy.ai
After visiting my Psychic this year, I demanded that she give me my money back! She looked into her crystal ball and said that our industry in 2022 will revolve around the 4 C’s which was the same prediction that she read to me for 2021. I said, “I am here for the 2022 predictions.” Her response, “The same as 2021. The financial services industry will see firms, Advisors and investors navigating the twisting and turning Compliance landscape. There will be continued fee Compression, the industry will see continued Consolidation as the big get bigger with Covid having an overarching influence.”
Marcus New, Founder & CEO | InvestX
Bitcoin will hit an all time high price, while NFT’s monetization will collapse and the markets perception will be that dumb money chased it. However, it will become more mainstream in adoption, but not for investment. Blockchain will be used by companies for financial record keeping and audit firms will start to do audit testing on blockchain. More investors will fund AI-based financial planning and portfolio construction companies as adoption increases. A new standard for cap tables will emerge and be adopted by a number of high-profile unicorns, leading to the full electronification of clearing and settlement for private shares.
Keith Gregg, Founder & CEO | Chalice Network
I believe 2022 will become the year of unification and migration. The past few years during the pandemic we have experienced so much isolation and anxiety and it’s time for us to come together to help one another. At Chalice we are known to aggregate and integrate products and services that independent business owners need and benefit from. I predict there will be a movement from Independent Advisors to join forces and aid & assist each other like a modern-day co-op (cooperative) – which involves mutual assistance in reaching a common goal; and that goal is achieving economies of scale. At Chalice, our belief is the Strength of WE empowers a network of ME.
Mark Casady, Founder & General Partner | Vestigo Ventures
We are in a period of serious FOMO and JOMO-many want to run fast into the ever changing FinTech scene while others want to run away! In wealth management this is not the time to run because so many helpful tools are coming to advisors and their clients to keep track of their goals and make investing much easier and more personalized. The technology of choice will be AI based making advisors offices more productive by deploying bots to do the work and interact with clients.
Aaron Klein, CEO | Riskalyze
In an increasingly tight labor market, we’ll see more talent from the “FAANG” tech companies move to fast-growing, nimble fintech companies. We’ve seen this trend already at Riskalyze as we’ve welcomed talent from Facebook, Google, Delta Air Lines, and more. “The Great Resignation” may be all over the news, but those people are clearly on the search for a strong culture and a world-changing mission, and we’re here to help!
Join us in the coming weeks as we publish Part 2 of this series (and maybe even Part 3)!
