Manchester Digital’s first ever Fintech Week concluded with its conference last Thursday afternoon – an afternoon of insightful discussions and presentations from experts across the Greater Manchester fintech sector. The presentations and fireside chats covered a range of topics from digital transaction security to embedded finance – and not surprisingly – AI!
Our senior account managers, Naomi and Lottie, share their top takeaways from the event:
The importance of a growth mindset for tech teams
Many of us like to learn what we like – and stay firmly in our comfort zone. Yet, Zuto’s Lucy Ironmonger showed us why it’s important for tech teams and developers to learn things they don’t necessarily like and to adopt a growth mindset. This is crucial for them to realise new possibilities and maximise opportunities. However, to enable teams to do this it’s important for managers to create an environment where asking questions is encouraged. A good manager will work closely and collaboratively with their team members to help them find and pursue tasks that truly push them out of their comfort zone.
Generative AI has an important role in more human-centred and personalised customer experiences
Credit Canary’s Simon Belfield and Matthew Bycroft explored how generative AI can be used to personalise the customer journey and fill data gaps. Not only can it allow teams to engineer solutions more quickly and realise other operational efficiencies, but conversational AI feels more natural than automated decision trees in customer comms and has the questions ready to collect the data it needs, personalise the journey, and close the feedback loop from customers.
How AI will change the role of the developer
Kirk Winstanley from BankiFi explored the incredible pace and scale at which AI is developing, and how this is already affecting coding, with the likes of GitHub CoPilot already generating a huge volume of code. Kirk acknowledges that we need an approach that recognises the rate of AI development and that developers need to be prepared for change. It’s likely they’re going to need to get better at asking questions and engineering prompts rather than directly solving problems.
It’s important to ‘romance’ customers
The first of the fireside chats focused on how customer experience should be optimised in fintech. The first 100 days should be ‘delightful’ for customers as this is typically when key decisions are made and also when customers are most likely to experience problems. As such, it’s during this period that customers should be romanced! Human-centred comms through this time are key in cementing loyalty.
AI is making financial advice more accessible
While historically only more wealthy members of society have been able to afford personalised financial advice, conversational AI and customer support is making this more widely accessible, helping customers to make informed decisions with accurate and readily available data.
If you’re interested in raising the profile of your tech-start up, get in touch today!