<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.999999999999998pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Digital Horizon presented the study "Fintech Trends 2022"</h1>
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<a style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://trends.digitalhorizon.vc/"><span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Experts told</a><span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> how we will pay within the metauniverses, what will replace big data, why the world needs total tokenization, and what role fintechs play in the implementation of the ESG agenda.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">&ldquo;2021 was a year of a big qualitative shift in the global economy and set new development vectors for the fintech market. We have all witnessed how the ongoing pandemic and increased social pressure have led to a significant expansion of opportunities and applications for fintech solutions. At the same time, while working on the report, we once again clearly felt how much more difficult it has become to separate what are really long-term trends from the hype. In this study, we detail seven key fintech trends that Digital Horizon is betting on,&rdquo; says Alan Waksman, founder and managing partner of Digital Horizon.
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After analyzing the ongoing events, a team of venture market experts identified seven new vectors for the development of financial technologies.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trend 1: Democratization of the market of non-public assets
Private equity marketplaces, wealth management tools, or financing of new business models, including digital assets, these and other solutions make the private equity market more transparent and open up new opportunities for retail investors to earn more.
What will happen next? It largely depends on the regulators: either they will limit the access of mass investors to the market of non-public assets, or they will be able to find a balance between people's desire to earn more and concern for their financial security. With more and more assets going digital and being tokenized, in practice, regulators will have to learn how to deal with the new realities, not just issue more bans.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trend 2. Products for the self-employed
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The pandemic has accelerated the introduction of a project format for cooperation between companies and independent contractors, including highly qualified specialists. At the same time, the self-employed, as well as small and medium-sized businesses, face problems in obtaining financing: most banks do not know how to work with those who have unstable income. To solve this problem, fintechs are taken. For example, transaction-based scoring and credit solutions on freelance platforms or risk management and financial stability tools.
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will happen next? Digital Horizon experts are confident that the principles of products for the self-employed will be transferred to the mainstream and will generally change approaches to scoring and funding decisions.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. Fintech for open ecosystems
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Open ecosystems that bring together independent players have become a new distribution channel that helps counter marketplaces and other types of centralized platforms. The focus of competition has shifted from individual product features to data competition, speed, and ease of embedding. This was reflected in the active development of universal checkout services, embedded products for investment and a new layer of ecosystems based on fintechs.
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will happen next? If independent players continue to unite, the fragmentation of the financial market and the specialization of fintech solutions will increase. On the contrary, the gap between leaders from closed ecosystems, centralized platforms and marketplaces will grow.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. Post-big-data era
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world has accumulated a huge amount of data, the storage of which requires a lot of energy, as well as other resources, in order to ensure security in accordance with the requirements of regulators. However, the information collected is often not representative. To improve the quality of analytics, technology companies are developing a more selective approach to data - taking into account user scenarios. Fintech solutions are developing that use synthetic data, audit information, or specialize in processing certain types of data.
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will happen next? Or there will be a monopolist - a centralized system that will know everything about everyone. Or specialization in data processing will increase, and consumer companies will buy signals that have weight in a certain scenario.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. Tokenization of the real world
The real sectors of the global economy need additional funding to overcome the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the capabilities of traditional banks are limited by the requirements of the regulator regarding capital adequacy. To attract alternative funding from institutional and private investors, the real sector will have to restructure and tokenize existing illiquid assets. The infrastructure for the digitization of rights and transactions with new asset classes is already being built. <span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will happen next? Digital Horizon experts are convinced that tokenization will be deeply integrated with other business processes, which will allow creating new financial products to solve non-standard cases.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6. Fintech for the Metaverse
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the metaverse, consumption occurs in real time and is not limited to one platform. To make this possible, we need an infrastructure that will ensure interoperability. And its foundations have already been laid by open ecosystems. Metaverses also provide users with enhanced options for personalizing interactions. Therefore, there will be more financial products that are embedded at the request of the user. The segment of solutions for managing reputation data will also grow.
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will happen next? It depends on which path the creators of the metaverses choose: completely decentralized, when, in accordance with the principles of Web 3.0, the rights of users to manage data and content are expanded, or more centralized, when control will be on the side of developer companies.
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<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7. Green fintech
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, as part of the ESG agenda, governments are adopting programs to achieve carbon neutrality, industry is rearming, and investors are more actively supporting green projects. The fintech industry is also actively responding to this public demand. For example, it introduces "carbon calculators" that calculate the user's personal carbon footprint, embeds automatic deductions for ESG goals in payments, develops products for "green" investments and alternative b2b lending.
<span style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Lora,serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will happen next: "green" fintech will become mainstream, the only question is how quickly: in three to five or 10-15 years. The trend will accelerate if regulators and society require ESG resilience parameters to be used in scoring and credit models and thereby influence funding decisions.

Experts told how we will pay within the metauniverses, what will replace big data, why the world needs total tokenization, and what role fintechs play in the implementation of the ESG agenda.