2023 so far has been an up and down year in both financial and business terms. Many countries have been battling with inflation and a shortage of goods. As with any economy some businesses have thrived and others have ceased to exist. With that being said there has also been some new trends that established themselves this year.
Buy Now Pay Later
In the article Finance and business trends for 2023 you can read that during previous years financial agreements have only been limited to house and car purchases. In 2022 that turned completely around and businesses started offering these agreements on smaller purchases. Klarna, Paypal and Clearpay all let their clientele split the majority of their purchases into instalments without interest. These agreements are available on anything from clothing purchases to takeaway orders from restaurants.
What makes this trend so likely to continue in the same manner is the data shown by Google Keyword Planner. The data shows that searches from the keyword Klarna UK increased by nearly 50% in the latter end of 2022.
Why should you watch this trend?
In another article called Why buy now, pay later is a trend to watch it is stated that “Over the past few years, buy now, pay later (BNPL) has gone from a niche payment method to one of the hottest trends in payments.” This has occurred due to several reasons for example rising adoption by companies, the flexibility BNPL (Buy now pay later) offers you and the loyal youth consumers.
What makes this method of payment so different is the points of exposure that the customer experiences throughout their buyer’s journey. The instalment price on the product or service makes it seem cheaper. The payment method can be selected in the checkout cart. At the same time some financial institutions are offering their clients this payment method so they can manage their cash flow better.
Juniper Research has come to the conclusion that BNPL (Buy now pay later) purchases are most likely going to represent a quarter of every global transaction in the year 2026.
Younger generations just prefer this method of payment proven by the statistics. Such as the 9% increase from 2021 in these transactions by the youth.
AI Detecting Fraud
Fraud is a common occurrence on the internet. Investopedia published the article What Is Fraud? Definition, Types and Consequences by Timothy LI. In the article it is written that there are several types of financial fraud.
For example “ Common individual mortgage fraud schemes include identity theft and income/asset falsification, while industry professionals may use appraisal frauds and air loans to dupe the system. The most common investor mortgage fraud schemes are different types of property flipping, occupancy fraud, and the straw buyer scam.
Fraud also occurs in the insurance industry. Thoroughly reviewing an insurance claim may take so many hours that an insurer may determine that a more cursory review is warranted considering the size of the claim. Knowing this, an individual may file a small claim for a loss that didn’t really occur. The insurer may decide to pay the claim without thoroughly investigating since the claim is small. In this case, insurance fraud has been conducted.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) describes securities fraud as criminal activity that can include high yield investment fraud, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, advanced fee schemes, foreign currency fraud, broker embezzlement, pump-and-dumps, hedge fund related fraud, and late-day trading.1 In many cases, the fraudster seeks to dupe investors through misrepresentation and to manipulate financial markets in some way. These crimes are characterized by providing false or misleading information, withholding key information, purposefully offering bad advice, and offering or acting on inside information. “
After reading this you are probably thinking what a complicated business fraud is! Is all that detective work now going to be left to AI?
In the same article that I referred to earlier Finance and business trends for 2023 you can read that AI is being used for this purpose, because AI already can detect fraudulent business activities. This has given security and peace of mind to many companies. In 2022 the number of firms using AI for this purpose increased from a meagre 10% to a much improved 31%.
The increase is mostly due to the emergence of AI models such as ChatGPT. ChatGPT can already write code and several types of content. Therefore AI can be a great to use when you suspect fraud is being committed.
Increased focus on Compliance and Risk Management
Recently, ringcental.com published the article 6 financial services trends to watch in 2023 by Matt Lehman in which he wrote that financial institutions have been struck with large financial fines due to their failure to follow requirements under key regulations. This has been a common occurrence over the past several years and it looks bound to continue.
Regulatory and reporting requirements seem to be raised a lot recently. Banks and financial institutions are put under more pressure to comply with the regulations or pay heavy fines. When the workforce operates more digitally and is more connected to the world, service providers get a hold of larger amounts of private information. The information is also being moved from locations and different softwares. Therefore making sure everything complies with regulations is a difficult task to undertake. What is most problematic for the Banks and the financial institutions is that customers expect to be able to use the apps and software they like the most.
Therefore Banks and financial institutions are working on giving their employers access to a great variety of tools and features, while minimising the potential risks.
Conclusion
As we get ever closer to the end of 2023, we can see that the BNPL (Buy now pay later) payment method is gaining a foothold in both the financial and the business world. Young people often have less money and want things immediately. Therefore they prefer to pay this way.
At the same time AI can become a major player at detecting fraud. While detecting fraud is a complicated task AI can already be trusted to write essays and create code. So why can’t it detect fraud as well?
Finally, Banks and financial institutions will focus on compiling with the strict regulations regarding personal data and at the same time limiting their risks.
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