Bain’s best financial services insights of 2023

Generative AI presents a powerful opportunity for financial services companies, but also multiple risks, including some new ones. Our July brief explores five design principles that can help firms strike the right balance as they explore the commercial potential of responsible AI.

It’s the great unbundling: Our global survey found that consumers are availing themselves of new digital providers at every turn, especially in developing markets. The rise of e-wallets and fintech payment offerings threatens to make banks less relevant in daily life and deprive them of everything that accompanies payments. Our report details five steps banking leaders can take to counter this fragmentation.

Insurance customers don’t just want their losses covered; increasingly, they want insurers to help reduce and even prevent them. Our research reveals that it’s time for insurers to redefine their role, provide new solutions, and, just as importantly, embrace a new sense of purpose.

Behind the overall growth trend in the payments industry is an intensifying competition for retail merchant and consumer accounts. Insurgents and major tech firms are changing the payments landscape. That fact, along with emerging web3 applications, could put as much as 90% of today’s revenue in play. We’ve outlined a strategy for banks.

A quarter of total stock wealth in the world is in liquid assets. We believe this global pool will expand from just over $130 trillion to almost $230 trillion by 2030, a boom that will lift revenues in the wealth management sector to over $500 billion. Bain partner Markus Habbel recently spoke to The Economist about the opportunities ahead.

Millions of accredited and qualified individual investors want to participate in private alternative assets, but a barrier looms: the absence of a robust and transparent digital infrastructure. Our brief identifies business archetypes that are emerging to overcome high administrative costs, illiquidity, and other obstacles.