As we close out this year, I wanted to take some time to reflect on some of Amount’s accomplishments from 2022, what we’re working on as we head into 2023 and beyond, as well as opine on some of the headwinds we are seeing in the market and the impact on our sector.
A slowing economy and an increasingly volatile financial market continue to be top-of-mind as we cross over to the new year. In conversations with clients, investors, partners, employees and prospects, I don’t think I’ve gone more than one day this year without discussing the way the broader economy is trending and its impact on our industry, as well as the financial services industry in general.
It makes for a challenging environment to build and grow any company. This sentiment is reflected in the contraction of the private capital markets and volatility in the public markets this year, which has forced many companies and investors to change course, pump the brakes and recalibrate.
Like many other firms operating in the fintech and the broader technology sector, we understand the realities of the economic conditions and the gravity of big decisions to uphold the long-term health and strength of our company. Looking forward, I’m confident there is reason for optimism as we examine the future of the banking and financial services community we serve.
The appetite for digital transformation in banking remains strong, and even banks that have made significant strides to up their digital offerings in recent years see plenty of opportunities for further growth ahead of them. As many industry pundits before me have noted, the pandemic accelerated digital transformation in the banking sector. Digital expectations, whether for regular consumers or even small business owners, are as high as they’ve ever been. In other words, the bar has been raised and it’s not coming back down.
In addition, we see other opportunities to help with digital initiatives that address the needs of our clients in the current economic environment. In a softening economy, banks have tended to focus on increasing efficiency in the back office, such as eliminating a variety of manual processes that support product delivery and service in favor of more digital automation and systems that operate in a much smarter capacity. This is where the combination of new automation must be paired with increased effectiveness of both fraud identification and customer verification capabilities in order to fully realize the benefits of these initiatives. Amount feels confident as a partner to bring these solutions to our banking clients and other financial services providers so they can deploy them quickly and in a cost-effective manner to improve the customer experience and drive down costs.
In the best of times, we’re helping banks capitalize on growth opportunities. But as we enter more uneasy economic times, our role as a partner to our clients is even more important to help them achieve these efficiencies and position them well for the future with profitable growth.
Despite the macro economic challenges, we’ve been fortunate at Amount to have had a lot of successes to celebrate this year. Among the highlights, here are a few that we’re especially proud of:
The acquisition of Linear Financial Technologies, and the subsequent launch of Amount’s small business lending solution, which builds upon our industry-leading retail lending and credit origination solution set.
Partnering with PSCU, the nation’s largest credit union service organization. This partnership with PSCU, which also invested in Amount, empowers credit unions to offer sophisticated end-to-end digital lending solutions and better compete in today’s digital-first marketplace.
Strengthening our partnership with Mastercard. Joining the Mastercard Engage partner network as a technology integration partner, Amount helps Mastercard customers quickly build and deploy financial services solutions using Mastercard’s open banking platform for new and improved payments and lending decisioning at scale. Mastercard also invested in Amount as part of our partnership.
In addition to our corporate development initiatives, we also took it upon ourselves to engage in a number of industry research projects to help us better understand the market we serve, and to share those insights with the industry. Some of these include:
Small Business, Big Ambitions: How Community Banks Can Embrace the Small Business Market(in collaboration with Cornerstone Advisors)
Bundled Banking Products: How Credit Cards Secure Customer Loyalty (in collaboration with PYMNTS)
Banking on Buy Now, Pay Later: Installment Payments and FIs' Untapped Opportunity (in collaboration with PYMNTS)
BNPL: Today's Greatest Acquisition Opportunity for Banks (in collaboration with Advertiser Perceptions)
As we approach the new year, I’m more confident that we’ve built a strong foundation for success in the years ahead with our amazing investors, clients, teams and innovative software capabilities. Our roadmap for 2023-24 features two prominent objectives that I’m especially excited about:
We are aiming to launch our next-generation originations platform, which will unify our consumer and small business platforms. The platform will be architected around microservices and self-service offerings and will, ultimately, deliver the most robust offerings in the market. Keep an eye out for more updates in the first half of the year.
We are also looking to actively expand our solution set to support more asset classes. The acquisition of Linear this year was instrumental in not only adding a whole new market segment for Amount (SMBs), but also informing our playbook for how we approach adding to our solution set in the future.
In closing, I want to acknowledge some of the unique challenges ahead given market dynamics; however, I am more optimistic than ever about our increasingly important role in enabling the banking industry’s digital revolution. It is a tremendous privilege to lead a company that is so steadfast in its commitment to helping our clients serve their customers well for a long time to come.