How aging workforces will shape fintech ops

Fintech founders are like other tech founders—venturing out to build out services and products that address deficiencies they’ve personally encountered. “I started, personally, to solve my problem, like how Brian Chesky founded Airbnb or [Travis Kalanick] founded Uber,” Milind Mehere, CEO and Founder of alt-investment platform Yieldstreet, told The Financial Revolutionist this week. 

But what happens as the median age of fintech founders and employees increases? How will that shape fintech writ large—especially fintechs’ operations?

Bringing out the wealthtech 

Baby boomers are expected to transfer more than $68T in wealth to their descendants in the coming years—and, once in the hands of younger relatives, this wealth will have to be managed and stored to guarantee the nest egg’s longevity. 

Already habituated to instantaneousness and low costs thanks to prominent wealthtech platforms like Wealthfront or banking solutions like Chima, Varo, and Ally, these younger cohorts will expect accessible, intuitive, and automated solutions for their newfound wealth. Shifting their operations to meet these new expectations, banks and wealthtechs may commit to tie-ups; banks and neobanks may also build out their wealth-management offerings to retain customers and capture their growing portfolios. 

Bolstering retirement options

Internally, as their employees grow older, fintech players should expect greater demand for a variety of retirement options. In addition to traditional perks like life insurance and 401(k) matching, culture-focused businesses may be expected to offer private-market retirement solutions or more up-and-coming retirement products like those offered by Savvly. 

Fintechs selling these solutions will no doubt capitalize on this trend, emphasizing the inevitability of employee demand—offering people ops leaders the opportunity to be trailblazers through the retirement benefits they offer. 

Emphasizing sustainability

Today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings who make up the majority of fintech’s workforce see climate change as the primary social issue of their generation. GenZ and Millennials are more actively engaged in addressing climate change, and see the environment as a top priority for governments. 

With those concerns in mind, fintechs and wealthtechs will increasingly emphasize the ecological and sustainable qualities of their operations—whether through measurable ESG outcomes, carbon offsets, or other mechanisms. More than a mere branding strategy, such an operational shift will let customer bases grow sizeably, and ensure a stable environment and economy for those workforces once they retire.