What 2022 meant for fintech operations

Major changes over the past year have inexorably shaped the fintech landscape—but few departments have been as affected as operations teams, which have had to react to developments and refract those new realities through hiring and strategy decisions. 

The cost of tech talent

In the face of tech-sector cuts as well as declining investor appetite, operations teams—in conjunction with other relevant departments—wield a double-edged sword. On the one hand, fintechs are being forced to return to market fundamentals in order to secure further capital. But on the other hand, they have an opportunity to acquire talent at cheaper prices than previously possible. 

Fintechs capable of both will emerge stronger on the other side of economic volatility. UK-based Wise, for example, which reported profits of about $63 million in 2022, is gearing up for a hiring spree. "It's a good time now for us to invest in our business, and luckily it's gotten easier to hire," said Wise CTO Harsh Sinha. Wise can rely on laid-off talent from Stripe, Klarna, Brex, and others to shore up its product pipelines and double down on its competitive edge.

Conflict over crypto 

At the beginning of the year, many fintech leaders saw crypto as a growing threat—potentially edging out fiat currency-based savings and investment products through blockchain-based alternatives. The volatility (if not implosion) of the past year for crypto has certainly dissuaded those fears, at least for now. But a notable cohort of fintechs—Stripe and Robinhood among them—find themselves halfway through integrating crypto products and offering them to their client bases. 

Operations teams face a difficult choice: whether to continue committing to blockchain-based pipelines and talent, or cut costs and abandon projects that won’t benefit them in the medium term. 

Recession woes

A confluence of geopolitical instability, inflation, and sector-specific volatility has created a market that seems to be headed into a recession (though some market indicators suggest otherwise). Investment apps like Robinhood have seen demand plummet, while consumer-facing savings solutions have taken advantage of rising interest rates to grow their user bases. The former group of fintechs may be forced to adopt a more conservative operational footing, while the latter might seize recessionary headwinds as an opportunity to scale aggressively.