Technology is advancing at breakneck speed, spurring the appearance of an unprecedented slew of neologisms. Every year, Fundéu BBVA’s “word of the year” candidate list brims with terms connected to the digital world, such as bitcoin, uberization, youtuber, phubbing, video refereeing, trolling, clicktivism, drone, nomophobia, meme, or selfie, chosen by Fundéu word of the year in 2014.
Blockchain, more regulations, emerging niche markets such as ‘insurtech’ y ‘regtech’... The future of fintechs has yet to be written but the trends shaping their future in the short- and medium-tern are already clear.
In the world of business, the coining of a neologism is almost a daily occurrence, as existing words are combined into acronyms that quickly become part of trend reports. Over the past years, we’ve witnessed a proliferation of solutions or companies - especially startups– seeking to leverage the new possibilities enabled by the latest technological advances to take on traditional markets, giving shape along the way to new subsegments of economic activity that escape the traditional definitions conveyed by existing terms.
Most of these new segments have been named by adding the -tech suffix to a prefix that normally makes reference to the traditional segment of activity they are related to. Thus we have fintech, proptech, insurtech, wealthtech, regtech, legaltech… Although almost self-explanatory, sometimes these terms can be a bit confusing for regular readers. To clear up doubts, we have prepared the following list.
Fintech: Finance + Technology
Probably one of the best known “–tech” neologisms is fintech, this umbrella term is used to refer to projects, many times startups, that seek to transform financial and banking services by applying disruptive ideas by leveraging new digital technologies. This term encompasses a broad range of solutions: methods of payment, data-based decision making, customer service through chatbots, hyper-personalized AI powered services that learn from customer patterns… Incumbents such as BBVA have managed to create synergies with fintech startups to offer before any of its competitors the sector’s most innovative services.
Proptech: Property + Technology
Although innovation has never been a defining trait of the real estate sector, the arrival of a new breed of players has unleashed a revolution, that is breathing new life into the market’s value chain in the shape of technological solutions of all sorts and kinds: from the modernization of real estate marketplaces, and blockchain-based home buying and selling solutions, new construction and property management software, virtual and augmented reality technologies to enhance property brokerage services –such as BBVA Valora View–, home automation, IoT devices or the leveraging of big data and geolocation.
