Articles

The current financial services sector is realising considerable changes in its operations due to development in technology and embracing of digital platforms. This evolution is changing the established concepts of business, consumers and channels of delivery of services. Financial services firms are changing the way they work through digital transformation due to developments in technology, changes in customer needs, and an increase in emphasis on sustainability. Understanding the opportunities, risks, and new trends in digital transformation is the focus of this paper. Opportunities include efficient real-time decision-making processes, increased transparency and better process controls, which are balanced by the threats of change management, dubious organization-technology fit, and high implementation costs. The study also examines recent advancements, including the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence, developments in mobile and online banking, integration of blockchain, and increasing focus on security and personalised banking. A literature review yields some findings from different studies on rural financial services, the evolution of the blockchain, drivers of digital transformation, cloud-based learning approaches, and emerging sustainability practices. All of these results suggest that more strategic planning, analytics, and more focus on ensuring that organisational objectives are met with transformations should be pursued. Hence, this research findings add to the existing literature in determining how innovative and digital technologies are likely to transform the financial services sector and advance sustainability.

In mid 2000s, a new Fintech era has commenced which is known as “Crowd lending” or “FinTech Credit” whereby credit activities are realized online through internet platforms that match borrowers with lenders (investors). Those kinds of lending activities are named Peer to Peer Lending (P2P). The purpose of this study to elaborate the functioning and regulatory framework of P2P lending in US and China. Those two countries can be considered as two conspicuous example of the application of P2P lending especially in terms of regulation. China transformed its P2P market in 2015 after a long loose regulation period and US from the very beginning applied a strict regulation on the market. By that way, a set of terms of regulation is aimed to be proposed especially for the emerging market countries. It is thought that P2P lending can contribute to the economic development of the emerging market countries if it is applied properly. The contribution of this study to newly developing literature is to provide a comparison and also a set of terms of regulation to be applied in the emerging market countries.