We live in a world that reveres the new and novel.
Just as we grow accustomed to one device or app, the next sleeker, flashier version arrives, packed with the promise of innovative new features we may never use.
In financial technology, where so much is at stake, innovation must serve a higher purpose: Improving the lives of users and empowering them to do their best work.
As Managing Director of Product Strategy, I've been building products in the fintech space for over 20 years and have experienced many technological trends. I've seen enough to know that some trends will fizzle out, while others will permanently transform the landscape of our industry.
My experience has taught me that chasing the latest trend won't help us achieve our goals. Instead, our success comes from combining deep expertise with the right technology to create tools and services that deliver meaningful, lasting value.
In this post, I explore why this approach to intentional innovation matters and how it impacts the development of sustainable financial technology.
The Principles Behind Meaningful FinTech Innovation
Early in my career, I had big ideas about using the latest technology to make things blazing fast or move everything to the cloud. I wanted to really shake things up.
But my experience working at Advent showed me this approach was a bit idealistic. I soon realized I was working with real, battle-tested products that have been serving global businesses day in and day out, year over year, for decades.
Technology, of course, plays a key role in how we develop our products. But I had initially overlooked the role expertise and experience also play in product development.
It can be all too easy to dismiss legacy technology as dated and overlook the fact that it actually embodies decades of work from some of the smartest minds in the industry – people with deep domain knowledge, production experience in mission-critical investment systems and expertise on how to handle the most complex issues.
By combining our rich history with the latest technology—and continuously enhancing our products based on client feedback and real-world experience—we’ve built an approach to innovation that truly stands apart.
Rather than trying to build a product to sell innovation, we weave innovation into the very fabric of our products and services. It’s not an add-on or afterthought—it’s integral to everything we build.
So, while some fintech companies may focus on the benefits of modern technology to signify their capability to displace decades-old systems, we focus on maintaining the depth and complexity our clients depend on while reimagining how legacy problems can be solved using emerging technology.
Sometimes that means rearchitecting major solutions; other times, it’s a thoughtful refinement—like creating new workflows to simplify tasks formerly enabled by legacy systems.
When we succeed, customers don’t see “innovation” as a feature—they simply experience intuitive, effective tools that make their work easier and their lives better.
Balancing Innovation with Responsibility
Our commitment to honoring our users’ needs — and their businesses — means developing products that deliver the greatest impact while preserving trust and stability.
For example, users may not value a cool, new AI enhancement if it doesn’t get adopted into users’ daily routines or comes at the cost of disruption or damaged vendor trust.
Similarly, a relatively new, modern user experience can look great and promise to solve many legacy problems. But what happens when that technology is used in a real-world investment environment, and users suddenly find its lack of depth disrupts mission-critical tasks?
The Genesis platform illustrates the right balance of meaningful innovation and reliable continuity.
When we developed Genesis, we faced important choices. Going fully cloud-native was tempting – and we had the technology to do it. But doing so would have meant leaving behind valuable elements of our domain that were critical to our users’ success. Moreover, we would have been playing catch-up to achieve the depth that our products and services had already achieved.
Anyone who has built product knows that no matter how much we replace old code with new technologies, there is no shortcut to replicating decades of development.
Instead, we architected from the ground up a platform that offers all of the benefits of being cloud native while bringing together the best depth of our solutions in a way that allows our clients to benefit from achievable transformation; where innovation and vision are continuously and incrementally delivered at a pace that works for our clients' businesses.
Ultimately, Genesis gives our users the best of both worlds: Innovation with minimal disruption. The platform we have invested in ensures that existing key critical components remain intact while enabling transformation when the time is right.
With this purpose-driven approach, our clients can rely on us to innovate responsibly, while protecting what matters most: The reputation and resilience of their firms.
Intentional Innovation for a Changing Industry
Change is a constant in this industry. The demands placed on investment managers are always evolving, and our product strategy and offerings must evolve alongside them.
Innovation means continuously taking in these inputs, using them to organically shape what we do and how we approach our work, and updating our efforts as needed.
What remains constant, however, is our ambitious yet thoughtful approach to development: Ambitious in pushing the boundaries of what technology can deliver and thoughtful in that we never lose sight of our responsibility to our users.
When we do our job well, innovation doesn’t feel like disruption. It feels like progress our users can trust.
Explore our range of solutions to learn what intentional innovation can do for your investment firm.
