3 key trends from this year’s FTT Fintech Festival

What are the biggest fintech trends affecting businesses right now? Here’s what we heard from finance leaders at the FTT Fintech Festival in London.

1. Embedded payment solutions mean a better user experience

At the embedded finance stage, the conversation revolved around the big opportunity embedded finance gives companies to consolidate products and provide smoother user experiences.

Embedded finance — when financial products and services are integrated and monetised within non-financial services — creates significant benefits for companies and customers alike.

Crucially, customers are able to enjoy a more streamlined purchasing journey, with less friction and fewer additional steps, enhancing their experience.

Experts on the panel, including Marie Volpe, Navan’s Product Marketing Lead for Payments & Expense, stressed the importance of well-considered partnerships for successfully delivering embedded finance solutions and consolidating to provide best-in-class user experiences.

Referencing Navan’s partnership with Brex, Volpe emphasised the need for collaborating companies to focus on what each does best in order to deliver a superior service to users: “Play to your strengths. Don’t try to do everything.”

BrexPay for Navan integrates Brex’s leading card management capabilities with Navan’s end-to-end travel and expense platform to create a next-generation business and travel payments solution.

Where legacy companies would use a travel management company, an expense management platform, and a corporate card, they can now just use BrexPay for Navan. “We’ve created a joint solution where you can embed Brex spend cards into the Navan platform, so everything is much more seamless,” Volpe said.

Plus, the solution provides 100% payment reconciliation on travel booked on Navan, making month-end-close easy for finance and accounting teams.

2. Automation isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s non-negotiable

A key topic at the event was the opportunity digitisation has given businesses to automate tasks and streamline processes.

Leaders agreed automation is imperative for companies looking to improve data accuracy, increase transaction speed, and help ensure regulatory compliance.

For finance and accounting teams especially, automating routine tasks like invoicing, expenses, and reimbursements frees up time for higher-value activities such as strategic planning and business analysis.

With automation reshaping the landscape, teams must evolve their skill sets. Speakers at the event stressed the need for finance and accounting teams to become adept in data analytics, AI management, and digital transformation to extract the full benefits of digitisation and automation.

3. Let data drive decisions

Closely tied to the topic of automation was discussion around the role data should play in informing financial decisions and driving business growth.

Although data is more comprehensive and available than ever before, harnessing it remains a challenge for teams.

Leaders at the event agreed on the importance of adopting the right AI and analytics tools for their company’s unique needs so they can use the real-time data at their fingertips to make better, more objective decisions.

The drawbacks of not taking a data-driven approach are too big to ignore. McKinsey research shows data-driven companies see EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) increases of up to 25%, while also being more likely to beat competitors in customer acquisition, more likely to stay profitable, and more likely to retain customers.

Deloitte research has also revealed that more digitally mature organisations have higher revenues and profit margin growth.

How Navan helps finance and accounting teams

At Navan, we’ve built a travel, travel payments, and expense solution that saves companies of all sizes time and money. Customers benefit from automated processes, real-time data, and innovative payment solutions, and get one global platform to manage corporate spend.

Navan has embedded various centralised payment solutions directly into the platform, including Travel Payments, Navan Connect, the ability to connect any Visa, Mastercard or American Express corporate card to Navan, and direct bank payments for users.

Centralising payments directly into Navan gives companies the benefits of automated expense management from swipe to reconciliation, including proactive spend policies, coded and enriched transaction data, and automated expense reconciliation.

A Forrester study of Navan’s expense management solution revealed that, for a company of 2,000 people generating 2,000 expense reports annually, accounting and finance teams could save eight hours per week, with an increased operational efficiency worth almost $227,000.

Ready to find out more? Book a demo to hear how Navan can save your company time and money.