The end of the zero-interest-rate period compressed lending margins, but it had a silver lining. It forced fintech companies to become 'full-stack' by acquiring bank charters and building significant revenue streams from customer deposits, ultimately making their business models more durable.

While scale is necessary for investment in technology, excessive market concentration (above 20-25%) harms consumers. It incentivizes banks to sit back and extract value rather than innovate and improve service, as competition is the primary driver of betterment.

While consumer fintech gets the hype, the most systematically important opportunities lie in building 'utility services' that connect existing institutions. These complex, non-sexy infrastructure plays—like deposit networks—enable the entire ecosystem to function more efficiently, creating a deep moat by becoming critical financial market plumbing.

Merely deploying AI tools like Copilot to employees offers minimal value. The real revolution is using AI to re-engineer core processes from the ground up. For example, AI can reduce a six-week credit file preparation to 14 minutes, forcing a fundamental rethink of roles and requiring massive reskilling efforts.

The next evolution in fintech will be regulated applications that offer seamless trading across traditional securities, tokenized assets, and native crypto. This framework allows direct user access to DeFi protocols like staking and lending from a single, compliant, and user-friendly platform, bridging the gap between two currently separate financial worlds.

Large financial institutions, which once insisted on building all tech in-house (even email clients), have undergone a cultural shift. Humbling experiences and the clear ROI of AI have made them more open to adopting best-in-class external software, creating a huge market for B2B fintechs.

The primary interface for services is shifting from websites to conversational AI agents. Users form personal preferences and history with their chosen AI (e.g., ChatGPT) and will expect to perform tasks like opening a bank account through that trusted agent, forcing companies to create a great "Agent Experience."

The 2022-2023 market downturn acted as a forcing function for survival. Point solutions like neobanks had to expand into lending or investing to retain users. This culling process resulted in the winners emerging as much more comprehensive, full-fledged financial platforms, not just niche apps.

Financial institutions are at a tipping point where the risk of keeping outdated legacy systems exceeds the risk of replacing them. AI-native platforms unlock significant revenue opportunities—such as processing more insurance applications—making the cost of inaction (missed revenue) too high to ignore.