WNS launches FINSIBLE to support high-growth fintechs seeking disruptor success

The Situation: As fintechs mature, they need ecosystem support to continue their growth and innovation. Most service providers address this need with an ad hoc approach. Maturing fintechs need purpose-built capabilities – not trickle-down offerings designed for aging banks.

The fintech sector has been red-hot for a decade. Money is cheap at the tail-end of the ongoing pandemic, spurred by low interest rates. Investors continue to plow loads of venture capital and private equity money into the hands of the global fintech community with investments, valuations, and exits all sky high. Fintechs continue to evolve as both disrupters and enablers for established financial services firms. But as HFS has been tracking, fintechs are obviously not trapped in perpetual start-up mode. As fintechs grow up, there is a massive need for operations support services to help them focus on what they do best: innovation.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) firms have been talking about this potential for years, but few firms have gone so far as to formalize a specific fintech operations practice. Until now. At the tail-end of 2021, WNS has come to the fore to support high-growth fintechs and launched FINSIBLE.

WNS FINSIBLE aims to do the back-office heavy-lifting, allowing fintech clients to focus on continued innovation

WNS FINSIBLE, at its core, is a modular “operations-as-a-service” offering, built upon customizable and scalable operating models bundled with technology, FTEs, and exception handling. The offering combines analytics, technology tools and platforms, and an information security framework supported by WNS’ industry expertise to help drive optimal business operations. FINSIBLE offers an end-to-end value chain of services across banking processes, including payments, lending, and compliance operations (Exhibit 1). By design, WNS intends the offerings to work with fintechs as they grow and mature. We previously spoke to WNS and some of its fintech clients to understand how this works in action. The feedback indicated WNS is a critical element of their growth strategy.

Exhibit 1: WNS’ FINSIBLE is a modularized offering to support back-office operations for high-growth fintechs

Source: WNS, 2022

Purpose-built for fintechs

WNS did not rush into the launch of this offering. Rather, in an ongoing effort to identify underserved needs in financial services, WNS spent a couple of years working with fintechs to understand their unique challenges with a particular eye to supporting rapid growth and continuous change. Fintechs need their partners to flex and change as quickly as they do. And, as they generally lack legacy and are obsessed with applied innovation, they generally expect tech-enabled solutions that bring the best of hybrid human and emerging technologies. The outsourcing norms of established financial services firms with lengthy contracting cycles and multi-year, frozen-in-stone contracts built on FTEs do not work with fintechs. Thus, FINSIBLE was born, backed by 2,500 dedicated resources and 15 fast-growth clients and growing.

FINSIBLE uptake focuses on financial crimes compliance and customer experience

WNS has seen the biggest traction thus far with financial crimes compliance and customer service. For firms that have recently attained banking licensure, such as its public domain client Varo back in 2020, the ability to rapidly scale regulatory compliance operations such as KYC, fraud investigations, enhanced due diligence, and PEP (politically exposed person) and sanctions screenings is essential. Similarly, any fintech with rapid growth in B2C or B2B customers needs to ensure its customer service scales as fast as its customer base across all channels. Both critical growth enablers require people plus technology and specialized domain expertise to succeed. WNS’ FINSIBLE offers rapid scale, ongoing rightsizing, and additional support across its portfolio (Exhibit 1).

The Bottom Line: When fintechs grow up, they need a heck of a lot more than a good idea and investors with deep pockets. Ensuring operational excellence is boring, but it is essential on the fintech path to disruptor success.

Mature fintechs, like a certain global payments disruptor, got there because they were smart enough to realize that disruptive technologies and innovative approaches alone could not take them to the Promised Land. Operations services may not be as cool and sexy as disrupting the global payments market or scalping market share from established banks, but fintechs will fail without it. Fintech leaders need to approach operations with as much gusto as they do innovation—and trusted partners can help them get there.

WNS’ FINSIBLE offers a vetted and formalized approach to helping fintechs scale and meet their growing employee, customer, and regulatory commitments. The vetted approach makes all the difference as existing BPO offerings focused on established banks will not fly here. WNS’ competitors that offer only ad hoc support for fintechs should take note. WNS needs to continue to showcase its results in the form of scaled fintechs making their mark beyond being the venture capital flavor of the month.