Asian Financial Services Newsletter, October 2013

1 October 2013

Tokyo, Japan

From the Senior Vice President

An important part of Celent's work is helping financial institutions and technology providers capture market opportunity by understanding major trends. These themes can't just look good on paper; they have to represent real demand in the marketplace.

Many of our clients find Asia challenging because it is not one market but many, from the great developing countries of China and India to smaller mature markets such as Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore, and everything in between. Looking across such a diverse landscape, and across multiple financial segments (banking, insurance, capital markets, and wealth management), what, one might ask, are the unifying themes?

One area we can point to with certainty is mobile delivery of financial services, which is challenging legacy paradigms in the mature markets and opening up entirely new (unbanked) markets in the developing countries.

Celent has covered mobile financial services since our start in 1999, and our market-leading research on Asia continues with reports on mobile payments in South Korea, mobile banking in China, and case studies of mobile insurance in our influential Model Insurer Asia reports. And of course our Asia-specific work is backed by Celent's global research on innovation and best practices in digital financial services.

Neil Katkov, PhD
Senior Vice President, Asia

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