The past few decades were revolutionary in terms of the changes that happened in technology and finance. This transformation has made a significant impact on trading and traders, affecting the local and international markets and business culture across the world.

Banks and insurers have used the same increasingly stable, highly lucrative market models for decades. However, they are now met from both sides by entrepreneurs looking to challenge their companies. Crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, electronic banking, Bitcoin, robo-advisers - the diversity of these fintech innovators, as well as their astronomically high valuations, seems to be endless.

The most valuable changes occurred in the areas of automation, accessibility, competition, and flexibility. Let's take a look at them one by one.

Accessibility of Crypto Trading

The change in technology and the spread of digital assets has done for us in the last decade to allow the masses to penetrate the investment market. You do not have to be part of an institution anymore to have the ability to trade and gain profits from investments. Now, private and retail agents have equal access to the market through online trading platforms and apps.

Another major change happened in the sector of finance. The investment requirements of today are the lowest in the decade.

The tools for trading also became widely accessible. Anyone who has a will can learn how to trade and navigate their investment portfolio. More and more user-friendly, no-middleman exchange platforms are being created, offering direct and easy crypto sales with ID verification for experts and non-experts alike. An example of a platform where you can trade crypto with the lowest fees is redot.com.

Competition

The increase in accessibility has made the investment market a popular choice for more people than previously thought. This recent dynamic has forced the brokers, exchange, and retail providers to innovate, optimize, and cut costs. The growing competition has also been pushing the providers to make trading faster, easier, and cheaper.

Companies compete on who will offer the lowest transaction fee, most attractive deposit or withdrawal fee, fair storage fee, and others. The new systems of bonuses and loyalty programs are being introduced each year, with a strong client-oriented approach based on competitive prices.

Flexibility

The Internet, digitalization, and the general advancement of technology and the finance sector have made trading much more flexible. Traders can now make transactions from any place in the world, at any time, using nothing else than their mobile phone. Credit and debit card deposits are not the only ways to invest your money. High flexibility allows for bank transfers, PayPal, Western Union, and even direct cash deposits in ATMs, such as in the case of Bitcoin trading.

Moreover, market information is being generated at an unprecedented speed and with a high degree of transparency, making it easier to adjust your trading decisions, cancel trades, buy and sell in a matter of minutes.

Automation

The trading industry has benefited a lot from all the automation that happened in the last decade. Technological advances and high-speed Internet allowed AI to flourish, penetrating new areas such as crypto trading. These algorithms and programs allow faster and more reliable data analysis. This, in turn, is used for better trading decisions.

Modern trading bots are able to perform a review of the market statistics, up and down trends, market risks, and the combination of other elements that determine investment success. They do so by making accurate predictions about the risks and benefits and deciding on behalf of the trader about how much to invest and at what time.

Innovators are now using their engineering capabilities to simplify manual procedures that are currently time-consuming for existing players. This enables them to reach out to formerly new classes of customers, allowing them to provide services that were previously only available to the wealthy.

Wealthfront and Nutmeg are examples of robo-advisers that have automated a comprehensive range of wealth management options, including asset selection, financial counseling, and even complex tax minimization plans, many of which are available to consumers via an online interface. As a result, a whole new generation of wealthier, less affluent people receives advice and help in their attempts to invest.

Highly Focused Services

Innovators of the past have always attempted to mimic the whole bank, culminating in business structures that only applied to the most tech-savvy or price-conscious consumers. Today's innovators focus their efforts on the intersection of high consumer frustration and high profitability for incumbents, helping them to "skim the cream" by stealing the most profitable goods from incumbents.

Remittance is an excellent example of this: banks have historically paid exorbitant rates for cross-border money transfers and had bad customer service, with transfers taking up to three days to arrive at their destination.

Some companies are upending the mechanism by using a revolutionary network of bank accounts and a user-friendly online interface to make foreign transactions quicker, simpler, and even less expensive. These corporations currently manage millions in monthly transactions thanks to this business model and spread all across the world.

Strategic Data Usage

Financial firms have long used customer data to make decisions-bankers use the credit score to make lending decisions. At the same time, insurers can look at the driving record or demand a health check before issuing a policy. New sources of granular, real-time data, and innovators that use the data to drive financial decision-making are evolving as people and their computers become more integrated.

What About the Negative Changes?

The technology and finance advancements have surely influenced our business culture, and not always for the better.

For example, many traders emphasize that with each new year, they face less and less human interaction. The trading bots are making most of the decisions and market analysis, platform customer support is becoming more automated, and traders lose the opportunity to communicate with fellow investors to make a deal.

This loss of human element brings far consequences such as the use of bots and trading programs for fraud. This can happen if inexperienced traders rely too much on technology instead of doing their own reliable research.