With 10 years having passed since the Financial Crisis, many consumers have not fully recovered from its effects on their financial health. Individuals now demand a best-in-class customer experience in banking that goes beyond convenience, access, and design -- to deliver improved financial wellness, as consumers urgently focus on building savings, improving credit, and other long-term financial goals.

As an emerging technology seeking mainstream acceptance, blockchain continues to build applications and use cases towards solutions that can have an immediate impact on industries in need of innovation, efficiency, and/or disruption.  One industry that easily fits these criteria is insurance.

Fintech continues to evolve as customers now trust these digital-only companies more than ever, slowly migrating deposit balances and other assets away from banks and traditional institutions. If you're an individual interested in investing, working for, or building the next great fintech, here are four areas to examine closely:

When fintechs first popped up a few years ago, these startups had a goal of disrupting and displacing banks in the world of financial services.  Banks stood their ground and made small reactive changes, but kept systems and processes mostly the same.  The relationship between these rivals has dramatically changed, with both fintechs and banks now working closely together to impact the future of finance.

IBM is teaming up with non-profit Sovrin Foundation to use blockchain technology to build a framework of global identity for both individuals and businesses, which aims to make everything in the online space as true and authentic as in the offline space (or "real world").

After years of investment in digital transformation, the top US banks have actually started to pull away with market share while smaller regional banks are left behind, based on a study by Accenture of US banks, in reference to core banking systems, back-office processes, and workforce development.

Despite Bitcoin's future taking the majority of the top stories in finance, multiple fintech companies are experiencing noteworthy growth and tackling today's critical issues from fraud detection, streamlining loan approval, to going beyond standard credit score decisioning in underwriting loans.

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