In the middle of the decade. From endless scrolling to limitless motions. Spatial reality among the trends for 2025 (and much more)
We live in a world moving at an accelerated pace compared to the past, often making it difficult to understand and decode new phenomena. Yet, we need to capture what’s happening around us. That’s the purpose of our new column, Insights. These are in-depth longform pieces, with recurring monthly editions, offering detailed stories on key topics. It's a way to understand what’s unfolding around us and to embrace the future challenges that affect individuals, businesses, and communities. Enjoy reading!
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“Midway upon the journey of our life.” To explore what’s coming in 2025, we’ve even turned to Dante Alighieri and the opening line of his Divine Comedy. With the new year approaching, we’ll be right in the middle of the 2020s - a decade that began with the pandemic emergency and has since continued at full speed with the rise of generative artificial intelligence, the spread of superapps, mobile-first service aggregation systems, and the adoption of real-time models to interpret markets and even predict trends.
In this mid-decade moment, we are constantly balancing ever-more advanced technological solutions with the need to upskill professionals to adapt to new work demands. It’s a delicate yet invaluable equilibrium, though sometimes hard to maintain. As Forbes America highlights, this balance will shape 2025’s most significant trends, particularly in banking and finance. "As technological revolutions and economic uncertainties continue to reshape the financial landscape - alongside shifts in consumer behavior and purchasing choices - 2025 promises to be a challenging year for banking and financial services," writes Bernard Marr in Forbes.
But there’s more. Established institutions will face unprecedented pressure from banks and disruptive fintech players racing to implement AI solutions and enhance customer experiences. Starting from this premise, Forbes outlines ten crucial trends that banks and financial services companies must explore to maintain their competitive edge. We’ll delve into those shortly, but first, let’s take a detour into this middle ground where humans and humanoids collaborate.
From 2024 to 2025: the hybrid dimension of spatial reality
As the year closes and a new one begins, it’s time for reflections and predictions. The coming year will also strike a balance between humans and humanoids—people and robots. That’s what Time spotlighted in one of its most anticipated covers, reviewing 2024 and forecasting 2025 trends. Humanoid robots, deemed among the best inventions of the year now ending, are set to shape the year ahead, according to the magazine. What stands out is their evolution toward agility - in movements, actions, and computational capabilities. If we recently explored virtual or augmented reality, we now find ourselves in the hybrid dimension. "This is the new frontier of human interaction, where physical and digital environments converge. Thanks to the combination of artificial intelligence, blockchain, and mixed reality, we create contexts where virtual seamlessly intertwines with real," says Fabio Lalli, author of the book Spatial Shift, published by Egea at Bocconi University, in an interview with Sole24Ore. This involves enhanced human presence, now less tethered to technology than before. "Current headsets equipped with cameras and AI, along with smart lenses, can detect gestures and voices, transforming interaction into a more natural and fluid experience. But there’s more: spatial interaction will move ‘out-of-screen,’ enabling access to information and functionalities visible in the environment, effectively influencing augmented data," Lalli elaborates.
It might seem like a dystopian vision, yet these smart lenses will soon simulate tasks, tech hand gestures will move objects, and synthetic voices will amplify interactions. Technology will inhabit physical spaces, stepping out of screens and conquering new dimensions, moving beyond keyboards, mice, and even touch functionalities.
The global mixed reality market, valued at $2.8 billion, is projected to grow by 45% year-over-year through 2033.
Trend 1. Real-time risk assessment
Let’s go back to the trends highlighted by Forbes. By 2025, automating everyday tasks such as transaction processing, reconciliation, data entry, compliance, and fraud detection will become routine. Efficiency improvements and the reduction of human errors are driving significant decreases in operational costs. Having mastered initial use cases, banks and other financial services organizations that have achieved a sufficient level of AI maturity are now aiming for more advanced implementations involving fully autonomous decision-making and real-time risk assessment. According to Forbes, achieving this will lead to further efficiency gains but will also require tackling greater challenges related to customer data, privacy, and the ethical use of artificial intelligence.
Trend 2. Chatbots for Continuous Customer Relationships
Autonomous chatbots are quickly becoming indispensable in customer service, providing 24/7 support and handling increasingly sophisticated interactions. As we approach 2025, these bots are expected to evolve into agents capable of managing tasks that require multiple actions and more complex problem-solving abilities. These automated customer service agents will offer proactive support, anticipate needs, and deliver a far more personalized and seamless experience.
Trend 3. Generative financial planning
Another area where generative artificial intelligence will handle more complex interactions is financial planning and advisory services. By combining the ability to analyze customer behavioral data with the latest advancements in natural language processing (NLP), AI agents will provide clients with tailored advice on how to maximize the returns on their savings, pensions, and investments. This guidance will be specifically adapted to their individual needs, with AI acting as a virtual financial advisor, complementing the interpretation and insights of human professionals.
Trend 4. Sustainable financial products
In 2025, customers will increasingly demand sustainable and ethical financial products. This translates into opportunities to invest in renewable energy initiatives and investment funds focused on ESG criteria. Banks and other institutions are expected to be transparent about data such as energy consumption and the carbon emissions generated by transactions, helping clients make informed decisions about how their financial choices impact their environmental footprint. Financial institutions that achieve this goal will position themselves as valuable enablers in their clients' journeys toward sustainability and decarbonization, unlocking numerous opportunities for new business ventures.
Trend 5. Digital currencies for central banks
This refers to a form of electronic currency designed to allow central banks to leverage the convenience and utility of blockchain-based transaction networks without the risks, volatility, and exposure to fraud. In 2025, countries such as China with its digital yuan, the Eurozone, Brazil, Thailand, and many others will continue advancing their efforts toward a more digital global financial system.
Trend 6. Quantum finance for accelerated operations
The application of quantum computing to real-world financial workloads is currently highly experimental. However, with growing interest and investment, 2025 could be the year we see some initial operational implementations. Quantum computing involves leveraging the capabilities of quantum computers to enable certain computational operations to be performed millions of times faster. Potential use cases in the financial sector include risk analysis, fraud detection, automated trading, credit scoring, cybersecurity, and the development of future-proof encryption.
Trend 7. Next-generation superapps
Aggregation will increasingly become a must, as we have often discussed on Sella Insights. The convenience of managing financial affairs through centralized apps and simplified digital platforms accelerates both technological and consumption revolutions. This is leading to models like the Chinese WeChat, which combines financial and payment services with features such as ride-sharing and e-commerce. Not by chance, some analysts suggest that the next revolution will likely come more from the East than the West.
Trend 8. Enhanced regulation and transparency
You may ask: what does this trend have to do with technological advancements and the rise of artificial intelligence? It has everything to do with it. As financial services enthusiastically adopt AI across all operational areas, they must also contend with increasing, proper, and inevitable oversight from regulatory authorities. By 2025, further regulation will be introduced as lawmakers implement frameworks designed to promote trust and transparency while simultaneously attempting to eliminate risks related to bias and prejudices. Navigating this ever-evolving legal landscape will be a key challenge for banks, financial service institutions, and fintech startups as we approach 2025 and beyond.
Trend 9. Identifying, training, and motivating talent
Jobs are changing, and so are the types of roles needed by financial services organizations. According to Forbes America, a key part of this challenge is understanding exactly what new roles will be required: from engineers working with generative AI to cybersecurity analysts to digital transformation strategists. Bridging the skills gap that prevents many organizations from fully exploiting AI opportunities will be a key challenge in 2025. This will involve upskilling and reskilling, promoting a culture of diversity in hiring, and creating ongoing partnerships to ensure a workforce capable of adapting to this rapidly evolving landscape.
Trend 10. Strengthening resilience
In this mid-decade period of the 2020s, it becomes crucial to enhance everything that helps decode complexity. With the growing threat of cyberattacks, geopolitical tensions, and economic uncertainty, banks and financial institutions will allocate more resources to ensure operational resilience. This includes creating robust contingency plans to enable business continuity in the face of supply chain disruptions and behavioral shifts among customers due to wars, global pandemics, climate-related interruptions, or any other threats. Demonstrating resilience in the face of uncertainty is essential for building consumer trust and surviving any potentially existential threat that financial services organizations will face in 2025.
"The financial services sector has always been centered on trust, security, and service. What will change in 2025 is the way these fundamentals will be delivered in a continuous logic. The banks that will succeed will not simply adopt new technologies but will reinvent the relationship in the banking sector in the digital age. The future of banking is not just digital: it is smart, sustainable, and more human than ever," writes Bernard Marr. A reflection that becomes a programmatic manifesto for designing the bank of the future.