Insurtech, Proptech, and Fintech Environment: Sustainability, Global Trends and Opportunities

The Special Issue “Insurtech, Proptech, and Fintech Environment: Sustainability, Global Trends and Opportunities” is focused on the InsurTech, PropTech, and FinTech environments. It is well known that “FinTech” comes from the union of two words, “Finance” and “Technology”, “InsurTech” is the union of the words “Insurance” and “Technology”, and PropTech is the use of technology in the real estate industry to make transactions more efficient. This sector is probably one of the most relevant new markets in recent years, with a great potential to generate collaborations with financial institutions and the insurance world, and jointly grow towards a more innovative business model.

This sector features investors who seek to detect the best investment opportunities without intermediaries and with all those companies which want to collaborate with different products and services related to the technological, legal, marketing, and human resource departments, among others.

This objective implies an advanced business model which adopts emerging technology and pays special attention to the digital transformation of the financial industry and its effect on sustainability. Analysis and research on the opportunities, challenges, and global trends in this sector may contribute directly and indirectly to the achievement of a sustainable development industry. Therefore, we consider that there is great potential to make further contributions on this topic.

Thus, papers published in this Special Issue have covered some of those topics from a wide range of views and fields such as financial, technological, digital, management, international business, and quantitative analysis, including sustainable businesses. Moreover, the contributions included in this Special Issue have not been limited to academics, but also to practitioners who have been very welcome.

In summary, this Special Issue has included original contributions demonstrating the significant advancements, innovations, relevance, and potential growth of this sector in the forthcoming years. This Special Issue has also focused on the main forms of interaction between banks and FinTech companies.

After describing the main characteristics of the Spanish companies belonging to the FinTech, InsurTech, and PropTech sectors, the main objective of [1] was to analyze whether their B2B/B2C business models were related to the existence of sustainability plans. Specifically, this manuscript analyzed whether the existence of a sustainability department is a determining factor for the business model adopted by the Spanish FinTech, InsurTech, and PropTech companies. By using the multinomial logit regression, other factors such as the current closeness of companies to the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the sensitivity to domestic and European FinTech/InsurTech regulations, and the perception of FinTechs about such European regulations were discussed before conclusions.

In [2], the role of digital technostress and self-efficacy in digital marketing research is seldom discussed and even more rarely examined among Gen Z consumers. This manuscript investigates the relationships between four sub-dimensions of technostress (complexity, overload, invasion, and uncertainty), digital technology self-efficacy, and FinTech usage intention. Data from a total of 266 Chinese Gen Z consumers were used in a multiple-regression analysis. The results of this study support that all sub-dimensions of technostress were negatively related to FinTech usage intention. Related to the moderating effects of digital technology self-efficacy on the relationship between the four sub-dimensions of technostress and FinTech usage intention, significant interaction effects with complexity and overload were found.

In [3], the technology effectiveness was examined for industry demand in which artificial intelligence (AI) is applied in the financial sector. This study examined bank revenue methodologically and assessed the impact of customer service and chatbot on bank revenues through customer age classification. The results indicated that new product-oriented funds or housing subscription savings were more suitable for purchase through customer service than through chatbot. When classified by age, purchases by the majority age group in the channel positively affected bank profits. Finally, it was shown a tendency to process small banking transactions through the chatbot system, which saves transaction and management costs, positively affecting profits.

The aim of [4] was to assess telematics technology acceptance for insurance purposes. This study was based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). By interviewing 502 new car buyers, the factors affecting the potential usage of telematic devices for insurance purposes were tested. The results indicated that facilitating conditions are the main predictor of telematics use. Moreover, privacy concerns related to the potential abuse of driving behavior data played an important role in technology acceptance. Although novel insurance technologies are mainly presented as user-driven, users (drivers and insurance buyers) are often neglected as an active party in the development of such technologies.

In [5], the main goal was to answer whether FinTechs are more similar to traditional banks or trendy technological firms. This study focused on analyzing the differences between FinTechs and traditional banks in market valuation, showing the potential for digital interaction and the cross-pollination of complementary business models. The main contribution of this paper was that the appraisal approaches of FinTechs follow those of technological startups, having a revenue model much more scalable than that of a typical bank. FinTechs may so provide a solution for sustainable finance with microfinance and crowdfunding, among others.

The FinTech phenomenon from an ecosystem point of view is analyzed in [6]. In effect, this study explored the FinTech ecosystem composition in order to understand better business model innovation based on underlying ecosystem dynamics whilst focusing on the specific role of cross-sector actors. Adopting a comparative case study method by considering the China-based Alibaba Group and Tencent, the study’s findings indicated that novel business model developments based on strong technological expertise and scale-based resources by cross-sector Fintech render a functional perspective on the fast-developing FinTech industry less practical. Thus, this manuscript contributed to the scant literature on FinTech ecosystems and their sustainable development.

Entrepreneurship through digital innovation in the financial market as well as investors’ influence on digital technology-based entrepreneurs’ funding decisions was the subject of [7]. This research attempted to analyze the decision-making criteria for funding financial technology companies (FinTechs), hybrid companies which combine digital entrepreneurship, technology, and banking. Through developments in digital technology, banks have shifted from traditional money-lending activities (i.e., debt-financing) to becoming stakeholders in FinTechs and, hence, equity investors.

The achievement of the development and sustainable growth of Fintechs was the main topic addressed in [8]. This study focused on two relevant issues: uncertainty and information technology (IT) quality, exploring the relationship between uncertainty and IT quality, both of which significantly affect FinTech continuance intentions. The results demonstrated that system quality is negatively related to perceived risk, whereas information quality is positively related to trust. Service quality was the most important quality factor for controlling uncertainty and encouraging the continued use of FinTechs.

The relationship between FinTech and sustainability, and the different areas of collaboration between FinTech and sustainable finance was the main goal of [9]. In this paper, two FinTech initiatives (clarity AI and Pensumo) were described, as well as several proposals to improve the detection of greenwashing and other deceptive behavior by firms. The results led to the conclusion that sustainable finance and FinTech have many aspects in common, and that FinTech can make financial businesses more sustainable overall by promoting green finance.