There has been an explosion of successful FinTech companies in recent years including payment providers, banking API providers, currency exchanges, cryptocurrency companies and more.
With all of this growth, companies in the FinTech industry need to seriously consider how they can keep pace with demand and scale in an efficient, compliant way.
Industry leading FinTech Decacorns & Unicorns such as PayPal, Klarna and more have paved the way in implementing ERP solutions to create structured processes and robust back office systems.
ERP solutions enable FinTechs to achieve these goals, however this has lead many CIOs, CFOs and finance and IT leaders to ask:
What is the best ERP solution for fintech?
What is the best ERP for payment providers?
What is the best ERP for growing financial services companies?
How much does ERP for fintech cost?
In this piece, we'll help you to understand the best ERP systems available for growing FinTech businesses and answer all of your questions to get your ERP project started.
1. ERP Modules & Requirements for FinTech
2. Best ERP Systems for FinTech
- Hypergrowth & Large FinTech ERP Systems
3. How to choose ERP for your FinTech
4. How to choose a FinTech ERP implementation partner
5. How much does a Fintech ERP system cost?
If you extrapolate out the acronym ERP, you'll find it stands for enterprise resource planning.
This is because originally, ERP systems were designed for product-centric businesses such as manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to enable them to procure and handle stock and materials in a more efficient manner plus run accounting.
So it's worth asking, is implementing an ERP system even the right choice for FinTech companies?
In short, the answer is yes.
Growing fintech companies are turning to the use of ERP systems when they begin to scale and mature. ERP systems provide Fintechs much of the structure, process and operational capabilities they need to be able to grow.
So which enterprise resource planning systems are used by fintechs today? Below we have reviewed the best ERP systems across two groups for fintech, depending on the complexity & growth ambitions for your fintech organization.
The best place to start is by downloading our Top 10 ERP Systems below:
Which are the best enterprise resource planning systems for Fintechs requiring a low complexity ERP solution with low to medium scalability?
Oracle Netsuite is a common choice for small and medium sized financial technology (FinTech) companies. The solution is a native Cloud ERP, providing capabilities for financial management, professional services automation, human capital management and great integration capabilities.
Sage Intacct is a Cloud financial management suite that's proven successful with many FinTech companies, such as Zest AI.
Sage provides functionality beyond just financial management, covering billing, revenue recognition, as well as ensuring compliance with ASC 606 requirements.
Which are the best enterprise resource planning systems for large, established or hypergrowth companies?
Many larger and established FinTech companies run the enterprise ERP solution from SAP including the likes of Klarna, SumUp and PayPal. SAP S/4 HANA is available in Cloud or On-Premise deployments as well as providing deep capabilities for treasury management, financial sub-ledgers, billing and a tonne of localizations.
FinTech ERP software can cost anywhere from $100,000 to several millions of dollars in the first year.
The cost depends on which software you choose to implement and the complexity of your business.
What functionality and ERP modules does a FinTech company need?
As the fintech industry has grown and developed, it's become clear that there are now multiple subindustries within the space such as payments, cryptocurrencies, digital & challenger banks, insurtech, savings, wealthtech and more.
See the complete breakdown of FinTech industry sub-verticals below:
What this means for FinTech companies considering a new ERP solution is that you're likely going to be treading new ground when considering an ERP solution and quite simply - no one ERP fits all FinTech ERP requirements.
With that said, here are some of the common ERP modules and functionalities we see required by growing FinTech companies here at ERP Research.
Most fintechs are Cloud native companies, with little or no On-Premise infrastructure and have no intention to change that. As such, the vast majority of fintech ERP evaluations will focus on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Private Cloud ERP deployments.
Typically, public Cloud or SaaS ERP solutions are favourable to fintechs, however in many cases they opt for Private Cloud deployments to provide greater customization possibilities, deeper functionality and control.
Finance and accounting are key requirements for fintech ERP systems. Typically, fintechs need to be able to cope with blisteringly fast growth, expansion into new markets and geographies as well as automation and intelligence within their finance system in order to be able to meet their growth and productivity goals.
Fintech companies may not choose to evaluate human resources management systems (HRMS) of HCM software at the point of evaluating ERP software. But given the fact people and knowledge are key to the success of most fintech companies, attracting, hiring, onboarding and compensating them is also pretty important. Some ERP solutions will offer integrated or bolt-on functionality for HCM/HRMS.
Managing multiple bank accounts, currencies and ultimately cash flow is a huge requirement for companies in the fintech space. Many ERP solutions will either offer out of the box integrations with popular treasury systems or can offer treasury management as part of their functionality.
For the last few years, travel and expense management hasn't been a big requirement for Fintechs or any company for that matter. But the world is/has returned almost to normal now and this will be again a key requirement going forwards.
Reporting & Analytics
One of the key reasons for many Fintechs adopting an ERP platform in the first place is a lack of real time reporting across their businesses. Therefore a big requirement for Fintechs is having good reporting and analytics built into their new ERP system.
Fintechs tend to be full of very bright, talented and expensive talent. They also full of tech savvy, user experience focussed professionals. They also create and design products which usually differentiate based on user experience. So it's also crucial that your ERP offers a friendly user interface too.
Procurement for fintech companies isn't usually complicated and is typically focussed on indirect spend, self service procurement catalogues and robust approval matrixes. This allows your employees, wherever they are in the world to quickly procure goods or services when necessary with intelligent purchasing control rules within you ERP.
Integrating your fintech ERP with other systems is usually mission critical for the fintechs we deal with. Typically, fintechs will run multiple bespoke, proprietary front end systems that provide the competitive advantage for their business and integrating these systems with their ERP provides real time execution of business processes at high volumes and scale.