Fintech
The Human Factor Behind Fintech Productivity
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Fintech (financial technology) has brought in the past years waves of innovation and efficiency in a previously somewhat stagnant financial industry.
“The organizational adoption of fintech technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) technology, increased from 33% in 2023 to 71% in 2024, reflecting rapid acceleration within the financial industry.”
Part of the value of fintech is how it makes not just the organization as a whole, but also individual employees more efficient. In theory, a more efficient system should directly improve productivity and also improve the psychological conditions of employees.
“Fintech has streamlined data analysis and risk assessment processes while simultaneously enhancing the accuracy and speed of decision-making for financial employees. Automated financial processes, data-driven decision-making tools, and real-time analytics have empowered employees to work more intelligently and efficiently.”
In practice, it is not so simple, as a more efficient process can also make employees feel powerless. Or, in the case of more advanced AI-driven fintech, it can create justified anxiety about the risk of being replaced by automation, as positions that consist of repetitive or rule-based tasks are particularly vulnerable to replacement by fintech solutions.
Overall, the evolution of fintech has introduced increasing levels of unpredictability and uncertainty into the workplace environment.
A team of three researchers at the Beijing Normal University in Zhuhai analyzed the effects of fintech on the psychology of employees of financial institutions.
They published their findings in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications1, under the title “Fintech at work: examining the psychological mechanisms linking fintech use and work productivity in the financial industry”.
Use Of Fintech & Psychology
Building An Analytical Framework
A well-established analytical tool about employees’ perceptions of work is Kahn’s work engagement framework, centred around 3 concepts:
- Psychological meaningfulness: “Does this work matter, and is it worth my effort?”
- Psychological safety: “Can I be myself without negative consequences?”
- Psychological availability: “Do I have the physical and emotional capacity right now?”
In the context of fintech deployment through digitization, automation, and algorithmic decision support, it makes sense that rapidly shifting tasks, roles, and processes will change the psychological condition of the employees as well.
It is well known that openness to change plays a crucial role in the adoption of innovative technologies, and might be a key feature of employees successfully adapting to changes brought by fintech.
“Openness to change acts as an antecedent, positively influencing employees’ motivation to adopt AI-based chatbots. Specifically, employees who value openness to change are more likely to perceive these technologies as beneficial—for reasons such as personalization, interactivity, perceived intelligence, and perceived anthropomorphism.”
Still, a lot will also depend on how fintech is deployed. When fintech standardizes workflows and limits discretion, it constrains opportunities for proactive behaviors, such as experimentation and creative problem solving.
This contradiction can also mean that in some circumstances, the negative impact of fintech use on psychological meaningfulness becomes more pronounced among employees with higher levels of openness to change.
Analyzing Real-Life Employees
To determine how the psychological condition of finance employees is affected by fintech deployment, the researchers conducted a survey of 934 Chinese finance employees. Ultimately, 458 randomly selected responses were retained for analysis.
More than looking to represent a copy of the industry demographic, the study focused on a sufficiently diverse profile to capture all possible conditions. It was mostly split by gender, with most respondents in the 27-42 age bracket, the majority having gone to undergraduate school, and the majority having used fintech for 3 years or more.
Direct Effects Of Fintech
The study results showed that the use of fintech impacted both psychological meaningfulness and psychological safety negatively, illustrating how automation can cause demoralization and meaningful stress in finance employees.
This effect was increased for employees with high levels of openness to change when it comes to meaningfulness, but not safety, revealing that the employees most willing to adopt fintech are also the most likely to feel disempowered by it, but not more likely to feel threatened by it.
However, fintech adoption also improved psychological availability, likely reflecting the reduced mental load as tedious and repetitive tasks are automated away.
Fintech Takeaways
The results of this study show how automation can potentially reduce employees’ opportunities for self-expression and creative problem-solving. Consequently, their sense of job value may diminish, affecting career development and leading to adverse psychological reactions, unrelated to whether this results in lower perceived job safety.
This is a serious issue, as employees’ sense that their work matters directly affects long-term productivity and engagement.
This illustrates how companies in finance should not just look to reassure employees about no layoffs from automation, but also be careful to retain a sense of ownership over their work and that their contribution is meaningful. Such efforts are nevertheless useful, as reduced psychological safety is another path by which fintech can negatively impact employees’ productivity.
At the same time, fintech deployment can streamline workflows and thus consistently free up “mental bandwidth” for higher-level tasks. So fintech also gives employees the necessary psychological resources for their tasks.
Leveraging this improvement will be necessary to help mitigate the negative effects on meaningfulness and safety.
The link between openness to change and greater negative impacts of fintech is troubling. From the perspective of AI and fintech adoption, the employees most open to welcoming these new technologies are also the most likely to be demoralized and made insecure by their deployment. This can create a negative feedback loop, reducing the ability of the organization as a whole to adapt to new technologies by “burning” the very employees who are the most adaptable and have the most goodwill toward new technologies.
“Providing mere access to the fintech is insufficient; financial firms must endeavor to create an environment where employees feel psychologically supported and empowered by these fintech.”
This emphasizes the need for supportive policies:
- Strengthening psychological safety through open dialogue and digital literacy.
- Improving meaningfulness by preserving or redesigning tasks that emphasize creativity, interpersonal interaction, and judgment-based decision-making, all areas where human input remains critical despite fintech support.
- Leveraging improved psychological availability with smart task allocation and learning. Organizations can redesign work roles to preserve task significance, provide opportunities for skill utilization, and encourage job crafting to maintain a sense of purpose.
Investors Takeaways
When fintech is deployed in banks or other financial institutions, the immediate cost savings and improved productivity are often the focus. But a deeper analysis needs to take into account how it changes employees’ work.
If fintech is focused on removing repetitive and tedious tasks, an emphasis on ensuring psychological safety will be important.
If fintech removes agency from employees by automating decisions, measures to make sure employees still feel their contribution is meaningful will be more important.
In any case, the employees most open to change need to be made into advocates for the technology, which will pass by empowering them and avoiding negative psychological impacts.
So successful implementation should be considered as a factor investors should examine when evaluating fintech providers, as well as the potential impact of fintech deployment into a given company, with the preservation of the long-term motivation of employees an important metric to keep track of.
Investing In Fintech
Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE: FIS).
FIS Price Chart
FIS was founded in 1968 as Systematics, Inc., building customized accounting and automation technology for local and community banks. It was later bought by telecom provider Alltel Corporation and then, in 2003, by Title insurance heavyweight Fidelity National Financial (FNF ) (FNF).
After it IPOed in 2006, it went through a series of acquisitions and mergers (Metavante Technologies, SunGard, Worldpay ) that turned the company into the world’s largest processing and merchant payments entity.
After selling its Worldpay ownership in January 2026, FIS is still a global leader in financial technology (FinTech) with a presence in infrastructure for payment, banking, and money management/capital markets.
Source: FIS
The company’s technology backs 95% of the world’s global banks, and 72 out of the 100 top consume banking, payments, and cap markets solutions.
In total, the company moves over $9 trillion annually across roughly 75 billion transactions, and processes approximately 50% of all residential mortgages in the U.S.
By providing key infrastructure and services to the banking industry, FIS benefits from a very stable business, with a multinational bank migrating away from its core accounting software a very rare and costly decision. Once a financial institution integrates FIS deeply into its digital foundation, they rarely leave, ensuring stable financial performance across market cycles.
This stable growth and increasing profitability are reflected in the company’s expanding free cash flow, which has grown 19%-33% in the past few years.
Source: FIS
As a key provider of banking & payment automation, FIS is exactly the type of company discussed in this study. It is also a key enabler of AI deployment in the financial sector, using it to develop software, process tickets, security alerts, and support operations with AI Copilot.
Source: FIS
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Study Referenced
1. Jung-Chieh Lee, Jingyi Sun, and Lei Bi. Fintech at work: examining the psychological mechanisms linking fintech use and work productivity in the financial industry. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 12 August 2026. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08769-6
