May 15, 2020

IT solutions able to accelerate distribution of business support are already available

Anton Zujev, head of the sales and business development of Fininbox banking software, states that technical barriers must not be the main impediment to the process of distributing business support, as the necessary IT and financial services solutions are already on the market – all it takes is just use them.

According to Anton Zujev, head of the sales and business development at Fininbox, the echoes in the media identifying the lack of IT solutions as one of the major problems for providing support are not entirely correct, and the country's business, which is facing challenges, could be aided by the already exiting solutions offered by FinTech companies in the Lithuanian market.

Recently hit by the crisis, the Lithuanian economy and business support to maintain liquidity, are under the magnifying glass. The experts have started questioning the efficiency of the processes, and the alternative solutions that could help resolve the problem and reduce the consequences of the pandemic for the country's economy had to be found. In mid-April, President Gitanas Nausėda, who defined the current procedures as “lumbering”, raised the idea of establishing a commercial bank, and a couple of weeks ago, the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Lithuania decided to cooperate in creating a new Business Support Fund.

There are many proposals, but, according to Anton Zujev, the preparation of each of them for carrying out the activity would take time, and business does not have the privilege of lingering. This situation has led to an inevitable need for new, innovative IT solutions.

“Let us be fare, the situation is extraordinary, thus the proposals to resolve it should also be innovative,” Anton Zujev reasoned. “Of course, there are numerous solutions, however it is really important to find the one that could meet current expectations the best, allow for a more efficient distribution of the support or, at least would be technically fully capable of withstanding the siege of the system.”

Lithuania is one of the leaders in the FinTech industry, however, according to Anton Zujev, so far limited encouragement and involvement of the private sector does not allow using all the available opportunities. According to him, the recently widely discussed inefficient processes could be optimized through financial technology solutions. This would facilitate the completion of applications for support and speed up the processing of the received applications.

“Changes in the technology sector are happening somewhat faster than in the public sector, therefore, by involving the businesses focused on the solutions development, one can make use of their experience to find the most favourable solution that would help to optimize the work of institutions,” said Anton Zujev. The system developed by Fininbox could be one of the solutions to facilitate data processing and ensure faster distribution of business support. Still, in principle, the most important thing is to start a dialogue with the experts in the market. We have many experienced specialists, Lithuania is a leader in the global context of FinTech, so it is disappointing that so far there seems to be either no desire or it is not possible to use this accumulated experience,” noted Anton Zujev.

As lockdown conditions become milder, the true affect of the pandemic on the country's economy can be assessed. Private businesses, which have been hit the hardest by COVID-19, will not only have to adapt to new consumption patterns, but will also have to find new solutions to mitigate the effects of forced business closures. According to the experts, keeping a business “above water” during crises and providing timely support should be the task of the strong government shield, however without a clear strategy of actions and proactively solved compensation issues, businesses do not have the opportunity to come through unscathed.

“Basically, at the moment, one of the most important indicators of support effectiveness is speed. It is not that important via which financial institutions the support will be distributed – it is important that they would be able to do it quickly and efficiently, have not only the necessary competence, but also technical tools that would allow optimizing the process itself,” stated Anton Zujev. “Business is suffering difficulties, the time is little and the aid is needed now. The most important thing is that the necessary tools are already available – all you have to do is use them.”