Synechron Inc., a global consulting and technology organization, listed its predictions of top Financial Services Trends for 2017, supported by survey data from TABB Group.

The survey covered 200 senior-level, global financial services business and IT decision-makers across the U.S. U.K. and Europe. It found 38% of respondents placed Regulation as their top priority for 2017, followed by Data Management (14.4%), Systems Integration (10.6%), Artificial Intelligence (AI) (9.7%) and IT Business Transformation (8.3%).

Synechron expects to see more of blockchain in 2017 and says that it will continue to be a year of blockchain experimentation. However, it also hinted at the possibility of rise and fall of some blockchain consortiums, adding that the one trend that will remain is the appetite for banks to work together and leverage blockchain accelerators to run proof of concepts or controlled pilot programs. 

When asked if their company currently has enough talent capable of implementing blockchain technology, the survey results found 39.3% of respondents answered ‘No – Blockchain technology talent is still difficult to find’ and 31.3% said ‘No – We’re working with partners, vendors to supplement’ – as compared with 23.4% saying they would reallocate resources and 6.1% support training.

“The biggest challenge facing the industry today is the scarcity of Blockchain talent, not only from an application development perspective, but also from a domain expertise angle in which business use cases are validated and earmarked for blockchain transformation – making real development experience a unique asset”, it said.

Speaking of FinTech, Synechron said that this year could also see the fall of what were hoped to be future fintech unicorns. It reasons that this would not be a surprise as most technology VCs expect only 1 in 10 investments to pay-off, meaning that the fintech startup scene, and associated hype cycle, may get a little dose of commercial reality and start to feel deflated in 2017.