The concept of fintech has matured greatly since its inception as the fintech market as a whole continued to mature during 2017, KMPG writes in The pulse of Fintech Q4 2017. Global analysis of investment in fintech.

As a consequence of this, on one side global investors no longer just get their feet wet within the fintech market, but make more targeted investments focused on value and long-term sustainability.

On the other,  venture capital fintech deals volume has declined significantly over recent years, particularly at the angel and seed stage levels.

Fintech investment is expected to remain strong heading into 2018, with growing investor interest in regulatory technology (regtech), artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) enablement.

Here are the full list of their main predictions for the current year.

TOP 10 PREDICTIONS FOR 2018

1. AI accelerates: Continued innovation and adoption of AI as an underlying tech

2. Regtech rising: Increased investment in regtech around the world

3. Building bridges: Greater collaboration and partnering between large-scale providers

4. Next gen digital lending: The rise of online mortgage technology and platforms

5. Beyond use cases: Early success efforts in the initiation of blockchain production systems

6. Open banking: Open APIs pave the road for third party developers in Europe and Globally

7. New challenger banks: Financial services incumbents building their own digital banks

8. Insurtech innovation: Accelerated investment into driving insurtech innovations and building hubs around the world

9. Going full-stack: Broadening of solution sets by mature fintech companies

10. Big tech participation: More partnering between fintech and technology giants

Find out more here.