After three decades of watching both corporate and personal financial services, I'm convinced the fundamental problems haven't changed — they've just gotten more sophisticated at hiding behind better interfaces.
Last month, I watched a seasoned CFO of a £50M revenue company spend hours trying to understand whether they should hedge their Euro exposure. Despite running a financially sophisticated business, they couldn't get straight answers from their bank about costs, timing, or even whether hedging made sense for their specific situation. The bank's solution? A generic presentation about FX products and a suggestion to "start small and see how it goes."
This isn't an isolated incident. It's the norm.
The Information Asymmetry Problem
After 30 years of observing financial services from multiple angles—as a user, advisor, and now as someone building solutions—I've identified a fundamental issue that affects everyone from individual investors to mid-market companies: pervasive information asymmetry.
Providers Don't Really Know Their Customers
Financial services providers excel at collecting historical data. They know what you've done, where you've banked, what products you've bought. But they're remarkably poor at understanding what you're trying to achieve or what challenges you're facing next quarter, next year, or in the next phase of your business growth.
This backward-looking lens means their "solutions" are often responses to problems you had yesterday, not the ones keeping you awake tonight.
Customers Can't Navigate the Complexity
On the flip side, most companies—especially those outside the Fortune 500 or FTSE 100—simply can't afford to have specialists in every area of finance. The CFO of a growing tech company might be brilliant at financial planning and fundraising, but they're not necessarily experts in FX hedging, trade finance, or treasury optimization.
This creates a knowledge gap that providers should fill but rarely do. Instead, they assume you know what you need and simply present options rather than guidance.
The Transaction-First Mentality
As a direct result of these information asymmetries, financial services have evolved into transaction machines rather than outcome optimizers. Banks sell FX products, not FX risk management strategies. Investment platforms sell access to markets, not investment success.
The conversation typically goes: "Here are our FX hedging products" rather than "Let's understand your business cycle, cash flow patterns, and risk tolerance, then design an approach that makes sense for you."
The Personal Finance Mirror
These same dynamics play out in personal financial services, though this area is slowly improving. We're seeing better apps, more intuitive interfaces, and wider access to investment products that were previously institutional-only.
But even here, the improvement is mostly about democratising transactions rather than improving outcomes. Retail investors now have access to options trading, cryptocurrency, and complex ETFs — but are they getting better investment results? Are they making more informed decisions? Often, no.
The focus remains on giving people more ways to trade rather than helping them achieve their actual financial goals: retirement security, home ownership, education funding, or wealth preservation.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
In today's economic environment, the cost of financial services complexity has never been higher:
- For businesses: Currency volatility, supply chain disruptions, and changing regulations mean companies need agile financial strategies, not static financial product catalogues
- For individuals: Real wages have stagnated while investment complexity has exploded, making good financial guidance more crucial than ever
- For the economy: Inefficient allocation of financial resources slows growth and innovation
Mid-market companies are particularly squeezed. They're too sophisticated for basic banking products but not large enough to justify the white-glove treatment that major corporations receive. They're stuck in the middle, often making suboptimal financial decisions not because they're not smart enough, but because they don't have access to the right information and guidance.
The Path Forward
The solution isn't more products or better marketing. It's fundamentally restructuring how financial services think about customer relationships.
Instead of asking "What products can we sell this customer?" the question should be "What outcomes is this customer trying to achieve, and how can we help them get there?"
This requires:
- Forward-looking customer understanding rather than historical data analysis
- Outcome-based solutions rather than transaction-based sales
- Accessible expertise that doesn't require hiring specialists
- Transparent guidance that helps customers understand not just what to buy, but whether they should buy anything at all
Why We Built HedgeFlows
This frustration — watching capable finance professionals struggle with unnecessarily complex and poorly aligned financial services—is exactly why we started HedgeFlows.
We've experienced these pain points first hand: the opaque FX pricing, the disconnected payment systems, the reconciliation nightmares, the lack of integrated solutions that understand how different aspects of finance operations actually work together in real businesses.
Our platform addresses these issues by:
- Starting with your specific situation rather than a list of products
- Providing transparent, objective, outcome-focused guidance rather than sales pitches
- Integrating multiple financial functions so solutions work together rather than creating new silos
- Making sophisticated financial strategies accessible to companies that can't afford dedicated specialists
But we're just getting started. Next week, we'll be announcing a new suite of tools designed to democratise access to sophisticated financial processes — tools that help you understand your risks and opportunities before anyone tries to sell you anything.
Because the hardest part of financial services shouldn't be figuring out what you actually need.
Have you experienced similar frustrations with financial services? I'd love to hear your stories—both the horror stories and the rare examples of providers who actually got it right.
Ready to see how finance should work? Schedule a demo with HedgeFlows →
