Young, wealthy, urban people are at the forefront of the trend amongst consumers toward using alternative finance platforms such as peer-to-peer lenders, a new survey from EY has found.

Banks and insurers view these higher-income individuals as being among their most economically valuable customers, which means they will need to look at what they offer to avoid losing these individuals to alternative competitors.

“These organisations will have to review how their offerings, such as their own multi-channel strategies or partnerships with fintech providers, meet their customers’ needs,” said EY Global Lead Banking Analyst Steven Lewis. “Otherwise, they may have difficulty stemming the flight to fintech.”

The first EY FinTech Adoption Survey predicts that consumer adoption of fintech will grow significantly in 2016, obliging traditional financial services to reappraise their customer service strategies to compete effectively with dynamically rising new market entrants.

An example of this is UK peer-to-peer lending platform Unbolted, which dispenses with the need for credit checks by using a secured asset loan model; borrowers place a high value asset under Unbolted’s control until the loan term matures, whereupon it can either be settled or the asset sold at auction.

The EY survey, which polled over 10,000 digitally-active consumers in the Australia, Canada Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK, found that 15.5% on average have used at least two non-bank, non-insurance online fintech services in the last six months; responses about intentions regarding fintech suggested that adoption rates could double within the next year.

EY Americas FinTech Leader Matt Hatch said the survey shows that the “innovations and changes of fintech are here to stay,” and that as a result increased collaboration between the old and the new players “will be inevitable”.