With more bank-fintech partnerships, the acceptance of technological change within the C-suite, and an increasing number of entry points connecting banks to new businesses, it’s no surprise that these topics resonated with readers in March.

Below are Bank Innovation‘s top 3 posts for the month, based on website traffic and editorial judgment.

• Citi Venture Investing Head: ‘Financial Services is Becoming More Like Tech’

Both the participation in fintech and the financing of fintech is on the rise. According to the Financial Technology Partners’ 2018 Annual fintech Almanac, all fintech financings are up 35% from 2017.

Arvind Purushotham, Managing Director & Global Head of Venture Investing for Citi Ventures, told Bank Innovation that there has been a significant shift in the market. Fintech companies wish to partner with banks and banks similarly want to partner with fintech companies.

“Financial services is becoming more like tech,” Purushotham said. “If you go back to things like Intel Capital or Cisco’s Business Development Group, those kinds of groups are very mature and they’ve been doing strategic venture investment for a long time. And now banks are getting there as well, and it’s a logical evolution.”

Citi Ventures itself is looking into how it can apply artificial intelligence to do some “higher level automation.” Citi has a team of 12 investors meeting with over a thousand fintech startups each year, to make this goal achieved in the various facets of their company.

• Bank Boardrooms Are Increasingly Accepting of Technological Change

In the financial sector, there is a clear change in mindset among those in banking boardrooms resulting in more openness to technological change. But transformation can still be a process — and a slow one at that.

Banks’ IT spending has steadily increased for years and is expected to be $115 billion in North America alone by 2021, according to consultancy Celent. However, only a quarter of that spending is expected to go to innovation while the bulk will go to maintenance.

“We’re probably in a period of the cycle where you’ll find very few examples of banks that aren’t taking technology seriously,” said Mike Sha, co-founder and CEO of B2B software firm SigFig, to Bank Innovation.

Given the constant threat of challenger banks to the traditional model of banking, it only makes sense that those in bank boardrooms would open up to such inevitable change, as Emily Steele, President of North America for Temenos told Bank Innovation.

• Banks Finding More Entry Points to Real Estate Tech

JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup all invested in real estate tech startups in 2018 and there’s little reason to believe that trend won’t continue. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in the space last year.

Arvind Purushotham, Managing Director & Global Head of Venture Investing for Citi Ventures, told Bank Innovation that the bank has its eyes on real estate tech, aka “proptech,” as real estate is one of the largest markets in the U.S. and in the world.

“There are lots and lots of new opportunities that are coming into the real estate area, and we’re seeing that and we’re spending some time there,” he said.

The fact that real estate is a large and growing market means that it is becoming more and more digitized. A recent report by CB Insights stated that real estate tech is an emerging investment category. This makes sense, as Andro Ratiani, innovation head at Bank of Georgia, told Bank Innovation that his bank had digitized 60-70% of the process if acquiring a home loan.