In an environment of declining return on equity, investment banks should look for greater collaboration with fintech companies. This is the major theme of a new report by accounting and professional services firm EY and financial technology organisation Innovate Finance.The report, 'Capital Markets; innovation and the FinTech landscape', was released as Sibos, SWIFT's annual financial sector conference, exhibition and networking event, started up in Geneva. Notably, IB revenues have been falling steadily in recent years, to the point where the typical cost of equity for an investment bank would be between ten and 12 per cent, said EY.  The average return on equity for the top 14 global investment banks slid from 7.8 per cent in 2014 to 6.3 per cent in 2015, according to the professional services firm.One way to reverse this decline is to take up some of these "near term opportunities" for improving profitability: "robotic process automation", advanced analytics, digital transformation and the outsourcing of processes and services. In addition, partnerships between fintechs and investment banks can help reduce structural and operational costs, improve regulatory compliance, support the innovation of products and services, and ultimately deliver better value to shareholders, according to EY.Respondents told the report's writers they believed technologies such as artificial intelligence, smart contracts and blockchain could be important in the longer term, but would take longer to deliver returns on investment.The report also noted that regulators are becoming increasingly supportive of fintech solutions to investment banking problems, while also becoming more globally connected themselves through regulatory bridges, for example between the UK, Singapore and Australia.