FinTech is not about disruption. It’s renovation.
2016 is the year of big changes in #FinTech.
While VC investments have continued to rise in the first quarter of the year,many question marks are arising on real capacity of FinTech startup to build up enough critical mass and reach a long-term sustainable and scalable business model (see for instance the growing critics to pure web #robo advisors and recent troubles of Lending Club).
Is it FinTech wave in trouble? Is it it’s disruption promise already dead?
My own answer is that those who really thought that FinTech startup could disrupt and replace #banks got it all wrong. Yet, at the same time those from banks who are thinking that resistance will prevail got it all wrong too.
Banking is going under a major transformation since the arrival of internet. Digital banking, born at the end of last century in many geographies, is a reality and it is here to prove that banks can transform and embrace the digital world providing customers with the expected UX and solutions. There are so many examples, of digital first banks especially in Europe, Poland and Turkey leading the way, where they already enjoy millions of customers. Yet, digital banking is transforming itself and it is getting in to its second phase, converging with FinTech recent developments.
From one side FinTech startups are starting to collaborate, consolidate, inevitably moving to a more sustainable marketplace banking model (partnering with banks and/or among themselves).
On the other end the rise of open API banking and a pro-market regulation (see PSD2) is going to open up the doors also for banks, and especially for digital banks, to a broader, fruitful collaboration also with FinTech companies. Digital banks are the best positioned to get the most of the second digital phase. New FinTech aggregators will arise too.
In a nutshell, FinTech development will prove to be the new lifeblood to digital banking, a second, stronger, broader, faster, stage where collaborations and partnerships will strongly increase (instead of disruption). M&A as well will see a strong hype (albeit not at the exit prices dreamed by investing VC just one year ago) not just between banks (needed for efficiency and regulatory constraints) but also between FinTech companies and from Banks buying startups.
This is not disruption, it is banking renovation on the go, thru the very strong impact of the #technology and the customer oriented design brought by FinTech, that will shape up the financial services of the new century, and will transform banking. You may call it FinTech banking or Markeplace banking.
FinTech disruption is dead. Long live FinTech.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertoferrari” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Roberto Ferrari”] is General Manager CheBanca!, Chairman of the board YellowFunds Sicav. This article was originally published on linkedin.
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