Boom or bust ahead for fintech companies?

BI Intelligence

What’s really going on in financial technology?

Financial technology, or “fintech” for short, is threatening to turn traditional financial fields like banking, lending, asset management and insurance upside down.

New firms are using new mobile, social and digital technology to find new customers and offer them new financial products that meet their needs in a fast-changing world.

All this “new” is exciting…but disruptive and disorienting, too. Surprising new opportunities are coming fast and furious. So are crushing disappointments.

For instance, these positive fintech developments were announced in the last few weeks:

• Fintech funding is accelerating—it surpassed expectations by growing 96% YOY
• Ping An, China’s second largest insurer, has become the first Chinese firm to join the blockchain consortium R3 and partners like Goldman Sachs and Barclays
• In just 3 months, mobile app newcomer Revolut has processed over $300 million in foreign exchange transfers
• Sallie Krawcheck, former CFO of Citigroup, launched Ellevest, an automated investment platform aimed at women

But in the same time span, we’ve seen surprising negative fintech news:

• Alternative funding giant Lending Club is being investigated by the US Department of Justice, the stock cratered and the CEO resigned
• The UK financial regulator (FCA) has been asked by a group of MPs to provide more detail on the risks and opportunities presented by peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and “related markets.” This inquiry could lead to further and more significant regulation that could potentially stymie the growth of the industry in the short-term.
• Number26, a German digital-only bank, closed hundreds of accounts last week because customers were reportedly making too many ATM withdrawals, resulting in rising costs for the bank.
• UK marketplace lenders may only originate $0.7 billion in 2025, down from $4 billion in 2015. This forecast from Deloitte is a worst-case scenario, but highlights two key factors of marketplace lending: marketplace lenders need to give investors a better return than other investments to incentivize them to buy loans and banks can easily replicate marketplace lenders’ models.

The truth is, we’ve entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs.

No firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.

This very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Business Insider Intelligence has put together the definitive briefing on fintech.

It explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking
• Lending and Financing
• Payments and Transfers
• Wealth and Asset Management
• Markets and Exchanges
• Insurance
• Blockchain Transactions

If you work these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will affect your business and your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.

Evan Bakker of BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, has written a new report entitled The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry. The big picture insights you’ll get from this new report include:

• Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
• The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
• Traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
• Startups have challenges of their own—they are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
• The blockchain is a wild card that could completely remake financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.

This exclusive report also:

• Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
• Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
• Breaks down global and regional fintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
• Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
• Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
• Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.
• And much more.

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But to stay on top of the breaking developments in fintech—positive and negative—the ALL-ACCESS Membership is your best choice. It gives you a wealth of digital information, including the daily Fintech Briefing, which gives you all the latest news and analysis on the world of fintech.

However you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.