Competitive to Collaborative: How Fintech Works With Banks and Not Against Them

Over the past two decades alone, the advent of new technologies has undeniably changed the way we communicate, work, travel, invest, shop and more. This has forced traditional financial institutions to adopt more efficient and modern business models. It comes as little surprise, then, that the banking industry—long renowned for its staid, traditionalist approach to business—is ripe for disruption, operates under significant financial pressure and is subject to renewed scrutiny as a result of the liquidity spiral of 2008. Enter fintech.

Fintech has come a long way since Peter Knight, a business editor at the United Kingdom’s Sunday Times, first coined the term back in the 1980s, and since early entrant PayPal first revolutionized electronic payments. In its most current iteration (circa 2007, give or take), fintech emerged as a knight in shining armor: a disruptive force ready to save us all from those —evil’ financial institutions deemed responsible for the Great Recession.

Much has changed since 2007 and it seems that, as many predicted, banks, alternative lenders and fintech companies have come full circle in how they view each other relative to the ecosystem they occupy—from perceived partners, to “frenemies” (companies that cooperate for the mutual benefit despite competing in the same industry niche) and enemies (companies that compete in the same industry niche), then back to perceived partners. An increasing number of these actors have been adopting a more collaborative rather than adversarial approach, recognizing the overlap in business objectives in everyone’s self-interest. This can be seen as an extremely positive thing; partnerships with fintech companies can provide financial institutions with the ability to serve new segments, engage new customers and expand business with efficient technological solutions.

Bottom line, when banks and fintech companies work together, they are able to bring products to market quickly and seamlessly, all while providing a significantly enhanced client experience.

But what is behind this paradigm shift? There are three main factors driving this new wave of collaboration:

The Competitive Landscape
Beholden to prohibitively complex and cumbersome financial regulations, banks have seen significant consolidation and increasing competition over the past 40 years. They responded in large part by rebalancing their business models from a strict asset transformation approach, to blended fee-based models. Now, however, when fintech and banks collaborate, they’re able to not only leverage the resources of banks, but also leverage fintech’s nimbleness in order to effectively and expediently bring products to market. Data has exposed many previously underserved market opportunities, long overlooked due to bloated cost structures riddled with antiquated IT infrastructures and heavily layered processes, impeded further by the highly siloed nature of financial institutions’ operational structures.

Traditional Customer Service Role Has Changed
Traditional banks, be they large too-big-to-fail banks or regional and community banks and credit unions, have a strong position not only from a capital perspective, but also from a customer vantage point—they have records of all of their customers’ information. This is an important distinction between traditional and well-established institutions versus new alternative finance companies—banks would have a much lower cost of customer acquisition when compared to alternative lenders that face massive marketing expenditures.

The traditional role of the bank is to take in and manage deposits, allocate that capital and service a traditional portfolio with traditional loan parameters. Banks lend, borrow and ultimately help keep money in circulation. However, unless there is commitment by senior management at these financial institutions to adapt modern technologies, success is unlikely for traditional financial institutions.

Innovation Overdue
Lastly, driven by the competitive landscape, banks seem to have recognized that they are not viewed as bastions of innovation. Many are responding accordingly by teaming up with fintech companies that are well-positioned to steer them forward into the digital age. Deals between traditional financial institutions and alternative lenders and fintech players (like JP Morgan and OnDeck or Kabbage and Santander) are illustrative of the complementary and mutually beneficial qualities that players in banking and fintech bring to the table.

These factors, in combination, will likely result in an ecosystem of fintech companies assuming 25-30 percent, if not more, of the current banking system’s value chain. Catering to both traditional and alternative financial institutions, fintech companies enable banks to focus on their individual core competencies by offering expanding toolkits of services from origination (customer acquisition and digital onboarding) to underwriting and portfolio management (know your customer, otherwise known as KYC, anti-money laundering compliance, predictive data analytics and loan management).

The financial ecosystem is changing regardless of how market participants feel. Change is the only certainty, after all. Survivors will adapt by leveraging technological innovation through fintech partnerships, creating significant value for customers and the company itself. Those that don’t will quickly be left behind and ultimately perish.