Make friends with fintech: Bankers lobby

Top bankers lobby says fintechs should figure out how to please banks

In a new era of peace fintechs and bankers should be friends, claims the bankers' lobby house journal.

The time where fintechs and bankers waged war is over and a new era of peace, where fintechs figure out how best to serve the banks, is at hand.

A new article in the house journal of the American Bankers Association, the top US banking lobby, has claimed that bankers should figure out how to befriend fintechs as the age of competition is over.

“when the wave of new fintech startups burst onto the scene several years ago, announcing themselves loudly as disruptors of the banking industry, bankers rightfully worried,” the article says.

“Time and reality have since set in, and the tone of the conversation has shifted away from ‘compete’ toward ‘collaborate.’”

Building a friendship, it claims, requires compromise on both sides.

For fintechs, the compromise requires letting slide any dreams of customer acquisition, which is folly given customers’ well-noticed loyalties to their banks. For bankers, it requires realising that fintechs have all the good ideas and that the learning goes both ways.

“For banks, the wakeup call has been the realization that customers are coming to value—and expect—a frictionless banking experience,” it says.

“That being said, banks have two key advantages over fintech companies… the strong relationships that they have built with regulators, and an existing customer base.”

The report, which builds off conversations with fintech pioneers and bankers, says that each institution must remember that startups and large bureaucratic entities like banks have different cultures. And any collaboration should bear that it mind.

Read the full article here.