Tech-driven banking began innovating and addressing specific needs and was coined “The great un-bundling”. Currently we are seeing trends towards the opposite direction, as fintechs have begun to ‘re-bundle’ some of these innovations in an effort to scale up and increase market share. What are the benefits and challenges of these trends?
At FTT Embedded Finance UK & Europe 2021 our rockstar panellists, moderated by Kimberly Mescal, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Marqeta, discussed on the progress in the re-bundling of banking services, and whether fintechs can successfully pair multiple new banking products and avoid becoming Jacks of All Trades.
Adnan Ahmed, Head of Strategy at Starling Bank explained the un-bundling process “Twenty years ago, we would go to the bank for a mortgage, and you would have to fill out a lot of paper forms. It would be complicated and not efficient. What fintech did was, they saw a gap in the market to make more of these services that banks offered, and they focused on just one and decided to deliver that service or product really well”
Adnan added there is a couple of reasons why he thinks the situation is changing now: “The first one would be customer experience. You have people using your app, but ultimately you want them to keep coming back. The second one would be monetizing those customer relationships.”
Eddie Rob, Commercial Director at Zumo, commented that in terms partnerships, and when deciding how the brand wants to align “In the crypto space, and because of the nature of crypto, you have to kiss a lot of frogs and evaluate how real the opportunity is and get to know them.”
The panel also highlighted panellists’ product broadening strategy, touching on the innovation have they brought to the products they offer and how are they re-bundling in a way that doesn’t compromise on their reputation for innovation and great customer experiences.
Watch the full panel discussion below:
We already have a save the date for the upcoming FTT Embedded Finance UK and Europe (26th of April 2022, County Hall, Westminster, London) and look forward to continuing to grow this exciting and disruptive community.
