Yet another Neobank?

After having recently launched a new digital bank I found myself often answering to the obvious question; is there a place for another one? What new things do you bring to the table? What is your unbeatable value proposition?

When talking to fintech leaders, it seems their focus is somewhere else far away from digital banking. There is an unspoken reality where we already have declared the winners with some strong followers, some niche champions and the (very) long tail of others. Names will vary a bit from person to person, but Nubank and Revolut, N26, Chime and Grab, Starling and Bunq, are very familiar to all of us. It seems we already have solved for everything with a coolish user experience, a different way of talking, gimmicky payment flows, formerly all-free now “fairly” priced services, shiny cards and voilà… Nothing else to add, let’s move on. Well, some added crypto trading as it was the thing to do…

I like to look and smile at the flamboyant highlines fintech leaders did in the last 3 years and how they were supposed to change everything forever. And well, we are still here with the so-called traditional banks making profits and adapting at a quite agile pace, while lots of fintech banks are nervous about the upcoming funding rounds.

My observation, while the big Fintechs have been busy implementing their global expansion plans and their lucrative IPOs, they forgot that running a technology-experience based business is about talent and constant engagement with the customer. Meanwhile, traditional banks had onboarded an unprecedented inflow of talent looking for a less pompous more structured environment and they let them work. In-house and collaborative financial innovation labs/hubs look like the place where to be now if you want to make a difference in the industry today.

The reality is that fintech has been never so populated of talent, focus and resources like nowadays. The industry has already a collective conscience that catches a glimpse of what could be a major network effect. Everyone is working very hard in something, everyone has access to talent, resources keep coming and most importantly; the ancient regulatory frameworks that didn’t change for almost a century are in a clear evolution path.

Kudos to all the Fintechs who are really making of the industry a hot spot, especially the ones who built global companies out of nothing. They showed the world how to navigate the complexity of the licensing and the compliance programs, not without lots of hiccups, some of them major ones, but they did it.?Kudos to traditional banks that truly understood what was coming and took a very uncertain path of change. Some of them did it for the cosmetics, some of them got lost into politics and some of them are still committed to real innovation agenda. Kudos to the Big-tech for the “Pay’s” and for the uncountable number of new technologies that you make available for us. We are still waiting for your Big-tech fintech earthquake announced. Not sure if it is coming anytime soon, but I am sure it’s coming.

Take my modest opinion as of someone who contributed to launch a digital bank last February. A bank offered by a 170+ years old company with the honest purpose of making the life of migrants, double-belongers and global citizens better. A bank that just announced that managed to onboard 20.000+ customers and won’t stop there. Next time you listen about a new digital bank, I suggest you look in detail what they try to solve, how they try to solve it and who is there trying to solve. If you do this instead of just asking “Yet another one?”. It will help to understand better what is coming. And trust me, lots of things are coming and lot of new banks too.

#digitalbanking #neobanks #fintech #challengerbanks #bigtech #westernunion

All opinions in this article are personal

Photo by Candice Seplow on Unsplash