Скачать или смотреть LFP054 – Special Episode! Do we need Fintech 2.0? What are Brexit’s impacts? with Giles Andrews Z...

(http://londonfintechpodcast.com/wp-co...) Less than a week ago the UK voted to leave the EU. This comes against a background of severe problems for listed US marketplace lenders, a worlwide tailing off of institutional capital into the sector and only a tiny number of Fintechs having achieved profitability (many years after launch).



I thought it time to take a big picture look at Fintech – is Fintech 1.0 flagging? Do we need Fintech 2.0 to take us onward and upwards? Will Brexit be a positive force or a negative force for Fintech?



(http://londonfintechpodcast.com/wp-co...) I could think of no better figure to discuss this with than Giles Andrews who has been at the top of perhaps the UK’s oldest Fintech Zopa (https://www.zopa.com/) per se as well as one of the most blue-chip today.



It’s a wide-ranging conversation but one that lays out some of the parameters of the territory ahead – one which right now may be shrouded in fog but one which we all, including the Fintech sector, will travel through.



It’s a longer episode than normal and there is plenty on the show. Some main topics we discuss include:








• a look forward to next week’s episode on the weaknesses on Financial Services and the opportunities this offers for Fintech


• Giles career experience at Zopa and experience of the whole evolution – originally before the word existed Zopa used to call themselves a “technology-enabled Financial Services business” – which while a mouthful is perhaps a more insightful term


• consumer finance businesses take far longer than anyone expects to grow; need to build trust before one spends too much money on marketing


• the impact of the 2008 crisis (“not a good thing”) to have a positive impact on the development of Fintech (and parallels with perceptions of “Brexit” as being a crisis)


• “for Fintech businesses to be interesting they need either to offer either better value to consumers or better service experience or ideally both”


• “I don’t think better service is enough to build a business” – we are still seeing this in many Fintechs right now [one aspect of Fintech 1.0 that needs upgrading – a shiny, in essence user interface isn’t a deep business angle]


• most Fintechs are aiming at achieving profitability quicker now then they were a few years ago – the need for strong marginal economics and the imprtance of that as a direction/narrative


• the Executive Chairman/CEO respective roles at Zopa


• uncertainty of Brexit being implicit in the vote which was in essence for or against something without any vote on what would happen next – there being a wide range of possibilities


• conservative risk management in the circs esp re consumer credit in any economic downturn that may or may not happen


• balances of opportunity and threat – periods of change being more of a threat to incumbents (the larger they are) and more opportunity for new startups to react faster


• UK focused Fintechs versus those more outward looking ones (esp those that need scale to succeed)


• the long running negotiations to come balancing eg membership of the single market with demands for open borders (which was a real pain point for much of the electorate)


• Fintech 2.0



• an example being Bitcoin (1.0) and Blockchain (2.0)


• in payments a comparison of GoCardless (1.0) running on existing rails versus payments 2.0 with direct access to the Bank of England accounts and payments systems


• an increasing onus to demonstrate profitability and self-sustaining Fintechs – so a shake-out component





• Fintech having set its stall out as being focused and not diversified – so one growth option for Fintech 1.0s would not appear to be diversifying into different types of Fintech


• early stage businesses often define themselves in terms of what they are not into one of defining themselves by what they are demonstrably good at


• partnering with incumbents such as banks and the possible stage after that of being acquired by banks


• Metro Banks lending of some of its depositors funds to Zopa as an example of partnership


• the best speech on Fintech (in passing never delivered) was Giles believes by Mark Carney the Governor of the Bank of England “Enabling the FinTech transformation: Revolution, Restoration, or Reformation?”


• the future of the whole PSD2 impulse now the UK is going further from Europe – will Banks lobby more successfully or will our traditional; less bureaucratic approach triumph? This set against a global trend to greater lobbying and po...