{"id":7447,"date":"2020-10-14T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T04:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=7447"},"modified":"2022-04-05T15:10:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-05T09:40:45","slug":"banks-versus-fintechs-who-is-ahead-on-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/14\/banks-versus-fintechs-who-is-ahead-on-product\/","title":{"rendered":"Banks Versus Fintechs: Who Is Ahead On Product?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I concluded in <a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/08\/why-banks-will-never-catch-up-with-fintechs-on-ux\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Why Banks Will Never Catch Up With Fintechs On UX<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that Banks will arguably not be able to catch up with Fintechs in terms of the User Experience of their websites and apps.<\/p>\n<p>(Definition of Bank and Fintech, and the difference between the two, are explained in my <a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/08\/why-banks-will-never-catch-up-with-fintechs\/#BankFintechFincumbentDefinition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>glossary here<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>That post was about the UX of a Financial Services Product.<\/p>\n<p>This post is about the Product itself.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/banks-fintech-product-fi.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-7472 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/banks-fintech-product-fi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/banks-fintech-product-fi.jpg 630w, https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/banks-fintech-product-fi-200x89.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 70%;\" \/>\n<p>Over time, banks have created a wide array of innovative products like ATM, Credit Card, CDO2, CDS, HFT and UPI.<\/p>\n<p>Compared to that, I haven&#8217;t come across any pathbreaking products from neobanks.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Better UX, commitment to purpose &amp; all that are great but I&#39;m waiting for a Neobank to use its touted innovativeness to invent a brand new financial product, the way banks invented Credit Card, ATM, MBS, CDO, CDS, Algo Trading.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/s_ketharaman\/status\/1303717409170362370?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 9, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/ronshevlin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Ron Shevlin<\/strong><\/a>, Director of Research at Cornerstone Advisors, pointed me to a couple of novel products from fintechs (though not neobanks):<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Automated savings e.g. Acorns, Digit<\/li>\n<li>Bill negotiation e.g. Billshark, Trim<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Let me weigh in on these two product categories.<\/p>\n<p><em>Automated Savings<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In the mid 1980s, Citibank India launched &#8220;Unfixed Deposit&#8221;. This product swept excess amount in a savings account to a higher-yield fixed deposit, which could then be broken in small units if the customer needed cash before the FD matured. Around ten years later, ICICI Bank launched a Bank Account product called <em>Quantum Optima<\/em>, which sweeps amounts above a preset balance in a savings account to an FD yielding higher interest rate.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, when I was in UK and Germany, I had to manually track my checking accounts and remember to move surplus funds to savings accounts (or lose interest if I forgot). Going by Ron Shevlin, American banks still don&#8217;t do auto sweeps.<\/p>\n<p>Against this backdrop, I&#8217;ll concede that <em>Automated Savings<\/em> is an innovative product from fintechs, but only in the West &#8211; because banks have offered it in India since before the term &#8220;fintech&#8221; was even coined (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/avant%20la%20lettre\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>avant la lettre<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>(For readers outside India, here&#8217;s a clarification: &#8220;Savings account&#8221; is the basic bank account for individuals in India, where current account is issued only to businesses. So, whenever you read &#8220;savings account&#8221; in the Indian context, replace it with you&#8217;d call a &#8220;DDA&#8221;, &#8220;checking account&#8221; or &#8220;bank account&#8221;.)<\/p>\n<p><em>Bill Negotiation<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Over the years, I&#8217;ve come across a plethora of companies that negotiate prices for airline tickets, ecommerce products, and so on. Nobody calls them fintechs. By the same logic, negotiating a cheaper mobile phone plan with my TELCO shouldn&#8217;t be in the realm of financial services.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, I won&#8217;t treat Billshark and Trim &#8211; and one more Mumbai-based startup that was planning to launch a similar service in India a few years ago &#8211; as fintechs.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s moot whether banks have a product in this space or not.<\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 70%;\" \/>\n<p>While I expect more fintechs to launch credit card, they&#8217;d only be catching up with banks on this product. Bank of America launched the first ever credit card in Fresno, California, in 1958.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Hope Railsbank&#39;s Credit Card As A Service platform changes the trickle of fintech \/ nonbank credit card offerings into a wave.<br \/> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/vhE51HBW8t\">https:\/\/t.co\/vhE51HBW8t<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/AF6hBsmODo\">https:\/\/t.co\/AF6hBsmODo<\/a> . <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/CCaaS?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#CCaaS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/s_ketharaman\/status\/1291652874729136128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 7, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 70%;\" \/>\n<p>Going by the above examples, I was about to conclude that banks are ahead of fintechs on product.<\/p>\n<p>Then I read an interview with Reid Hoffman in an HBR article entitled <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2016\/04\/blitzscaling\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Blitzscaling<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us know Hoffman as the cofounder of LinkedIn but, before that, he was one of the cofounders of PayPal aka member of the famous &#8220;PayPal Mafia&#8221;, which also includes many Silicon Valley celebs like Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), Max Levchin (Affirm), and Peter Thiel (Palantir).<\/p>\n<p>Reid Hoffman is also the creator of the <em><strong>Blitzscaling<\/strong><\/em> growth framework, which he defines as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Blitzscaling is what you do when you need to grow really, really quickly. It\u2019s the science and art of rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In this interview, Hoffman explains why banks would never have invented a PayPal.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: #fafafa;\">\n<p>&#8230;freedom from normal rules is what gives you competitive advantage. For example, if we had understood how pernicious credit card fraud and chargebacks were in the early days at PayPal, I\u2019m not sure we would have believed that such a service could be successful. We didn\u2019t realize how staggering the losses could be. All the banking people knew the rules &#8211; you had to protect against fraud first. That prevented them from trying anything that looked remotely like PayPal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Hoffman tries to sound self-effacing by attributing the success of PayPal to ignorance of rules, thereby stoking the mystique of a bunch of guys who started out in a Silicon Valley garage with a mission to the make the world a better place and didn&#8217;t let anything stop them in their missionary zeal.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">One man&#39;s &quot;regulatory gap&quot; is another man&#39;s &quot;going up against a corrupt establishment&quot; &amp; &quot;fighting against &#8230; systems that are based on decades of graft within city govts&quot; ~ <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/nMRwhxJefm\">https:\/\/t.co\/nMRwhxJefm<\/a> ;<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/uRjTOOxnGd\">https:\/\/t.co\/uRjTOOxnGd<\/a> . <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Uber?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Uber<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/s_ketharaman\/status\/1288497243566288897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 29, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s more to it than that.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with <em>Slate<\/em>, the Founder CEO of Simple, a neobank, hinted that PayPal may have broken some rules, then used the blitzscaling strategy to grow rapidly, and reach the stage when it became <em>too big to have to comply<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Money Quote: &quot;We chose &#8230; to ask for permission, not forgiveness&#8230; That\u2019s not the approach that everyone took (e.g. PayPal)&#8230; They were so small that no one cared&#8230; And then they were too big to have to comply.&quot; <br \/>&#8211; Simple CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/i2pi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@i2pi<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/TooBigToComply?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#TooBigToComply<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/7FPlkPE0zY\">https:\/\/t.co\/7FPlkPE0zY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/s_ketharaman\/status\/997820176065232897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 19, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Banking is a highly regulated industry. Banks won&#8217;t break the law &#8211; at least not to create innovative products (or deliver superior customer experience).<\/p>\n<p>(Of course, banks don&#8217;t suffer from any such inhibition when it comes to making money for themselves and their shareholders. If you need any convincing on that count, check out the latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.finextra.com\/newsarticle\/36596\/fincen-leaks-throw-doubt-on-banks-aml-efforts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Buzzfeed News \/ ICIJ expose<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I&#39;ve heard of the one billion dollar fine here and the two billion dollar fine there. But I was shocked to hear that Top 6 Banks have paid a total of $110B in fines for GFC &#8211; via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WSJ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@WSJ<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PNM1cW0gz2\">https:\/\/t.co\/PNM1cW0gz2<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/GitAGy0pHB\">pic.twitter.com\/GitAGy0pHB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; GTM360 (@GTM360) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GTM360\/status\/992380932135976960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 4, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 70%;\" \/>\n<p>In my blog post entitled <a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/19\/fintechs-need-marketers-and-lobbyists-not-lawyers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Fintechs Need Marketers And Lobbyists &#8211; Not Lawyers<\/strong><\/a>, I introduced the term &#8220;regulatory gap&#8221; to highlight areas that lie in the twilight zone between \u201cNot Legal\u201d and \u201cNot Illegal\u201d, where:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\u201cNot Legal\u201d means there\u2019s no law on it.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cNot Illegal\u201d means it does not violate any existing laws.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cNot Illegal\u201d does not mean \u201cLegal\u201d and \u201cNot Legal\u201d does not mean \u201cIllegal\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">While &quot;Illegal&quot; means &quot;Not Legal&quot;, &quot;Not Legal&quot; does not mean &quot;Illegal&quot; but only that there&#39;s no regulation on the topic &#8211; aka &quot;Regulatory Gap&quot; ~ <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Unocoin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Unocoin<\/a> Founder. <\/p>\n<p>With my exposure to Logic &amp; Boolean Algebra &amp; ability at Hair Splitting, I agree. Will the regulator agree? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/g4kDy54S27\">pic.twitter.com\/g4kDy54S27<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/s_ketharaman\/status\/1053625573539483649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 20, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>No financial services regulator is likely to bless a product that lies in the twilight zone between &#8220;Not Legal&#8221; and &#8220;Not Illegal&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Accordingly, no mainstream bank will go near such a product. Cryptocurrency is a recent example.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, banks trail fintechs on products that leverage regulatory gaps. But they&#8217;re ahead of fintechs on all other types of financial services products.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I concluded in Why Banks Will Never Catch Up With Fintechs On UX\u00a0that Banks will arguably not be able to catch up with Fintechs in terms of the User Experience of their websites and apps. (Definition of Bank and Fintech, and the difference between the two, are explained in my glossary here.) That post was &#8230; <a title=\"Banks Versus Fintechs: Who Is Ahead On Product?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/14\/banks-versus-fintechs-who-is-ahead-on-product\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Banks Versus Fintechs: Who Is Ahead On Product?\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b2-product-v-services","category-bfsi","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7447"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9424,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7447\/revisions\/9424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}