Future trends, Brexit impact and „Banks vs Fintechs” – interview with Brett King

This summer, two CEE FinTech co-founders, János and András had the opportunity to meet and talk with Brett King, four times bestselling author, the host of the “BREAKING BANK$” Radio Show and the founder of the fintech startup Moven. During our conversation with Brett, we discussed future trends, Brexit impact and „Banks vs Fintechs” as main topics, so we decided to summarize this in an interview on our blog.

In your book, Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane you write about the future and how you see it coming, can you share some thoughts with us?

Due to technology, in the next 15-20 years every aspect of our lives will change, whether it’s healthcare, transportation or financial services. Disruption is already here and it’s directing development to new ways, accelerating or stopping current technologies, bringing a circular change in the world. The four key disruptors will be Artificial Intelligence, Experience Design, Smart Infrastructure, and HealthTech. AI can develop expertise and personality given enough context and degree of freedom.

What will be the impact of Brexit on the global fintech scene?

I recommend Pascal Bouvier’s deeper analysis on the impact of Brexit on a wide perspective[1], he has very good insights on this. We are still waiting for the adoption of Brexit as there are different scenarios. The one that is still planning some integrations and closer partnership with the EU will harm less fintech and a radical, anti-EU adoption could make London loose its place on the fintech scene and I’m convinced that several startups will choose relocation, so other European fintech hubs will rise in that case.

How do you see the relationships of banks and fintech players?

Real digital banks are partnering, investing or acquiring fintechs, finding ways to learn faster through partnerships with very agile teams that are thinking differently about the problem. If you’ve run a ‘hackathon’ but don’t fund a fintech startup, you aren’t a digital bank.

What kind of key resources are must-have for banks to survive in the disruption era?

I would definitely state that a strong technology driven leadership even in the top management is needed. We live in an age where Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein says that they are a technology firm.[2] There are some really outstanding digital banks out there today making their best efforts, with very competent management and technical, experience and digital teams executing behind that vision. Francisco González BBVA CEO led the company on a bold transformational strategy to become the world’s first digital global bank. Although, there are some banks, who are not innovation driven but from their point of view, digital commitment is just something to publish in a press release, they will fall within the next 10 years without mindset changing.
The facts that most of the investment in bank’s digital transformation are going into compliance and simply retooling core systems for things like real-time payments than doing a full digital bank rework as mBank in Poland did.

What would you advise to banks in Hungary?

I can highly recommend to each top bankers in the country that it’s time to open up for technology disruption and get ready for the changes so they can stay on the market on the longer run too. Let’s start some partnership with fintechs, investing in the startups or at least keep an eye (or two) on them.

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If you want to hear more about fintech vs banks we recommend the “Digital Bank? Or Digital Banking?” episode of Brett’s podcast, Breaking Banks that you can reach here:
http://www.breakingbanks.com/digital-bank-or-digital-banking/

[1] FinTech Brexistentialism

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/8df546df-20d1-46e5-824b-0702e9225046

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