Having attended the Robo Investing conference in London last week I can only emphasize the focus on re-bundling and partnerships.
After a few years of total focus on un-bundling, much driven by regulation, the financial industry now sees value in being able to offer their customers more than one product. What is different and interesting, and do I dare to say a new perspective, is that the banking industry finally is starting to focus on the client rather than product.
What role does new vs old play? Only until recently the talk was focused on fintech vs the incumbents. Who will win and lose respectively? Now that the discussion has matured and is more centered around various forms of partnerships, we can only hope that the client really stands to gain. These partnerships are not at all exclusive to financial players, on the contrary, it can very well be players in completely other lines of businesses.
Sweden has some truly great fintech players, especially in payments. But there is a lot to learn from Asia, who leapfrogged into mobile banking and early on saw non-financial players, like WeChat and Alibaba putting pressure on the old ways and status quo. Hong Kong is very open to business collaboration and what better opportunity to find out more than attending the upcoming lunch with Mr. James Lau, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government on September 24th at 12 pm RSVP to kansli@hongkong.se, still a few seats available.
/Hanna