I alimony seeing tweets well-nigh fintech transforming the world and wares on fintech eating the world and keynotes on how fintech is the death knell for traditional banks and whatnot.
The world is not stuff eaten at all. Its your margin thats stuff devoured.
Still.
I mean.
We saw and heard and thought and feared (or hoped for) those things at the dawn of the fintech era and then it just didnt quite happen.
A few people made a lot of money.
A lot of people made a lot of noise.
A few things reverted dramatically.
A lot of things evolved slowly and deliberately.
But traditional banks are still here, and largely unchanged. And fintech is moreover very much still here but hasnt eaten much of anything other than a lot of VC cash.
Do I midpoint fintech was not a gravity to be reckoned with? Not at all.
I midpoint that we had it all wrong.
We said fintech and meant this new stuff start-ups do. We largely unquestionably meant start-ups. Really.
But the last 15 years have shown that fintech isnt a single thing and that start-ups are just a small part of it.
If anything, entrepreneurship (not start-ups) is the worthier story and, plane then, that is only a small part of the transpiration we are trying to size. Dynamism is the worthier story and plane then, not the whole story.
The whole story is a paradigm shift from terminology to digital. Its not a small set of things we use that is shifting but rather the way societies live that has changed.
We have now learned that digitisation is not a miracle that smaller companies have all sown up. We have learned that fintech did not bring in its wake a set of new tools but rather was part and parcel of a transformation so deep as to encompass our unshortened social fabric globally.
We have learned that digital isnt a nomination banks get to make in their own time or the privileged domain of start-up founders in hoodies. We have learned that we are part of a worthier thing, rather than this thing stuff a factor to be reckoned with in our domain.
The power dynamic is reversed and the proportions are all out of whack compared to what we thought was happening.
So.
We have learned all that.
And we have learned that financial is transforming all right, but not in a way that is straightforwardly well-nigh winners and losers.
And right now, with the tech industry going through round without round of redundancies and with funding drying up, valuations imploding and some of our shiniest unicorns falling into rough times now that some of the ones to watch have handed when their licenses and sealed their doors not in droves, but moreover in unbearable numbers to prove inexorably that there is a shift now that we know all these things
I still see fintech is eating the world or neos vs big tech winner-takes-all bingo territory on the decks of well-known influencers and well-paid consultants.
And I know I know that the narrative keeps their livelihood intact. I know that. And I moreover know that the pace at which the world is waffly isnt charitable to the slow learner or to those who feel that the world will wait till they are ready so the message stuff repeated then and then is needed and therefore inevitable in some ways. I know its moreover nonflexible to shift mental models. You can winnow a variegated wordplay but asking a variegated question is a whole new ballgame.
I know all that and still, I cant help but wonder what are people smoking?
I was there when disintermediation was the visitant and banks were terrified fintechs would come into the world as we know it and take the weightier bits. And by best, we meant most profitable.
I know saying that I was there at the dawn of fintech is tantamount to whereas that I had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pyjamas or a lambada skirt. I had both and, frankly, stuff older doesnt midpoint youve seen it all before. But it does midpoint that you have seen some of it before. And I have definitely seen the posturing and the rhetoric before. Only last time we had reason to believe it. Reasons that didnt hold, perhaps. But that you dont know till without the fact. Which is now. Now is without the fact. Now we know better.
It turned out disintermediation was the wrong thing to be wrung of. As were start-ups.
Thats not where the rencontre would come from and frankly, I suspect banks now kinda wish that had been the worst of it. Hindsight and all.
We were so unprotected up with worrying who would do this to us, where the threat would come from and what we could do to slow them down, trip them up or buy them out so unprotected up in looking for the potential perpetrator of this thing that we missed the signs well-nigh what was going to be washed-up to us.
And while we were looking at start-ups thinking we were looking at fintech, the economy virtually us digitised. The world became hyperconnected. New skills, a new consciousness, new legislation and new economic models emerged in tandem all virtually us. And this transpiration demands new things from us as customers, regulators and suppliers move faster than the financial services industry.
And this transpiration came at us from all directions.
Replete with opportunity, for sure. But not just opportunity.
Disintermediation didnt quite happen. What happened is that financial services institutions are now looking at a unflinching new world of digitally distributed services and products, data-driven services, real-time services and truth-sharing when it comes to cleared balances, interest accruals and so on and so forth, while moreover delivering the forfeit to serve of all the legacy tracery in their estate.
Unit economics dont quite wash if you have to price for a digital product while spending on both the digital tracery and all the manor of times gone by since its still there limping along.
And yet here we are. Still looking at neos and big tech trying to work out who is the biggest threat. When we should know by now that the enemy is within considering the world without is so transformed that the stuff we siphon inside our organisations is the greatest threat to survival. Considering it slows us down. Considering it weighs us down. Considering it bogs us down.
It turned out disintermediation was the wrong thing to be wrung of.
Unit economics was the visitant we should have been losing sleep over.
So its not fintech thats eating the world. Its not big tech thats eating our lunch.
The world is not stuff eaten at all. Its your margin thats stuff devoured. And its not fintech or big tech doing it to you its not start-ups or tech giants its the legacy manor and its heavy-heavy footprint in a world that moves fast, financing less and treads lightly.
If you must sublease lame, if you must find who is doing this to you, then sadly the wordplay is yourself.
#LedaWrites
Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures resident thought provocateur she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.
She is a recovering banker, lapsed wonk and long-term resident of the financial ecosystem. She is senior vendee officer at 10x Future Technologies.
Leda is moreover a published tragedian her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is misogynist to order here.
All opinions are her own. You cant have them but you are welcome to debate and comment!
