COMMENTARY: INNOVATION
Challenging the challengers
Neobanks would have nothing to rage against – wouldn’t be ‘new’ – if there weren’t ‘old’ banks that had failed to respond adequately to a world that was changing rapidly around them. They were the neglectful mothers of invention; challengers were the children of necessity. At least, that’s the way Muhammed Salim, director of product design at one of those rebellious offspring, Revolut, sees it. “All the fintechs, the new banks that have arrived, they wouldn’t exist if the traditional banks were never there. Perhaps we are the children; we grow and move on but the parents will stay there,” he says of a previous generation that, in his opinion, has reached ‘peak bank’. And, try as they might to impress the kids with new tools and services, it’s a bit like having to watch the embarrassing dad dance. “What we’re trying to do, all the time, is think ‘what’s going to make a difference?’, so we’re not just playing catchup,” says Mark Hipperson, CEO and co-founder of Ziglu, a next-wave neo that embraces crypto like a native, who was also founder and former CTO of the UK challenger that broke the mould. www.fintechf.com
Challenger or incumbent, how do you keep the flywheel of continuous innovation turning? We asked three experts with different banking and technology backgrounds: a customer experience designer; an established neobank and a baby-faced startup at the forefront of Generation Crypto “I remember, when I was at Starling, we were the first in the world to design ‘pause your card’ in-app. It was three years later we saw an advert for Barclays, where someone was sitting on a bus and doing the same – three years behind us, despite all the money those guys have to do stuff,” says Hipperson. “It comes back to the innovation mindset: making a difference, trying to get things done and having people that care about customer service. It’s not about making money. Money will come if you do a great job. The mindset should be ‘how do I put my customer first
and give them something really exciting and innovative?’.” That’s all very well, if you’re a fintech sitting on a seemingly bottomless pot of venture capital – as many appear to be – with a long runway, comparatively low fixed costs and no urgency to turn a profit. But when the first and second wave of neos are themselves ‘established’ brands and faced with rivals that are pushing even bigger envelopes, how will they keep the flywheel of innovation spinning? By relentless focus on the customer, according to VP of global financial services at Mobiquity, Matthew Williamson. The digital enabler is at the cutting edge of transformation, helping to build digital banks (standalone challengers or as part of an established institution’s digital strategy) and its goal is to ‘transform points of friction into sparks of innovation’. To help achieve this, Mobiquity has developed friction reports, a proprietary method of analysing hundreds of thousands of reviews and ratings from customer feedback channels like the iOS and Google Play stores, to help companies from different industries understand what’s working well and where there is room for improvement. Issue 7 | ThePaytechMagazine
53