COMPLIANT DISRUPTION
of qualifications in San Francisco or New York, as we do in Copenhagen.” Fintech hub for Northern Europe With the generally good conditions for companies in Copenhagen, what else would it take to make Copenhagen the number one fintech hub in the Nordics? Michael Grønager responds: “Well frankly, if you say ‘Nordic fintech hub’, you only compare Copenhagen to Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki, and while we ought to beat them, if that was the ambition, that would not even be fun – and it wouldn’t be enough. I’d rather say that Copenhagen should be the fintech hub for Northern Europe or number two in all of Europe after London, then you’d set a real goal. Everything else might be nice, but not very ambitious.” So raising the bar – what would this goal require? The first and easy answer would be money, but not just any kind of money, smart money, which in Michael Grønager’s book is “money from someone understanding and sharing the same vision and who will be able to push you forward.” He expects to see more smart money in the Danish fintech market as more startups become successful or if some of the big institutional players with money and knowledge enter more actively into to venture capital space:
“We see Citi, BBVA and AIG investing heavily in the fintech space, and we could expect the big banks in Denmark to do the same. They could enter the space and drive some of the initiatives. This would drive a more ambitious agenda – they could find themselves creating their own competitors, but it would be preferable to compete with yourself than lose out entirely.” The Danish Chainalysis employees are located in Copenhagen as part of Copenhagen Fintech Hub, which is the new fintech environment started by the Financial Services Union in Denmark. Michael Grønager is very supportive and positive towards this new location for fintech companies: “It’s really a fantastic initiative – I think that it’s super cool that a union takes this initiative, and very well planned to create a startup environment united under the same theme – I have been in various shared office spaces, where you work next to people with very different backgrounds and different start-ups. And the problem is that you cannot use your network much if the people you work with are not working in the same space. The fintech theme of Copenhagen Fintech Hub means that it’s the same customers and connections that you need in the industry, the same investors that will look at you and this creates a massive synergy.”◼
Perfect test lab Because of the size and the affluence of Denmark, Michael Grønager encourages big international companies to use the small Nordic country as a living test lab: “Denmark is a good market for experimentation. It’s manageable, people are very affluent and it’s practically a cashless society, so if you aim for this kind of segment in e.g. the US, then Denmark is the perfect test lab. Denmark is such a small country that you can afford to fail here, as it would never be the most important market for an international player. This makes it a ‘safe’ – a playground, where you can experiment before you deploy in the ‘real world’.”