The presence of FinTech companies within the financial industry is sustainably increasing. These type of companies are able to provide a wider variety of products and services at a higher speed, which are more convenience and personalized for a better price. However, there are also risks that needs to be taken into consideration. For instance, since its still upcoming there are unclear regulations and people may make impulsive decisions (Central Bank of Ireland n.d.)
The influence of FinTech companies differs per country. The Netherlands counts more than 400 FinTech companies, which all strive to provide more personalized and accessible financial services, and thereby challenge the incumbents (Holland Fintech 2018). One of the best known Dutch FinTech companies is Ayden, which is a payment platform that enables global payments (Ayden n.d.). Ayden is the only Dutch company that is taken into account in the KPMGs FINTECH100 Leading Global FinTech Innovators and received the 17th place of most leading FinTech companies worldwide. When looking at other countries within this report, United States counts 18 of the biggest and most innovative FinTech companies, United Kingdom has 12 and China ends third with 11 companies. If you would look more specific to the top 5 most leading companies of this report, 3 of them are Chinese companies (KPMG 2018). The influence of FinTech companies is in these countries more noticeable than the Netherlands.
The most financial disruptive company and the number one of the report is Ant Financial, which is a spin-off of Alibaba and its paying service AliPay. Due to the large data sets that was collected from users, Ant Financial is able to use this data and their vast consumer base to create all sorts of platform based financial services (Concepcion 2019). The total value of the company is $150 million, and their paying platform, AliPay, counts more than 700 million active users (Detrixhe 2019)
The Dutch banks should watch out for emerging FinTech companies as well as hub firms entering the financial market. I am curious how the financial industry will look like in 5 to 10 years in the Netherlands. Will ING, Rabobank and ABN AMRO still be the dominant players or did others take over their share?
References:
Ayden (n.d.) ‘Ons Verhaal’. Retrieved from: https://www.adyen.com/nl_NL/over-adyen
Central Bank of Ireland (n.d.) ‘What is fintech and how is it changing financial products’. Retrieved from: https://centralbank.ie/consumer-hub/explainers/what-is-fintech-and-how-is-it-changing-financial-products
Concepcion, A. (2019) ‘How Ant Financial Became the Largest Fintech in the World’. Retrieved from: https://www.applicoinc.com/blog/ant-financial-services-platform-largest-fintech-in-world/
Detrixhe, J. (2019) ‘Ant Financial raised alsmost as much money as all US and European FinTech firms combined’. Retrieved from: https://qz.com/1537638/ant-financial-raised-almost-as-much-money-in-2018-as-all-fintechs-in-us-and-europe/
Holland Fintech (2018) ‘Dutch Fintech Infographic 4.0’. Retrieved from: https://hollandfintech.com/featured/dutch-fintech-infographic/
KPMG (2018) ‘2018 KPMG FinTech100 Leading Global Fintech Innovators’. Retrieved from: https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/nl/pdf/2018/advisory/fintech-100-2018.pdf
