Fintechs are becoming more entrenched into the financial ecosystem, with the majority of banks now firmly on the side of collaboration, rather than conflict.
More than 80% of financial incumbents anticipate developing more partnerships with fintechs in the next five years, according to PwC’s 2017 Global Fintech Report.
However, working with fintechs is nothing like working with other incumbents. According to the report, the developing partnerships between financial startups and FIs still have some challenges to overcome. One of the biggest issues at hand is melding together two quite distinct workplace cultures:
Fintechs see this as more of a problem than FIs (55% of fintech respondents categorized this as a challenge as opposed to 40% of FI respondents), but both are struggling to integrate the “move fast and break things” creed of startups with the more staid culture of a typical incumbent.
For most of the fintechs surveyed in the report, this was the top issue—incumbents, meanwhile, were mostly concerned with IT security, closely followed by regulatory uncertainties.
The full report, which included about 1,300 survey participants, may be viewed here.