Embedded Finance. Scarlett Sieber

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Название Embedded Finance
Автор произведения Scarlett Sieber
Жанр Банковское дело
Серия
Издательство Банковское дело
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781119891062



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have appeared 3,000 years ago in China and a few hundred years later in Turkey. Both were advanced, literate societies with established social norms and laws protecting persons and property. But the act of borrowing and lending is more fundamental to human activity than the idea of “money,” as any child on the playground can tell you.

      Lending appears to have been a family matter in ancient Mesopotamia, with wealthy families lending from their own reserves. In ancient Greece and Rome, banking became more formal and less personal, with lending and money-changing often tied to the economic activities of powerful entities such as temples or government offices.

      The consumer banking most of us are familiar with arrived in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, along with industrialization and the emergence of the middle class. And of course, the twentieth century saw the trappings of traditional financial life become standardized: the checkbook, the bills arriving like clockwork every month, the plastic cards, and the bankers in their suits and ties.

      The intersection of banking and technology, or financial technology now commonly known as fintech, began in the internet era. It got its start with digital banking over dial-up internet connections in the 1990s, the arrival of application programming interfaces (APIs) as a communication tool between applications in the 2000s, and truly came into its own in 2009, as the financial crisis wreaked havoc on consumer credit and the entire business of banking. Why was this the moment? The 2009 financial crisis meant that traditional banks became subject to new regulations stemming from repeated crises, and at the same time millions of smartphones (the first iPhone was released in the summer of 2007) found their way into consumers’ hands. This created a unique confluence of circumstances for the new wave of fintech companies to emerge and challenge the banks.

      Fintech relies on a number of technology layers from a multitude of providers whose interactions can be quite complex, but consumers don't care how all the processes work together on the backend. Very few users know about the financial systems and programming languages used to deliver services to their touchscreens. An important point about fintech is that, whenever possible, it is automated, and performed with minimal human intervention, removing friction as far as possible to complete any desired action. However, when human intervention is needed, fintechs offer this service, and often more seamlessly than the banks because they focus on providing the best possible customer experience.

      But to return to 2008, financial services in this era still relied on physical locations to deliver products and services to their customers. Branch tellers and their cordoned-off lines were a familiar sight for millions of consumers every day. But bank branches were expensive to maintain, from rent to cleaning to utilities to supplies to employee salaries, and more. To offset these costs, banks had to make revenue elsewhere, like any other business, or think of a way to reduce those costs drastically. The end result of this necessary cost of doing business negatively impacted the customer. Banks retreated from certain products to focus on others, and fintech entered the breach.

      Customer needs have changed, and the customer base has grown younger and more diverse. New products and services are required to meet the new customers’ needs. Consider how radically other industries have changed over recent decades. It is happening in banking too, but up until now banking has lagged behind the rest of the economy.

      The financial crisis of 2008 resulted from a cascade of causes within the banking industry and in society at large. Loose regulations led to irresponsible lending and borrowing, particularly in the mortgage sector, and then losses from failed loans led to catastrophe for consumers and financial institutions alike. Ivy League graduates formerly flocked to the large investment banks and the secure life they promised, but in 2008 this changed forever. The five largest investment banks at that time were Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers. All five were severely compromised by toxic assets (mortgages in default) that were worse than worthless—they were negative equity.