Margins in Digital Banking

1.) If a FinTech wants a competitive advantage (compared to a „classical“ bricks and mortor bank) it has to be more efficient and more automated.

2.) If you want to be 100% (or close to that) automated your variety of products and services will be limited.
E.g. today you cannot serve all exchanges or investment products (e.g. bonds) fully automated. This is one (but not the only) reason for a lot of manual work in „classic“ banks.
With new technologies (e.g. blockchain or standard APIs) and further standardisation the opportunities for product and service automation will increase but they will be accessible to all participants.

3.) A radically different product/service offering is hard to achieve, and if you have one, there will be many who want to copy you.

4.) As a result, the offers from FinTechs in the same service will be interchangeable or are already very similar.
E.g. compare Wealthfront, Betterment, FutureAdvisor etc. in the Robo-Investement-Advisor area.

5.) The differentiator will then be mainly pricing and yes of course also user interface, algorithms, marketing and the like…

In conclusion, margins will fall and banking (especially digital banking) will become a less lucrative business, profitable only for a few big players (economies of scale).

DE