The year 2008 was the dawn of a major evolutionary change in the financial technology industry. This was brought on by the collapse of an unsustainable banking system that took too many risks in its quest for profits. Lehman Brothers were bankrupted, swiftly followed by emergency rescue plans to save major high street names such as HBOS, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Royal Bank of Scotland and Alliance & Leicester.
This crisis opened up the opportunity to do things differently. Previously financial technology had been an in-house enterprise for the banks. The introduction of credit cards in the 1950’s, ATM’s in the 1960’s and electronic stock trading in the 1970’s were all driven internally by major players in the banking industry.
The failure in the banking system gave rise to a whole host of financial technology upstarts. Innovative new companies that wanted to see change and most importantly remove traditional barriers that the banking system had built. This rise in financial technology was quickly labelled as fintech.
Fintech covers a vast spectrum of innovation. Digital wallets, peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding, micro-loans, insurance and infrastructure are just a few areas where people are seeing room for innovation and disruption to traditional methods.
This rapid growth has created a booming financial technology industry. Due to the multitude of companies that fall under the umbrella of fintech it is hard to put an exact figure on the global value of this industry. Thankfully KPMG produce a quarterly report called ‘The Pulse of Fintech’. This provides a global analysis of the latest investments in the fintech industry. Their most recent report states that global investment in fintech companies reached a whopping $24.7 billion in 2016, spread across 1076 deals.
On Techbullion, we publish daily articles and analysis that will help keep you informed about the latest trends in the financial technology industry.
We also invite fintech industry experts to join hands with us, if you have news, articles, fintech insights and industry analysis, success stories and new startups to share with us, please contact us.
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