Top-heavy bank sector holds back FinTech potential

A top-heavy banking ecosystem coupled with an under resourced regulatory regime is holding back Australia’s FinTech progress, according to industry leaders.

The panellists were participating in a session of the Newfound Australia FinTech Market Mission event dealing with the lessons learned by FinTechs in the Australian market.Australia’s financial layout differs with most other countries in that we have a huge mass of banking activity concentrated in our Big Four banks.

Panellist Damir Cuca, founder and chief executive at Basiq an aggregation platform for acquiring financial data believes the Australian banking structure can make it tricky for FinTechs to move as quickly as they would like.

“It would take an average FinTech a single day to integrate into our API platform. With a bank it’s a nine-month pilot, plus another six months before they get to production and many, many meetings along the way.”

However, those long lead times have advantages. “The advantage is that you become a lot more enterprise ready sooner and your platform evolves a lot sooner as well,” said Mr Cuca.

Our top-heavy banking ecosystem does put a drag on financial innovation said panellist Lynda Coker, Commercial Director of Volt Bank, the first Australian consumer neobank, to be issued with a restricted ADI licence by APRA.

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Source: Top-heavy bank sector holds back FinTech potential – InnovationAus