Banks must face up to fintech – fast

Tech competitors are set to gobble up a bigger slice of their markets than banks realise, says Mattthew Lynn.

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Banks suffer huge legacy costs: branches are expensive to run

Everybody relax. The banks will not be blown away in a technological whirlwind. The venture capital money being poured into financial start-ups will be wasted, and the UK's peer-to-peer lenders and app-based banks will never take more than a tiny slice of the banks' business. Consultancy Deloitte reckons that, even in the most optimistic scenario, "fintech" companies are unlikely to have more than 6% of the market by 2025.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.