The impact of Fintech in the financial sector

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand Fintech and its impact on the financial services sector. The planet has experienced a dramatic shift in our daily lives because of technological advances. Each of us has been impacted or affected by the new technologies in a broad number of ways (Stever and Muroyama, 1998). The financial services sector is no different, and that is the reason why over the last decade, has attested changes both in regulation and in the manner in which conventional financial services communicate with customers (BBVA, 2019c). Part of this reform derives from the developments in financial technology, or from-as we call them now- Fintech (Zigurat, 2019). After the last financial crisis, many customers have ceased relying on traditional financial institutions to benefit from the advantages offered by these startups and financial institutions based on technological solutions (Contri et al., 2017). FinTech is now revolutionizing the market as hundreds of young start-ups are developing new creative financial products and services for consumers (Dietz et al., 2016). These new entrants challenge the conventional model or structure for financial services (Dietz et al., 2016). The study is to dig deeper into the financial services sector and to provide a better perspective into where the industry is today and where it will be in the future. At the beginning of the thesis, the author would review academic books, newspaper articles and corporate business papers provided by industry experts. The decision of not doing interviews relies on the fact that the opinions that were interesting for the thesis were from professionals working in both the financial and the fintech industry, and it was difficult to reach them. The conclusion of the impact fintech are having in the financial world, that will be better explained later, is that they have appeared as a powerful tool that provides advantages for both Fintech and clients, reduce costs, and increase operation’s speed, but that at the same time needs a lot of development till we can see the true improvements they bring (De La Torre, Torralba and Rivera, 2018)