Which FinTech Future Should We Bank On?

[Sponsored article] It seems clear FinTech will continue to drive radical change in the market for banking services. But one unanswered question is: will the application of these advances in digital technology open up a myriad of new opportunities for the established giants, or will it fundamentally disrupt the business model that has made traditional banks so profitable in the past?

Two men who see fundamentally different futures for the banking sector are Mr Benjamin Hung, Standard Chartered’s CEO for Greater China and North Asia, and member of the HKUST Business School Advisory Council - and someone with decades of experience in the industry - Mr Paul Schulte, founder of Schulte Research and author of The Advent of Financial Technology.

The power of game-changing technology

“The genesis of what’s happening today lies in the ideas that were around in the 1980s and 90s, when the technology just wasn’t present to realize them,” says Mr Schulte. “Now, the things you can do are breathtaking - and what is huge for entrepreneurs is that, today, you can do phenomenally more with phenomenally less.”

He cites the smartphone as the big game-changing technology. With the collapse in the price of technology over the last decade, there are now billions of smartphones in the world and sensor technology is becoming ubiquitous.

“So the things we can count are virtually infinite and the data we have is virtually infinite,” Mr Schulte suggests. “Some of the new possibilities in the world of finance include: a new way to do credit ratings; a new way to allocate capital; new replacements for commercial banks; new forms of currency; a new way to regulate publicly-listed companies; and, a new way to measure sentiment.”