Will Hurst, Head of Commercial Development at Monevo, part of Quint Group, summarises some of the commercial developments in the FinTech space for 2019 and looks forward to 2020. Here are Hurst’s predictions for themes likely to come up next year:

1 – Partnerships!

We´ve seen an explosion of partnerships across the sector in 2019; neobanks and personal finance have spearheaded the rise in marketplace banking offerings.

2019 has seen Monevo partner with Confused, Plum, Yolt and Monese. We have a host of other very exciting partnerships set for 2020 and beyond that we can’t wait to announce.

Big tech partnerships in the PCW space this year have seen CYBG and Go Compare partner for energy switch and Confused.com integrate Monevo to provide more lenders to their panel.

Where the ever-growing and ever-popular challenger banks lead, the incumbents will soon follow. I fully expect the old guard to adopt this approach to give opportunity to provide more positive interactions through products they don’t provide and in terms of credit decisioning, looking to others to provide alternative yes outcomes, helping customers access products that the banks can help oversee. This is my big prediction for 2020.

2 – Open Banking

We’re still very much at the start of the Open Banking revolution PSD2 has kicked off. The pace of change in all areas of banking FinTech will continue to revolutionise customer experience and products.

As credit providers get their head around the vast volumes of data available on their potential and current customers, intelligent product builds will help lenders filter the data into what is useful to them and discard what’s not behind the scenes.

Here at Monevo, we will soon be adopting an Open Banking partner to streamline customer experience.

3 – RegTech

It’s hard to think of an industry that has seen as much technological change in the last five to 10 years and it’s even harder to think of a more regulated industry. How Risk, Compliance and Legal handle the pace of change is inevitably through tech.

Expect to see VC cash pile into this sector and great new solutions and products continuing to appear throughout the banking and finance industry, helping streamline process behind the scenes from consumer facing products.

4 – New Libra cryptocurrency to arrive

Apple card is here, Facebook’s new Libra cryptocurrency arrives next year. Expect more big names to dip their toe into the FinTech waters as they look to expand their product spectrum (and also squeeze more commercial value out of their current customer base).

FinTech is such an attractive prospect, the returns in the space as well as the pioneering technology, it’s only a matter of time before we see familiar names in the space.

5 – Neobanks

Nothing new here, they’ve featured on every prediction list for the last five years….

Starling hit 1mn customers last week and Revolut has more than 8mn. Everybody loves the neobanks (except the incumbents, of course), with the bottom lines improving, they’re all sure-fire bets to all be here for the long term, fending off predictions from many a quarter.

With N26 and Monese growing at pace and the old boys of the sector pushing out their own brands, such as RBS’s Bó, the charge will continue.

Expectations here are for each to diversify further their credit offerings, providing more products and services for customers, primarily themselves but also through the aforementioned partnership route.

The big question for me is whether or not we’ll see any consolidation or acquisition, we’ve yet to…. roll on 2020!

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