Financial Times: Big banks on notice as tech groups ramp up pressure

01 April 2018

Technology companies are set to take a big chunk of customers from banks, as they intensify their challenge to traditional lenders across a range of mass-market financial services, say industry executives and analysts.

Carlo Messina, chief executive of Intesa Sanpaolo, has said that Italy’s biggest bank by market capitalisation expects to lose market share to digitally focused rivals in many mainstream areas such as payments.

“It is clear that there could be a threat and in our plan we have already embedded a portion of revenues coming from payments that can be reduced.” But he added that most older, wealthy Italian clients would be reluctant to entrust their money to tech groups — prompting it to focus on areas such as insurance and asset management.

The comments by Mr Messina are backed up by new research predicting that North American banks could lose more than a third of revenues from traditional savings, lending and investment activities to tech-based rivals — including those backed by the banks themselves.

The banking market in the US and Canada will be more profoundly disrupted than elsewhere in the world by the new entrants and emerging technologies, according to Citigroup’s ‘Bank of the Future’ report.

Banks in Europe are being challenged by intensifying competition from tech-savvy rivals, spurred by new “open banking” regulation forcing lenders to give them access to the accounts of clients who authorise it.

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