The changing financial services landscape: from competition over partnerships to digital ecosystems

Abstract

Digital transformation and technological innovation are reshaping the financial services sector. Today the sector is confronted with both large, established tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook and small fintech startups that are moving into the financial services space. From a sector perspective, it is clear that a lot of the innovations focus on disintermediating the incumbent organizations. There is a clear move toward more decentralization and peer-to-peer (P2P) collaboration. Blockchain technology enables value transfers through a decentralized, P2P consensus process. International money transfers are drastically improved using P2P operating models, new P2P insurance solutions are created, and both lending and capital raising now take place on P2P platforms.