Fintech & the banking industry: disruption or evolution?

• Autor(a) principal: El Chihimi, Karine Athayde
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/23915
• topic: Banking industry; Technologies; Innovation; Fintechs; Spain; Banco; Tecnologias; Inovação; Espanha; Evolução; Ciência política; Empresas novas; Bancos - Espanha; Indústria de serviços financeiros - Inovações tecnológicas; Tecnologia da informação; Inovação disruptiva

This master dissertation aimed to understand the rise of the fintechs in the banking industry under an academic basis with a special focus on the Spanish market. The intention was to discuss if fintechs play a disruptive force or if they are driving the industry evolution. Even though the linkage of fintechs and the banking industry has a long history, dating back to 1886, they emerged strongly since the financial crisis of 2008. After this turning point, many start-ups pop up, launching value propositions that combined technology and innovation (Arner, Barberis & Buckley, 2015). In this sense, to address the problem in hand, five theories were applied to assist in the understanding of the current situation of the banking sector. The objective was to find an academic explanation for the phenomenon of fintechs and their impact on the industry. Each one of these theories generated a proposition assessed by an exploratory qualitative research carried out for the purpose of this master dissertation. Therefore, primary and secondary data were collected. The primary data was gathered blending distinct research methods such as personal interview, semi-structured interviews and online survey and questionnaire. Hence, a triangulation process was adopted in order to obtain multiple insights from the stakeholders involved: customers, fintechs and banking professionals. According to the definition of disruption provided by the theory of disruptive innovation (Christensen) and the concept of evolution provided by the literature of industry evolution (Klepper), the findings suggest that fintechs are not disruptors. They seem to be driving the evolution of the banking industry, institutionalizing new manners of doing business, due to their combination of two powerful forces capable of altering the dynamics of an industry and regenerate their lifecycles: innovation and technology.