What bankers still need to learn from their fintech competitors
Consumers have been voting with their feet — literally by the millions — in favor of innovative fintechs. And yet, there's no reason traditional banks can't deliver the same experiences that fintechs do. It's just that more than a decade into the fintech revolution, most bankers have yet to learn the important lessons that these highly effective competitors have been teaching the industry by example every day.
A decade ago, when I began working in the fintech sector, I realized that there was a significant disconnect between the way people in the banking industry think about products and the way consumers use those products.
As an early project in my startup, I recruited people from Craigslist to come talk to me about money. I found consumers were generally clear about what they wanted, even if they didn’t refer to something by the same name that the industry does.
This disconnect still persists today. It continues to thwart many traditional banks in their efforts to relate to customers. It also hinders the ability of banks to compete with fintechs that are much better at rising to the challenge.
But the problem can be fixed.
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