To Succeed You Need to Specialise, says Eyal Nachum of Bruc Bond
Over of late, fintech is different the landscape of banking and payments. Bruc Bond Board Member Eyal Nachum thinks more change is necessary as the industry matures.
From London to Singapore, NBFIs Have Changed the Game From London to Warsaw, from Vilnius to Singapore, non-traditional financial institutions have firmly established their presence in the major cities worldwide.
In Europe, non-bank banking institutions (NBFIs) are offering to you services with a growing cadre of corporate clients and retail consumers. Britain, for example, can boast of a wide range of consumer banking apps, while Lithuania plays host to some large number of business-oriented NBFIs. In Asia, the shift is much more pronounced. In several jurisdictions, digital conglomerates are dominating the sector.
Tencent and Ant Financial in China provide a holistic consumer experience that incorporates payments and finance seamlessly. Singapore, too, is charging ahead with intends to welcome fully digital banks in to the market.
Today’s payments and consumer services represent a stark switch the signal from the reality of just a few years ago. Consumers have opportunities that seemed unimaginable several decades ago. The speed of transacting has increased beyond recognition, as did the amount of transactions processed, like available services have grown innumerably, and the that’s talk about the newfound convenience many of us have grown used to so quickly. Seemingly, important things have never been better, but if we were to check beyond the headlines, it could become apparent that everything is not so rosy for those involved.
For one, both banking as well as the NBFI sector are susceptible to consolidation. The banking industry has become residing in circumstances of forced shrinkage for above a decade, with the years considering that the financial crash only serving to accelerate the method.
Europe’s banking industry has shrunk dramatically in recent times, with massive reductions in numbers of employees, branches, and banks themselves. Many are actually forced to shutter their doors, but many more are already acquired or merged with other people. The end result is the development of an oligopolistic banking market where smaller players fight to survive.
The evolution of the non-traditional sector is following a similar if distinct path. That should not surprise anyone, as the technological nature of these ventures leads to centralisation and consolidation. These tech-driven companies, in simple terms, provide almost indistinguishable services while competing for a similar slice of business. They flourish on scale and data, and flounder with no backing of tangible assets. A market can sustain only so much from the same thing, along with the capacity for low-margin, high-volume financial transacting may be reached too soon.
Find Growth Through Specialisation, says Eyal Nachum
If you need to avoid joining an overcrowded field is to find a niche and serve it exceptionally well, says Eyal Nachum. This was a guiding principle when Bruc Bond was getting started, and it has served the organization tremendously. There is little time trying for everyone everyone in the same way that else does it. Chances are, you’ll not manage to stand out. If you fail to make an impression, you do not gain traction, your growth are affected, at best your small business will be relegated towards the ranks of also-rans. Trying to please many people are a futile game, so don’t play it. Instead, specialise.
Rather than serving up just one more mobile banking app, look for a niche which is suffering from poor service. For example, an immigrant community that struggles for services in the host country’s language can be an ideal target for the hyper-focused app in their own personal language. If you don’t need to limit yourself to one country, serve migrant workers all across a continent. These transitory workers have unique needs and challenges which are unanswered by the current crop of banking an NBFI services. The margins on their own transacting will be small, but if you were the only one to serve that market, the gains may be huge.
Perhaps your passion is based on B2B (business-to-business). Well, then you definitely should know that many freelancers and sole proprietors likewise struggle to find services that match their requirements. These could form market for your taking. Small-to-medium businesses inside the import/export sectors have yet another set of struggles without solutions in traditional banking, perhaps they can become your cash cow, in case you serve them well.
Whichever path you are taking, says Eyal Nachum, remember that doing another thing superbly well is many leagues superior to doing everything just ok. As the old saying goes, a jack coming from all trades will be the master of none. So it is for banking; a bank for many fields really serves no person.