Impact of FinTechs on the Banking Sector. Competitor or Partner for Traditional Banks?

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Essen, language: English, abstract: This paper will analyse, if traditional banks deal with the continuous digitization and new technology-based competitors, especially FinTechs, as a threat or rather as a chance for their own business model. Is it more likely that banks and FinTechs will link up as partners to benefit from mutual competitive advantages, or will it degenerate into a battle for power and market share? Furthermore, why is it that small start-ups can present such a threat to established banks that have been operating for years? Innovative start-ups revolutionized several business sectors. There was Napster for the music industry, Uber for the taxi industry, and there are FinTechs for the financial sector. FinTech is an abbreviation for Financial Technology. The designation itself already gives an idea of what their business idea looks like. Intelligent technologies and the continuously expanding digitization across all business sectors expands the customers' needs and demands towards banks. They want to take care of banking business as easily and convenient as they order goods via Amazon, ask Google for the way or stream music and movies online via Spotify or Netflix. FinTech has recognized that change in customer behaviour and started to build their business models based on these findings. Those new innovative market entrants are present in every part of the value chain of a traditional bank, offering alternative financial products and services on a purely online basis. Traditional banks are, therefore, facing significant challenges and risks that are endangering their competitiveness.