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The lines between financial services (FS) and technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) firms have blurred to the point that the roads are a free-for-all and previously distinct sectors are colliding. Many TMT companies are applying for FS licences, and FS organisations have begun calling themselves technology companies. Fintech, or financial technology, is at the epicentre of this transformation. The FS and TMT industries are both using it to sharpen operational efficiency, lower costs, improve customer experience and heighten the appeal of their products and services. They’re also carving out new commercial possibilities. Digital-only banks are offering redesigned client propositions and cost profiles. Investment managers are deploying fully customised robo-advice. Insurers are using sensors to monitor people’s health and help prevent illness. And according to a recent PwC survey, consumers are ready for the digital shake-up. The question is no longer whether fintech will transform FS, but which firms will apply it best and emerge as leaders.  In this year’s Global Fintech Survey, we polled more than 500 FS and TMT executives worldwide and analysed their responses. We think the winning companies will be those that not only embrace fintech-driven business models but figure out how to navigate wider and more crowded lanes with approaches that make the most of FS and TMT’s combined strengths. This report will explore the current fintech landscape, the factors that will determine the likely winners and losers in coming years, and the steps that organisations can take to put themselves in the best position to lead. 

A prime example of a digitally savvy WiT cohort member is Bismart Insurance, a web insurance aggregator based in Kenya. Channelling a solution-oriented shift to digital, Bismart Insurance was set up to address and resolve key pain points customers faced when purchasing insurance, including a lack of disclosure of essential information and the absence of a consolidated platform for insurance products. Coupled with its participation in the first WiT Kenya cohort and vision to expand into the digital insurance market, Bismart Insurance efficiently scaled its operations and saw over 100 purchasers by the end of 2017.

“Abacus fulfills two requirements that help us make our expense reporting more efficient - a simple interface that helps our employees submit accurate expenses in real time, and powerful rule-based automation that we can customize to our policy so expenses are auto-approved or sent to the best person to review and approve.”Daniel Niccum, CFO, North American Substation Services

Thndr’s first product is a mobile-first equities trading platform in Egypt. The startup has just acquired the necessary licensing from the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA), making it the first company to acquire a brokerage license in Egypt since 2008. 

Egyptian fintech startup Thndr, a participant in the most recent Y Combinator accelerator, is gearing up for its formal launch after receiving the first new brokerage license granted in the country in over a decade.

Mobile money, a technology-driven innovation in financial services, has profoundly penetrated the financial landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa, including banks. Yet, besides anecdotal evidence, little is known about whether mobile money adoption enhances or worsens bank performance. Combining hand-collected data with balance sheet data from Bankscope for a panel of 170 financial institutions over the period 2009-2015, we find a strong positive and significant relationship between the time elapsed since banks’ adoption of mobile money and their performance considering an array of proxies of bank profitability, efficiency and stability. In further investigations, we show how bank specialization and size alter such an association. Our results are robust to using instrumental variables, controlling for bank and macro level confounding factors, bank fixed effects and considering alternative measures of bank performance and mobile money adoption. Furthermore, we show that enhanced income diversification and broadened access to deposits are possible channels through which banks involved in mobile money improve their performance. Overall, our findings highlight the bright side of cooperation between banks and mobile network operators in the provision of mobile money.

SimbaPay is an award winning mobile app transforming the international remittance space. With a focus on extreme speed, convenience and constant innovation. Customers are able to send money to loved ones or even merchants, from wherever they are at any time of day or night. The company is headquartered in London and can be found online at www.SimbaPay.com SimbaPay is licensed and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

SimbaPay is an award winning mobile app transforming the international remittance space. With a focus on extreme speed, convenience and constant innovation.

APIs are the core of every digital strategy Digital transformation has made it possible to scale up things that used to be difficult to expand. Partnering, integrating, or reselling used to require hard work by everyone involved. As a result of digital transformation, an increasing share of business processes is digital so these things can be done far more quickly and more efficiently. 

The Smartel Money customers and services include retail banking, individuals, insurance agents, retail grocery, retail clothing, retail cell phone services and utility services among others. These include checkout services such as the Smartel Money Point of sales system (sPOS); the Smartel Money Mobile point of sales systems (smPOS). These systems have access to the Smartel Money central engine for processing payments. “Businesses owners can finally give true convenience to customers by using My Wallet as a contactless payment option. They can also take advantage of our free business tools which include, point of sale, human resource management, and customer relationship management,” Mr Nchai said.

M-Pesa is a branchless banking service; M-Pesa customers can deposit and withdraw money from a network of agents that includes airtime resellers and retail outlets acting as banking agents.

We are starting with Egyptian equities, but we intend to quickly introduce alternative investment options to suit different risk/reward and involvement preferences

Thndr, an Egypt based startup, is now poised to formally launch operation after securing the first new brokerage license granted in the country in over a decade. The startup closed its pre-seed round last December, with investors including Y-Combinator, 4DX Ventures, Endure Capital, The Raba Partnership, and MSA Capital. The startup has just acquired the necessary licensing from the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA), making it the first company to acquire a brokerage license in Egypt since 2008.

STARTUP WATCH- Fawry is officially Egypt’s first unicorn: EGX-listed e-payments firm Fawry became the first Egyptian tech company to hit a market cap of USD 1 bn on Monday after its share price reached intraday highs of EGP 22.69, former managing director Mohamed Okasha announced in a LinkedIn post. Fawry’s share price has increased by more than 300% since it debuted on the EGX last year, a rise that has accelerated in recent months as the use of its payment services skyrocketed during the lockdown.

Regtech is the management of regulatory processes within the financial industry through technology. The main functions of regtech include regulatory monitoring, reporting, and compliance. Regtech, or RegTech, consists of a group of companies that use cloud computing technology through software-as-a-service (SaaS) to help businesses comply with regulations efficiently and less expensively. Regtech is also known as regulatory technology. Financial institutions and regulators both use Regtech to deal with complicated compliance processes.

Distributed-ledger technology (DLT) enables safer, faster and cheaper transactions in an ever-increasing number of sectors. The Commission considers DLT as a breakthrough technology that is key for the EU's competitiveness.

Because robo advisors are meant to be more cost-effective, they work to cover less various target client segment. Even if your investment is under $1,000, the machine analyzes all the opportunities on the market, develops reports and provides the most efficient and profitable way to grow your ROI.

Founded in late 2016 by Ahmed Wadi, MoneyFellows has digitized the concept of money circles (ROSCAs) which are commonly known as gam’eya in Egypt and other Arab countries, through its online platform.

Egypt's MoneyFellows raises $4 million Series A to expand its digital money circles platform to Africa

MoneyFellows with its mobile-based platform has digitized this entire process with a scoring model that compliments offline model, making it more scalable, safe, and efficient. In a statement, the Egyptian fintech said that it currently has over 150,000 active users that are verified by a user assessment algorithm. It also works with different corporates in Egypt, enabling their employees to participate in the money circles for saving money. 

With steady growth in our user base, we have been working hard over the past year in order to optimize and perfect our product and are now ready to begin our scaling journey. We will dedicate the money from this bridge round to raise greater awareness for MoneyFellows, in order to allow a much greater number of users to access our application and meet their saving and financial needs

MoneyFellows with its group pooling platform for credit and savings is digitizing the entire process of money circles with a scoring model that compliments current offline model, making it more scalable, safe and efficient.

The FinTech revolution captures the simultaneous attack of a large number of technologies, notably mobile telephones and blockchain, which are ushering in efficiency or outreach to multiple niche markets. The use of mobile telephone technology has expanded Internet reach to the excluded, created possibilities for business where banks were not historically present and is potentially disruptive.

As Financial Services organizations think through their FinTech and Cloud Strategy, while there’s clear momentum across industries, and in Financial Services itself, there are still security and efficiency challenges that need to be addressed.

Cloud wastage remains a pain point that can be addressed by going serverless and a solid approach to security needs to be central to the strategy. According to McAfee, 1,004 distinct cloud services being used by the average financial services firm, a 32.1% YOY growth – based on a survey of 3.7M finance employees over 14,000 cloud services. What’s more, according to MarketsandMarkets, the predicted size of the Finance Cloud Market is expected to reach $29.47B by 2021, which represents a 24.4% CAGR.

"Not only are you empowering people who are living in poverty to make meaningful choices for basic human rights, you are also helping children to understand their responsibility to give back to the global community and appreciate the quality of life they enjoy."