Listen to episode 10
Welcome back to our final episode of series one of Under The Hood from 11:FS and Synapse. In this series, we’re diving deep to uncover the banking infrastructure that is disrupting traditional banking models and shaking up the system to improve the financial lives of customers around the world.
This week we’re looking out to the future of banking and predicting what the fintech landscape will look like in the next 5-10 years. To explore this topic, the co-hosts, Simon Taylor, co-founder of 11:FS, and Sankaet Pathak, founder of Synapse are joined by guests Angela Strange, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz, and Anne Boden, CEO and Founder, Starling Bank.
The conversation starts off with both guests sharing their perspectives on the transformation of the banking landscape and where fintech has the potential to go. They expect more Internet companies to add fintech services because inherently it serves an existing need and it’s sticky with their customers. Sankaet shares his vision on scaling fintech to the size of Facebook or Google, naming the three big challenges as infrastructure and experience, identity, and customer service.
“Every company is going to be a fintech company and every bank is going to need fintech.”
- Angela Strange
They go on to discuss how banking may become invisible with financial services integrated into every walk of life. They discuss how different types of work could influence how and what banking services fit into modern careers. They spotlight examples of banking integrating with unlikely players like TikTok paying influencers with a debit card and gaming platforms like Fortnite paying tournament winners.
They continue with a discussion about the proliferation of smart apps that help customers solve problems like managing credit card debt by outsourcing it to decision-making software. They go on to talk about what it would take to have financial services software like this at scale, explaining that the goal would be to build a general purpose infrastructure that can accommodate end users from all over the world.
They review the importance of experimentation in fueling the BaaS model and its role in driving new and different businesses that address consumer segments that had previously been underserved. The session concludes with their visions of the market in 5-10 years.
