IN THE years since the crash of 2007-08, policymakers have concentrated on making finance safer. Regulators have stuffed the banks with capital and turned compliance from a back-office job into a corner-office one. Away from the regulatory spotlight, another revolution is under way—one that promises not just to make finance more secure for taxpayers, but also better for another neglected constituency: its customers.
The magical combination of geeks in T-shirts and venture capital that has disrupted other industries has put financial services in its sights. From payments to wealth management, from peer-to-peer lending to crowdfunding, a new generation of startups is taking aim at the heart of the industry—and a pot of revenues that Goldman Sachs estimates is worth $4.7 trillion. Like other disrupters from Silicon Valley, “fintech” firms are growing fast. They attracted $12 billion of investment in 2014, up from $4 billion the year before. Many of these businesses are long past the experimental phase, as our special report this week explains. Lending Club and OnDeck, two new lenders, have gone public; users of Venmo, a payments app,...
from The Economist: Leaders http://ift.tt/1KlS9SD
No comments:
Post a Comment