The relationship between banks and fintech, which began distant and with crossed claims, gradually became a strategic link for both players.
The traditional bankers, either because they have them as customers or suppliers, promote their growth or are shareholders of them, knew how to leave behind their initial fear and today see them as a key ally to reach new markets.
From the point of view of fintech, the need to have a recognized brand and quality financial services that support the products they offer forces them to maintain a more fluid relationship with a conventional entity.
In the middle, the Central Bank played a decisive game, since it not only tried to unite the parties -with the creation of the Financial Innovation Table-, but also introduced changes in the regulations so that the traditional bank could enter into the fintech market.
Specifically, a decision of the board allowed traditional entities (which had limited participation in this new industry) to buy or create one from scratch, on the condition that they do so with their own funds, without compromising the deposits of the savers.
"The fintech needs the bank to join the system, to provide better services, access the transfer highway, among many other issues, while the bank also needs the fintech to generate more volume, new business alternatives, and to start developing a different model, "says Alejandro Cid, retail banking manager of Banco Comafi, in dialogue with iProUP.
"It is the most modern and collaborative vision of what competition and cooperation between banks and fintech means," he adds. The Comafi has different links with fintech, from having this type of company among its clients, to being the main shareholder of one of them: Nubi.
"You have to understand that the fintech may be taking business in segments that we do not come in. By giving service to these firms, the transactions go through the bank, which thus generates a larger scale of operations and volumes within itself, that otherwise would not have ", explains Cid.
For Sebastian Böttcher, general manager of Nubi, the fact of having the support of Comafi "allows them to access the rest of the financial system and think about being much broader in the range of services" that it offers to the clients. "A fintech that can not enter the financial system is more than lazy," he says.
Connection
One of the banks that tipped with this collaborative vision and that today is one of the most oiled its link with fintech is the Industrial Bank (BIND).
Among its clients, it has about 20 firms in this sector, which are provided by API Bank (abbreviation in English of Application Programming Interface), a key product so that they can develop their business successfully. Strictly speaking, it is an instrument that enables a company to connect to another network - in this case, the bank - but directly from its own system.
In the world, the one that dabbled with the APIs was the giant Amazon, to give shape to its virtual purchasing system. Today, the banks give it to these new companies to operate with the financial products offered by the entity but from its network.
In other words, if the client of a fintech asks for a loan, the request for accreditation (prior approval of the firm) goes directly to the bank's network. That is, without a person from that fintech having to act as an intermediary and debit the bank account with which it operates.
"Through the APIs, fintech have a way of interacting with the bank that is very efficient from the point of view of operating costs and, at the same time, enables them to provide a much more powerful experience to their users," he says. in dialogue with iProUP José González Pereira, responsible for electronic channels of Banco Industrial.
He adds that, for example, an automatic disbursement can be made any day of the year, at any time, without the need of having a backoffice that handles those operations.
"If a fintech that gives loans had to have a backoffice for the disbursement transfers, that - in and of itself - would mean a very important barrier of entry, the volume of loans that it would have to gather to give them the business, in terms In addition, it would imply an obstacle for many firms that today want to enter with their own capital, "says González Pereira.
A product like the API is crucial for the development and growth of a fintech. In Europe, at the end of 2017, the European Central Bank issued the PSD2 directive, for which it obliged banks to offer this service to customers, including fintech. In the country, for now, the BCRA did not go that far: it seeks to encourage it, but without forcing anyone.
The BIND, in addition to offering this product that also have others such as ICBC or Galicia, joined seven other entities to be shareholders of Arfintech, a fund that was born in 2017 and invests in fintech companies.
The former Banco Privado banker and founder of Moni, Alejandro Estrada, and Andrés Meta, one of the shareholders of Banco Industrial, are the mentors of this fund, which also includes the Macro, the Services and Transactions Bank (BST). , Banco de Valores, Supervielle, Banco de San Juan, Piano and Columbia.
In addition to these entities, the fund includes the firm Fiducia (fiduciary of the Macro), Industrial Valores (brokerage of the BIND), the accelerator of startups Nxtp.Labs and the firm Ernst & Young.
Start
To a large extent, the idea of ââthe banks to enter the Fintech business arose one morning in April 2017, when the then president of the BCRA, Federico Sturzenneger, and a large part of his team went to breakfast at ADEBA headquarters, the camera that groups the private banks of national capital.
There, after the bankers' demand for the monetary agency to regulate what was just emerging as a competition, the former head of the BCRA first told them that he would not, because those companies do not take deposits, and then shot: "If they believe that fintech have competitive advantages over you, build your own fintech and go to market. "
That idea was reverberating in the head of Jorge Brito Jr., who at that time was the president of ADEBA, and then concretized it by joining the initiative that his friend, Meta, devised with Estrada. Months later, the Central launched the regulation so that banks can be shareholders of a fintech. By then, Brito had already tempted more colleagues to join that project.
This is perhaps the most direct link of the banks with the fintech since, indirectly, they have their own financial technology. Today, the fund invests in eight companies, which with their "techno" profile operate in different branches of the financial ecosystem.
Open the game
Banco Itaú has among its clients and suppliers companies of this type, although in Argentina it is not a shareholder of any fintech.
"We are constantly innovating, accompanying the trend and launching products that allow us to interact collaboratively with the entire financial sector," affirms iPrOP Fredericka Summers, manager of Digital Bank and Transformation at Banco Itaú.
According to the bank's vision, the link with the fintech is an opportunity for evolution and therefore has an active role in the Financial Innovation Tables that the BCRA carries out, in which they seek to evolve the current regulations and technologies.
"At Itaú we consider that the ecosystem formed by banks and fintech is a space in which we sometimes compete and others complement each other to give new user experiences," says Summers.
In 2015 he created "Cubo Itaú", the largest center for technological entrepreneurship in Latin America, from where they provide support to these new entities.
"Cubo Itaú is a market radar that puts the focus on startups in all segments and not only fintech, we understand the progress of these firms as an opportunity to build alliances and improve the services offered to customers," he adds.
Another one that also promotes the growth of the fintech is the BBVA, which aims to "make available to all the opportunities of this new era," as explained by the entity.
"The collaboration with Fintech is one of the fundamental pillars of its digital transformation strategy, in this context, the BBVA Open Innovation unit plays a key role in the transition towards a truly global and digital business," sources from the entity say. to iProUP.
In fact, through this program they promote different initiatives to strengthen their collaboration strategy with the external innovation ecosystem. One of them is the classic BBVA Open Talent, the largest fintech competition in the world: in its 10 editions, startups from more than 90 countries participated, including Argentina.
In this framework, they also organize Open Talks Buenos Aires, an event in which they bring together representatives of the Fintech world and the financial sector to discuss and share the new market trends. At the end of May, it will open the registrations for the BBVA Open Talent 2019.
Thus, each bank in its own way, most began to see in the fintech a partner to gain market and not unfair competition, as they initially feared.
In addition, this new link generates a change in their day to day, to be able to interact with more aggiornated work methodologies. "They are firms that have the technological DNA, which gives us a lot to the banks, with such traditional structures," explains one banker.
"The sector has been convinced that the road is this, thinking has been changing and renewing, and there is less and less left in the industry for those who believe that the game must be blocked or not," says Cid, from Comafi.
From the BIND agree to see the potential of this new link. "Our vision is more of openness, collaboration and competition at the same time, in some things we compete and in others we collaborate, in short, we will win the one that gives the best experience to the user, they will not collide banks with fintech in all the niches", reasons González Pereira.
Meanwhile, the Comafi executive acknowledges: "It's good that we come to shake a little market and prepare us all better."
In short, he concludes, will result in good service to people and better prices. As well as the initial relationship, with a commercial war to catch new customers benefited users of financial services, in this synergy the public ends up being the real winner.
