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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
FinTechs have been on the forefront of the financial services industry’s reshape.
There is a sound potential impact of such technologies worldwide, and more
specifically among the 1.7 billion adults who constitute the unbanked, who lack
affordable, useful and sustainable access to financial services and products.
Financial inclusion has been on key players’ agendas for the past few years,
considered to be key in reducing poverty and boosting prosperity worldwide.
While financial institutions have long enjoyed a centrality in customers’ financial
lives, and FinTechs threaten it by replacing parts of their value chains with
innovative solutions, this competitive mindset becomes a cooperative one when
developing economies are the target, where accessing unbanked populations
requires the cooperation between both players, in order to reach a profitable and
effective solution that brings together the know-how and trust afforded by banks
and the innovative skills brought by FinTechs.
In this work, we have analyzed how partnerships have been made possible and
what constitute their challenges, as despite allowing to overcome several
constraints that impeded the unbanked to be served, finding the right partner,
efficiently working together and effectively scaling innovation, is not always
straightforward.
Many services provided by partnerships have not yet been through a complete
financial cycle, and their benefits to financial inclusion take time to flourish. But
one can already conclude that if both players are able to partner successfully,
overcoming culture, working methods and ambition’s differences, financial
inclusion will continue to be targeted and one day, hopefully, fully addressed.