Monevo, the market leading personal credit platform & API, has released an independent report on UK Banks and Fintechs setting out the business case for developing closer partnerships and defining exactly how customers are set to benefit.

Entitled ‘The Banks and the Fintech: Creating Better Banking Together’, the new report is the culmination of in-depth interviews with a range of finance industry leaders, including brands such as Monese, Zopa and Shawbrook Bank. Their insight is coupled with references to recent research and case studies of ongoing successful partnerships between various Banks and Fintechs.

At the heart of the report is the theory that the combined strengths of Banks and Fintechs can offset their respective limitations - should the two industries develop partnerships built on healthy co-opetition.

The report, with a foreword from Fintech industry influencer Marcel Van Oost, presents a number of key findings, three of which are summarised below.

Fintechs are more digitally agile than Banks. For Banks to emulate Fintech operations, they would have to undertake large-scale, time-consuming, and costly digital transformations. By partnering with Fintechs, they would have immediate access to this technological capability without the investment.

Banks can achieve better customer understanding. As Fintechs function on platforms designed to integrate leading-edge AI and machine learning technology, they can complete sophisticated analyses of a Bank’s customer data on their behalf. This would allow Banks to responsively improve their customer offerings.

Partnerships would lead to better customer outcomes. Customers denied credit from their Banks are often forced to navigate the personal finance market on their own. With a suite of Fintechs at their disposal, Banks could instead introduce customers to those Fintechs they feel offer the best alternative solutions. This would mitigate the risk of customers committing to unfavourable deals and of Banks potentially losing customers to competitors.

Greg Cox, CEO of Monevo, says: “We feel this report is crucial because it’s the first of its kind to candidly interview experts within the lending space and to expose the multiple, substantive advantages of Banks and Fintech working together in a spirit of co-opetition.

“The timing of the report is also vital. Especially since the pandemic, customers are more digitally savvy, they want the ease, versatility, and functionality of Fintech but wrapped in a brand they can trust. By combining Fintech innovation with the captive audiences and trust levels that Banks possess, the personal finance market could undergo one of its most significant upgrades in decades. Our intention is that this report helps to drive more fruitful discussions that bring more customer-facing innovation to market.”

The full report can be found here.