Investment follows fashion in a sense. In the last few years venture capitalists have been pouring money into neobank startups thus creating a trend for other VCs to follow. However, John Detrixhe says,
“Questions are being raised about whether this fintech craze is another quixotic quest for market share that burns cash but doesn’t generate much profit in return.”
The most ambitious neobanks, namely N26 and Revolut, want, he suggests, to be the Amazon of finance, and they are proving to be very successful at picking up new customers. According to Accenture, digital-only banks operating in the U.K. could amass a total of 35 million customers globally within the next 12 months — up from 13 million today — based on current growth rates. The report also says, “Digital-only banks are also reaping the rewards of improving the customer experience as they gain an average Net Promoter Score of 62 compared to just 19 for traditional banks.”
Naturally, they are having to face the incumbent banks, which can’t offer the same service. But, we should be wary. As Detrixhe says, if you look at Uber and WeWork, for example, “these have shown that rapid growth and high valuations are far from a sure sign of success.” Furthermore, it is impossible to say if customers will continue to use them as niche providers of peer-to-peer payments or travel spending or fully embrace them as a one-stop-shop for financial services.
Some investors are now looking beyond the neobank buzz and are moving onto another fintech sector. For example, on hedge fund founder, Steve Cohen, thinks traditional banks won’t be disrupted by the unicorns. But, he does think the banks will have to learn some new tricks. He suggests “Older lenders need things like cloud-hosted software and systems that make it easier to sign up for a new account.”
And that is where the new investment opportunity lies; in software for digital account openings and machine learning systems to make recommendations to customers. It’s not quite as sexy as investing in a startup neobank, but these software startups could help traditional banks leap into the 21st century, and in that respect they could serve as neobank killers.