Appearing the second episode of Baker & McKenzie’s the future of fintech video series titled ‘Incumbents and fintech’, Mr Gilligan said the Australian banks “respond very well to fintech”.
“We’ve got a very progressive market as far as incumbents go here,” he said.
Mr Gilligan – whose venture capital fund is backed by Westpac – said this means two things for Australian fintech start-ups.
First, they have to work “twice as hard” as in players in other countries to gain traction.
“Second, there is a unique opportunity in the Australian market to develop those collaborations between banks and fintech markets which in other markets are harder to accomplish.”
Meanwhile, Reinventure co-founder Simon Cant said the biggest changes in technology in the next five to 10 years will come from big clients of financial services firms.
“Whereas previously financial services companies might have been serving a very fragmented base of customers, they’re now facing these giant customers that they have to negotiate terms with,” Mr Cant said.
“For some of these, customers have tremendous market power, because they’ve essentially integrated financial services into what they do... think of Uber or Airbnb.
“For banks, it’s going to be a real challenge to ensure they don’t just become a utility in that exercise,” Mr Cant said.
Watch the full video on the incumbents and fintech here.
