In the wake of the Banking Royal Commission, will FinTech startups capture market share from the brands that are on the nose with customers? And will these upstarts manage to attract the necessary funding to challenge the deep pockets and huge balance sheets of the incumbents? This was the underlying theme of a recent panel discussion hosted by Next Money Melbourne.

The panel comprised:

Nick Baker from NAB Ventures, typically investing $1m-$5m in Seed to Series C rounds, self-styled strategic investor with a particular focus on RegTech, Data and Data Security, and AI/Deep Learning

Ben Hensman from Square Peg Capital, writing cheques of $1.5m-$15m into Series A onwards, more of a financial investor, mainly in businesses starting to scale. Sees that the industry is ripe for disruption because of the mismatch between profit pools and capital pools, compared to the size of the economy.

Alan Tsen an Angel investor, making personal investments of $10k-$25k, mostly into teams/founders that he knows personally and has had an opportunity to see the business evolve fairly close up.

Key topics included:

Open banking – Will this be the game-changer that many people think it will? Are the banks being dragged kicking and screaming to open up their customer databases? What will be the main opportunities for FinTech startups? While customers often express an intention to switch banks, the reality is that few actually do. In part because current processes make it relatively difficult (hence the current Open banking initiative, which will later be extended to utilities); in part because there is little to no differentiation between the major banks (in products, costs and service). Also, it seems that banks are quietly getting on with the task in hand, given that resistance is futile. My personal view is that banks may have a significant role to play as custodians or guardians of our financial and personal data (“data fiduciaries”) rather than directly managing our financial assets. For example, when it comes to managing the personal private keys to our digital wallets, who would we most trust to hold a “back up of last resort” – probably our banks, because even though we may love to hate them, we still place an enormous amount of trust in them.

Full stack financial solutions – Within FinTech, the panel identified different options between full stack startups, compared to those that focus on either the funding layer (sourcing and origination), tech layer, and the CX layer.

Neo-banks – Welcome source of potential competition, but face huge challenges in customer acquisition, brand awareness and maintaining regulatory capital requirements.

Unbundling the banks – Seen as a likely outcome from the Royal Commission, given that we have already seen the major banks largely exit the wealth management and advice business. But the challenge for FinTech startups will be in developing specific products that match and exceed current offerings, without adding transactional friction etc.

Identifying Strong FinTech Teams – There needs to be evidence of deep domain expertise, plus experience of business scaling. Sometimes it’s a fine balance between naivety and experience, and outsiders versus insiders – bringing transferable external experience (especially with a view to disrupting and challenging the status quo) can easily trump incumbent complacency.

Funding Models – While most VC funding is in the form of equity, some VCs offer “venture debt” (based on achieving milestones) which can be converted to equity, but while it can lead to founder’s equity dilution, it may represent a lower cost of initial capital for startups. The panel mentioned the so-called “Dutch model” (because it has been used by Dutch pension funds) that local mortgage company Athena has brought to the market. Rather than seeking wholesale funding or warehouse financing to back their home loan business, Athena allows institutional investors such as superannuation funds, to lend direct to homeowners. This means that the funds receive more of the mortgage interest margin than if they were investing in RMBS issued by the banks and mortgage originators. Athena is mainly geared towards refinancing existing mortgages, rather than new loans, but also offers a new approach to mortgage servicing and administration.

Generally, VCs prefer simpler structures rather than, say, funding milestones, because of the risk of misaligned goals, and the impact this may have on subsequent price rounds. There are some models that create a level of optionality for founders, and others which are royalty-based, or which use a form of securitisation against future cash flows.

Meanwhile, the panel were generally not in favour of IPOs, mainly due to the additional regulatory, compliance and reporting obligations of being a public company. So it would seem their favoured exit strategy is either a trade sale or a merger, or acquisition by a private equity fund or institutional investor.

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