Fintech Fair Trade Credit

This book is a practical guide to the evolving landscape of finance, highlighting how it’s changing our relationship with money and how financial technology, together with macroeconomic and societal change, is rewriting the story of how business is done in developing economies. Financial services companies are trying to become more customer focused, but struggling to help huge customer segments, particularly in developing economies. Alternative financial models and tools are emerging, which are being embraced by consumers and incumbents. In large parts of the developing world, alternative services are leapfrogging traditional finance, meaning more and more people have access to finance without ever needing a bank. Meanwhile, the barriers around financial services companies are crumbling, as they become more reliant on integration with new providers and alternative types of service. Financial products can no longer be viewed in isolation, but as part of a service landscape that supports how people do life. This means rethinking how our businesses are designed, motivated and organised, and letting go of the old ways of thinking about supply and demand. With practical steps businesses and, in particular, financial services organisations need to take to participate in a global service ecosystem, this book will be of interest to financial professionals who work in banking, financial technology, and development finance.

This open access Pivot demonstrates how a variety of technologies act as innovation catalysts within the banking and financial services sector. Traditional banks and financial services are under increasing competition from global IT companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon and PayPal whilst facing pressure from investors to reduce costs, increase agility and improve customer retention. Technologies such as blockchain, cloud computing, mobile technologies, big data analytics and social media therefore have perhaps more potential in this industry and area of business than any other. This book defines a fintech ecosystem for the 21st century, providing a state-of-the art review of current literature, suggesting avenues for new research and offering perspectives from business, technology and industry.

Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy. They are the biggest job creators and offer a path to the American Dream. But for many, it is difficult to get the capital they need to operate and succeed. In the Great Recession, access to capital for small businesses froze, and in the aftermath, many community banks shuttered their doors and other lenders that had weathered the storm turned to more profitable avenues. For years after the financial crisis, the outlook for many small businesses was bleak. But then a new dawn of financial technology, or “fintech,” emerged. Beginning in 2010, new fintech entrepreneurs recognized the gaps in the small business lending market and revolutionized the customer experience for small business owners. Instead of Xeroxing a pile of paperwork and waiting weeks for an answer, small businesses filled out applications online and heard back within hours, sometimes even minutes. Banks scrambled to catch up. Technology companies like Amazon, PayPal, and Square entered the market, and new possibilities for even more transformative products and services began to appear. In Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, former U.S. Small Business Administrator and Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School, Karen G. Mills, focuses on the needs of small businesses for capital and how technology will transform the small business lending market. This is a market that has been plagued by frictions: it is hard for a lender to figure out which small businesses are creditworthy, and borrowers often don’t know how much money or what kind of loan they need. New streams of data have the power to illuminate the opaque nature of a small business’s finances, making it easier for them to weather bumpy cash flows and providing more transparency to potential lenders. Mills charts how fintech has changed and will continue to change small business lending, and how financial innovation and wise regulation can restore a path to the American Dream. An ambitious book grappling with the broad significance of small business to the economy, the historical role of credit markets, the dynamics of innovation cycles, and the policy implications for regulation, Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream is relevant to bankers, fintech investors, and regulators; in fact, to anyone who is interested in the future of small business in America.

Can fintech credit fill the credit gap in the consumer and business segments? There are few cross-country studies that explore this question. Focusing on marketplace lending, an important part of fintech credit, we use data for 109 countries from 2015 to 2017 to study the relationship between fintech credit to businesses and consumers and various aspects of financial development. Marketplace lending to consumers grows in countries where financial depth declines highlighting the role of fintech credit in filling the credit gap by traditional lenders. This result is particularly strong in low-income countries. In the business segment, marketplace lending expands where financial efficiency declines. Our findings show that low-income countries take advantage of the fintech credit opportunity in the consumer segment but face important challenges in the business segment.

This Palgrave Pivot analyses the evolution of strategies and business models adopted by financial operators that employ technological solutions to deliver financial products and services. The analysis is performed on a proprietary dataset built on different sources that highlight important differences in strategical approaches taken by FinTech companies, TechFin and BigTech, and banks (traditional and digital native). For each type, the authors underline their distinctive patterns, strengths and weaknesses. The main focus of the analysis in on the European market that is investigated also in the light of the difference and similarities with other markets (such as US and China). The unbundling and re-bundling of productive processes in finance, the treatment of information and the level of innovation in the customer relationship highlight the intense change that the banking activities of new financial services providers are currently dealing with, especially the retail segment. Despite the main international banks’ implementation of innovative strategical approaches to take advantage of the digitalization of business and cope with competition, so far the level of the disruption brought by FinTech is not fully understood or widespread. This holds especially true for the smaller banks: the latter need to take a proactive approach to individuate a business model able to satisfy the new customer needs and the competitive pressure that are destined to increase and further evolve. This book addresses this and would appeal to academics, researchers and students of banking, FinTech and financial innovation alongside policy makers, regulatory authorities, FinTechs and banks.

This book offers managers a complete analysis of the various facets of commercial credit and presents an analysis of the various types of markets, instruments, and risks associated with trade credit in supply chains across the globe. Trade credit is extensively used in both domestic and international commercial transactions. Although it clearly supports growth, its significance is even greater for developed countries, where the market has recovered remarkably since the global financial crisis. The number and heterogeneity of motivations to trade credit justify the variability observed in the data on global trading, and the role of trade credit has become crucial in supply chain coordination. A range of diverse trade credit finance solutions are available and include products and services offered by financial intermediaries and market products, highlighting a very interesting set of intermediate solutions that have emerged as a result of new technologies utilized in financial services. For financiers trade credit is an attractive option, but an in-depth evaluation of the possibility of losses forms the basis of a deep understating of numerous sources that can create credit risk (default and dilution risk). This book offers managers a complete analysis of the various facets of commercial credit and presents an analysis of the various types of markets, instruments, and risks associated with trade credit in supply chains across the globe.