Brendan McCarthy attended the Department for International Trade’s (DIT) ‘Landing a Successful Bank-FinTech Partnership in the US’ event which took place last week.
As part of Invest Northern Ireland’s ‘Graduate to Export’ programme, Brendan will travel to the United States later this year to represent Datactics in the region. “My role in-market will help drive Datactics’ international expansion plans by sourcing new business and potential partnerships within North America. This webinar offered advice for scaling tech companies growing in the United States and the necessary steps to take when forming new partnerships with banks and other financial institutions. The panellists were industry experts, so it was great to hear all of their stories and insights”.
One such key insight came from Ron Kalifa, Chairman at Network International, who stated that “RegTech is another one that’s going to come fast to the United States”. An Insights Report, commissioned by DIT, was also published to complement the webinar, offering key ideas for FinTechs to remember when partnering with a US bank. We picked our top three.
- Firstly, pick the ‘right’ problem. For banks, not all problems are equally concerning. Understand priority areas among critical stakeholders – and propose services to directly solve these. To start, look to improve client engagement or offer data-driven risk-profiling and credit decision support.
- Secondly, start narrow, move wider. This reiterates the importance of procurement, legal, innovation, and other teams. It’s vital to prove your value and build internal allies.
- Thirdly, FinTechs need to respect and recognise cultural differences. Rapid innovation can sometimes be unnecessarily disruptive, so it’s key to understand the appetite banks have for disruption and where they will be most responsive to innovation.
Another valuable insight noted during the webinar was the need for FinTechs to provide banks with “fresh capabilities and new revenue opportunities”. The panellists commented that this meant identifying the right problem, one that intersects both the FinTech’s functional expertise and a priority issue for the bank. As one bank lead noted, “Finding the hierarchy of priorities (inside a bank) is critical.”
This event allowed us to develop a better understanding of the U.S. market and to understand key ideas that are central to US partnerships. From the vitality of building internal allies, to proving value, to picking the ‘right’ problem, to understanding cultural differences.
Brendan noted that, “The last twelve months have restricted the opportunities for partnerships between banks and FinTechs due to the lack of face-to-face engagement and personal interaction. However, as the world continues toward a path of normality, and regulatory compliance pressures continue to mount on banks and other financial institutions, we at Datactics eagerly await for the opportunity to travel across the pond and spend time in North America, once again engaging with partners and meeting with clients face-to-face”.
All being well, Brendan is planning on being based in New York from September this year to seek out opportunities to speak to people in the industry about the Datactics Self-Service Data Quality platform. Our next gen, no-code toolbox is built with the business user in mind, allowing business subject matter experts to easily measure data to regulatory & industry standards, fix breaches in bulk and push into reporting tools, with full visibility and audit trail for Chief Risk and Data Officers. If you want to know more about how the Datactics solution can help automate the highly manual issue of data matching for customer onboarding, then please reach out. You can connect with Brendan here.
