Fintech Part 2.0

Meet up with another friend today. He has been pursuing the fintech bandwagon via the P2P lending space for about 15 months now. It is tough going for him as he needs to get licenses in the ASEAN countries he intends to operate in. To date, he does not have a license in any country to operate yet. The P2P space seems quite crowded now, as I see a lot of money chasing too few loans and credit analysis seems weak.

As part of my education process to reinvent myself, I have been actively attending fintech seminars to try to see if there are opportunities which I can pursue. Everyone knows that this is the mega trend but no one has a clear road map on how this will evolve. Silos within banks will make the adoption of disruptive new technology even harder. Do you want to support an initiative that will make your current job redundant?

Startups are mushrooming all over and failure is deemed to be part of the  learning experience. For every successful one, a thousand may have fallen on the sidelines. Even for the successful ones, number 1 will continue to be paranoid that its lunch will be eaten by someone else. Number 2 will be even more pressured to fight the incumbent leader. Number 3 and the rest can forget about having a fighting chance to compete.  Uber/Grab, Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat, WeChat/Line …