Special report
What’s on the cards for
How have Europe’s challenger banks been adapting to the new normal? While the pandemic has forced the need for digital-fi rst business models, the economic crisis has hit neobanks just as hard as incumbents. Abi Millar profi les the likes of bunq and neon to discover what challenger banks have been doing to stay afl oat.
ince the start of the pandemic, there has been a lot of rhetoric around ‘going digital’. As remote working became the norm, and physical interactions were curbed, organisations rapidly stepped up their digital capabilities. According to research by McKinsey, consumer and business digital adoption leapt five years forward during the first eight weeks of the Covid-19 crisis.
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In the banking world, you might expect that challenger banks would have had a boom year. Predicated on ‘digital first’ models, without the need for branches or old-fashioned bank managers,
Future Banking /
www.nsbanking.com
the likes of Monzo and Revolut may have seemed well placed to weather a socially distanced crisis. “We believe that digital banking is the future – that is why we are so dedicated to providing the best banking experience for our users via the app,” says Bartosz Urban, a spokesperson for the Dutch neobank bunq (the lack of capitalisation is trendily deliberate). “Current times are testing and to stay safe, people minimise their real-life interactions, and traditional brick-and-mortar banks are proving ineffective. That is why digital banks are crucial.” Certainly, Covid-19 has forced a change in the way people interact with financial services. In a World
neobanks? 42% Mastercard 11
The percentage of Europeans who handle their fi nances digitally more frequently than they did before the pandemic.
Sulastri Sulastri/
Shutterstock.com
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