ON MY MIND: Inside information
Trust has been the mainstay of relationships between banks and their clients, so why would they place their principles at risk in the battle for business?
Technological advances have intensified competition in the financial sector, as global tech giants and fintech startups have introduced new playbooks to an evolving game. Conceived in a digital era, these newcomers have built their businesses on data. In their effort to establish viable business models, they scrape the personal information of people subscribing to their services and apps in the name of delivering relevant product advertising to fuel their revenue engines. Apple is valued at US$612bn, Alphabet (Google) at $542bn, Microsoft at $448bn, Amazon at $401bn and Facebook at $369bn. They are the world’s top five most-valuable companies. All are technology firms and all have interests in financial services. These companies serve billions of people. Facebook alone has 1.18bn active daily users, excluding its 1bn WhatsApp users, more than 1bn Facebook Messenger users and over 500m active Instagram users. Facebook owns these apps, emphasising its dominance in the mobile app arena...
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