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The 2021 Nordic Report is live

A joint undertaking between Fintech Mundi and findexable and with FCG, Huawei and Mastercard, the report seals the success of the Nordic fintech community, which stands strong, with investors and innovators hard at work across the space.

The region’s early success at moving away from cash, its embrace of collaborative models for the development and distribution of innovative financial services long before fintech became every bank’s favourite bandwagon, and commitment to digital services have created the foundations for a thriving fintech ecosystem.

Global Fintech Index

Fintech Mundi has teamed up with long-standing partner MagnaCarta Communications and a coalition of other global partners to identify, compare and track the development of fintech everywhere – even in the furthest corners of our planet.

Launching in October, the Global Fintech Index, presented under the banner of Findexable, will be the first fully global index of cities ranked by fintech activity.

Fintech Mundi’s Susanne Hannestad explains the needs of the fintech sector in the Nordics and how accurate, tangible data can help raise the Nordics’ status as a hub of fintech innovation globally.

Fintech after 2020

• The Nordics are a fintech powerhouse but new report shows that progress is at risk of stalling without effective partnerships
• Confidence in the region as home to great ideas stands at 68% in 2019 (14% up from 2018)
• 67% of survey respondents feel the region needs greater access to investor capital to realise its potential
• 52% believe greater bank openness to partnering will help the region become a global fintech hub

The Nordic and Baltic region has all the building blocks to generate wealth and opportunities and is punching above its weight in terms of producing unicorns, moving from start-up to critical scale-up phase and it leading the rest of Europe on Open Banking and PSD2 progress. Results from the fourth Nordic Fintech Disruptors Report launched during Money 2020 in Amsterdam finds confidence in abundance at 68%, 14% up from 2018.
 
The report produced by MagnaCarta and Fintech Mundi in partnership with Mastercard and BDO, is a comprehensive review of the current position and future trends in Nordic and Baltic fintech. It features extensive interviews with banks, fintechs, regulators, accelerators and leading innovators, alongside the results of an industry-wide survey.
 
Although more than half the survey respondents believe that the Nordics and Baltics will dominate the fintech landscape after 2020, the confidence is tempered with realism and a recognition of key challenges. 67% of respondents feel the region needs greater access to investor capital to realise its potential (24% higher than 2018), while over half believe that greater openness to partnering will help the region compete on the global stage.
 
Against this background, this year’s report is more of a manifesto, setting out a vision for how the region can fully realise its strengths and take full advantage of the new era of integrated digital finance. Much of the answer still lies in viable, effective partnerships and a better connected fintech ecosystem which offers the best chance to:
 

• Attract skills and talent required to continue developing the marketplace
• Bring more customers on board to create sustainable businesses
• Serve and support new businesses to create more winners
• Fertilise new ideas at scale and shorten times to profit
• Grow the region’s reputation to create a virtuous circle for success

“Since we started the research in 2014 we have seen a region that has outperformed many in developing and nurturing fintech innovation but true collaboration and trust across the ecosystem remains an issue which has to be addressed if the region is to fulfil its potential as a global fintech hub, ” comments Simon Hardie, author and publisher of the report.

The report is a call to arms for banks, investors, regulators, public bodies and for the fintechs themselves,” says Susanne Hannestad, CEO of Fintech Mundi, a prominent Nordic based fintech accelerator. “The Nordic and Baltic regions are ideally placed to out-perform their peers in Europe, but only if we can find a more effective way to work together. We are not there yet.”

New mobile money propositions could reduce the world’s unbanked population by more than a third

A new report from Mastercard confirms the power of mobile technology to improve financial inclusion. The research shows that 15 countries account for over 60% of the global unbanked population, where 607 million people have a mobile phone, but do not yet have a bank account. Mobile technology could therefore provide them with immediate access to the benefits of financial inclusion.

In 14 of these countries, the number of people with a mobile phone outnumbers the number of people with a bank account by several million (rising to 204 million in China). The only exception is India, where more people have a bank account than a mobile phone.

However, the report emphasises that simply providing access to financial services is not enough to address financial exclusion. To achieve any real impact, people also need to become active users of financial products. Globally, 20% of people with a bank or mobile money account have not used it for more than a year, and many more people only ever use their account on an occasional basis.

In the absence of banking services, or if financial products are rarely used, people inevitably turn to informal providers, such as neighbourhood savings clubs, local money lenders, and unlicensed remittance services. Most people on low incomes tend to be experienced users of these informal financial products, and to have intricate and well-ordered financial lives. However, they do not have legal protection, face significant risks, and may pay more for a vastly inferior product.

As the report says, “the battle for inclusion is not about creating completely new behaviours or building entirely new markets. Nor is it about providing simple access to the financial mainstream. It is about how bona fide players and regulated providers can do a better job of out-competing the informal sector.”

Another important consideration is a deep gender gap, which could be exacerbated if mobile and digital technologies were to become the predominant delivery channel for financial services. In developing countries, for example, there is already an eight-percentage-point gap in account ownership (67% or men have an account compared to 59% of women). This gap extends to double-digits in many countries, such as Morocco and Peru, and reaches 30% some countries, like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Women are much less likely to have made or received a digital payment, more likely to have used informal financial products, and less able to come up with emergency funds in the face of an emergency.    

The report, Unravelling the Web, was commissioned by Mastercard and produced by MagnaCarta Communications. It was launched at the Financial Inclusion Summit in Oslo on 28 March 2019, where speakers included Ann Cairns, Vice-Chairman and President International Market of Mastercard, Greta Bull, CEO of CGAP (World Bank) and James Mwangi, CEO of Equity Bank Kenya.