This week, I am re-highlighting Ramona Ortega, a woman on a mission to close the wealth gap.
Just a few years ago, the story of fintech was the unbundling of the bank – a famous graphic showing a big bank homepage and all the fintech startups reproducing its services was a longtime staple of slide decks. But the conversation has now evolved to rebundling. Well-funded fintechs are expanding their offerings to services previously only available from banks.
Even the large acquisitions of 2020 speak to this – Intuit plans to acquire Credit Karma and expand its consumer-facing services and its trove of valuable consumer data. Lending Club, with the acquisition of Radius Bank, moves from being a marketplace lender to a full-service bank.
The wave of consolidation is a good thing -- as long as the consumer remains the focus. I caught up with Ramona a year later and asked for her take on the acquisitions shaking up the fintech universe lately:
"2020 is going to see more consolidation and payouts for the early Fintech players, for example, with Visa acquiring Plaid for $5.3 billion and the promise of Credit Karma to Intuit for $7 billion. I think we are also going to see consolidation of some of the roboadvisors, there is a lot of competition going after the same customer. Challenger banks are still a wait and see but frankly there are a lot of players and not a lot of differentiators. All in all, I am excited to see more focus on consumer needs, I think fintech is realizing that you have to be more than just a single transaction app to capture a market.
My Money My Future has always focused on the long-term value of our customers and building that relationship by creating content around an all-in-one platform to help people make the best financial decisions and I think more millennials are looking for that 360 approach."