Eighty-two percent of Pledge signatories surveyed said that they expect to increase the number of FinTech partnerships in the next five years. With that in mind, we also focussed on the key characteristics that were central to successful and effective partnerships, including:
- Up-front transparency: Setting a road map with expected timelines
- Knowing who is who: Including a single, named point of contact
- Defining success criteria: Enabling each party to know what success looks like
- Timeline expectations: Having a plan with deadlines to keep the project on track
- Feedback: Ensuring both sides provide clarity on what could be improved for future partnerships
Facilitating partnerships
As part of the research we also heard from financial institutions and FinTechs around how the UK FinTech industry could go even further to help facilitate partnerships. A number of FinTechs felt that standard documentation, such as nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), would be likely to save time and money. Another common theme that resulted from our research, was the importance of ongoing education, setting expectations and clearer process labelling to ensure that the end-to-end collaboration process progressed as smoothly as possible. Alongside this, the idea of matchmaking was suggested in order to connect financial institutions and FinTechs. There was also agreement that the Pledge had a key future role, with the objective of increasing visibility and the number of signatories in the UK and abroad.
In addition, partnerships are an essential method of driving innovation across financial services firms. They also allow FinTechs to scale-up and deliver growth through the volume of customers that institutions can provide.
Our findings conclude that the Pledge has made a real impact in making the initial process more transparent and easier. For FinTechs, it has meant that they understand better what is needed to progress to a commercial contract and have more support on that journey. By joining the Fintech Pledge, financial institutions are sending a strong public message to the wider FinTech sector about their commitment to the creation of partnerships, which would facilitate increased efficiency, transparency and innovation for all stakeholders.
We expect both the Pledge and partnerships between FinTech and financial services firms to increase in importance, as UK FinTech develops. Ultimately, this will benefit consumers with more innovative products and services, and the UK economy as the sector grows in strength.
Read the full report here.
Summary
The Fintech Pledge called for greater collaboration and partnership between FinTechs and financial institutions. Over the past 18 months, the industry has seen many benefits, from greater transparency to a better approach to partnership. The EY and TechNation report, Building better together, was commissioned to understand where the Pledge has made real impact for the whole ecosystem and what is needed to continue this progress.
