I am interested in all areas of business but am particularly interested in strategy and disruption. Why and how firms, and indeed entire sectors, are disrupted by the pace of change. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric said, ‘if the rate of change on the outside of the organisation exceeds the rate of changes on the inside, the end is near’. Pierre Nanterme in 2016, told the World Economic Forum that he believed that Digital is the main reason over half of the Fortune 500 had disappeared since 2000.
I therefore took a keen interest in the announcement by Hargreaves Lansdown that they are set to invest £175m into their digital strategy, with the aim of redefining wealth management. The news, accompanied by announcing a 20% fall in profits, saw the FTSE 100 company’s share price fall 20%. The market took a negative view of these results and the intention to cut dividends to invest in its digital capability. For me, this is a positive longer-term strategic move.
I read years ago that digital marketing was a defunct term because digital had become so core to marketing, that digital as a preface was no longer justifiable. Digital marketing is marketing. I reflect on that point because I believe we have reached that point with financial technology. FinTech (or this iteration of it, given technology has transformed financial services for generations) has fundamentally changed financial services. The FinTechs emerged with a disruptive business model; that model and dynamic has now been validated to the point where FinTech is Financial Services. It is just how we either do, or aspire to do business.
“That [fintech] model has now been validated to the point where fintech is financial services. It is just how we either do, or aspire to do, business.
