Financial technology, also known as FinTech, forms a new revolution within the financial sector that aims to use technology in order to improve the industry and make it more efficient. FinTech companies generally comprise of disruptive startups that are challenging the way that things are currently run, attempting to give more back to the customers who use the services. But will they be able to challenge the status-quo and overtake big banks?

How do FinTech companies work?

FinTech companies have been brought about because of the increase in innovation and technology that we are witnessing in the modern world. They use technology as their means of making the financial world easier for the everyday user, making use of the power of smartphones, apps, and the huge level of connectivity that we now have.

Banks, to a degree are FinTech companies, with their own dedicated mobile banking apps, but some of these are typically seen as nothing more than after-thoughts, and regularly pick up negative reviews and complaints.

Other mobile banking apps, such as Revolut, are dedicated apps and have no physical branches or stores, meaning they can focus solely on their financial technology experience. This allows for a streamlined and easy experience that makes for a much better app from giants such as Barclays or Santander.

But they attempt to go further than the other mobile banking apps, such as with £500 free international withdrawals each month and access to the very best exchange rates on the market, allowing them to offer better rates than other established credit cards.

This is alongside other fast-growing FinTech startups which appear to be overtaking big banks such as Transferwise, which allows for hugely cheaper international money transfers than big banks; typically eight times cheaper.

Essentially, the one thing that all of these FinTech startups have in common is that they are attempting to take power away from those who have, until now, been left previously untouched. They are doing similar things that Uber has done to the taxi world, or Airbnb has done to the rental world; making things easier and more cost-effective for the consumer.

But will FinTech be able to overtake the big banks?

There has been a huge distrust in banks since the 2008 crisis, and this will take many, many more years to die down. This has, in part, been the reason for such a large increase in FinTech companies.

There can be no denying that FinTech companies are going to have a profound effect on big banks. The latter is tied down with stringent regulations, top-line growth, and slow economic recovery. This is alongside the fact that FinTech startups will continue to drive prices down and eat away at big bank’s profit margins.

Big banks do still record yearly profits of around $1 trillion, and it is likely that this won’t drop dramatically anytime soon. But with roughly 12,000 FinTech start-ups on the market and counting, big banks will need to adapt or risk falling behind the competition. So yes, if big banks don’t adapt and modernise, it is likely that one day we will see FinTech overtake them.

Can FinTech and big banks work together?

Big banks and FinTech are not two separate industries; they are part of the same thing. We are already beginning to see banks adapt to the new wave of technology, such as Apple Pay being built on top of existing banking systems.

Big banks know that they are having to recover lost ground and build trust back up in their organisations. The fact that Apple Pay is built on their systems shows that they have a huge interior engine that drives much of the financial industry. However, it is the exterior where they are lacking, the actual customer-facing side, that FinTech is nailing.

The banking and finance industry have become dinosaurs amongst its evolutionised FinTech counterparts and they are struggling to catch up. However, many have said that they are willing to help and fund FinTech if it can be integrated in their businesses.

Big banks have the dominance, the power, the money, and the establishment to adapt and change to the ever-developing market around it. If they do this, it’s likely that they will maintain their ultimate dominance, albeit with some loss to FinTech startups. Failure to do this, however, will let us witness FinTech overtaking big banks.

Effective internal communication is not only necessary for a company but is also paramount to its success. There are numerous examples of companies that have failed due to poor communication, and meetings are one of the easiest ways of keeping company communication alive.

Why are meetings useful?

Meetings make for a quick and easy way of communicating information across to multiple people in one go. Sure, this can be done through e-mails or memos, but meetings allow for a pool of ideas, brainstorming sessions, and a more personal relaying of information that other methods of communicating simply don’t.

This can be done across all levels as well and doesn’t just need to be for some employees. Directors should be effectively communicating to each other, and the bits that are relevant to even the lowest levels of the organisation must be effectively communicated down.

Meetings shouldn’t be held just for the sake of it, but effectively using different types of meetings a company can work as one smooth machine rather than several different cogs.

Consider team meetings to ensure that your team is working on a project at the same pace, full-office meetings so that each of the different departments can work in unison, and board of director meetings so that they know exactly how the business is operating.

Are meetings always necessary?

In the same way that meetings shouldn’t just be held for the sake of it, also make sure that meetings aren’t just left as an afterthought. Meetings are regularly viewed as business-killers, what with the rise of tools like Skype and the way in which meetings are run.

Many meetings are organised simply because businesses feel that they should be hosting one, but they often lack structure, are poorly moderated, they often pull people away from important work when they didn’t need the meeting, and they appear to be growing stale.

A meeting should be something people look forward to, a chance to brainstorm, bounce around ideas, and genuinely push the business forward. If meetings are organised once a week simply for the sake of it, workers will begin to dread them, and the boredom will show throughout.

This in no way makes meetings a waste of time, but they need to be properly planned and thought out to ensure that they are useful and successful.

How to keep meetings useful on all levels

Structuring a successful meeting is done in a similar way across all levels. Although meetings are getting a somewhat bad reputation, the first thing to do is to meet regularly. Although it might seem like a better idea to meet less regularly, regular meetings will help bring employees closer together in an ever-increasing screen dominated environment and can help to de-stress employees through problem-solving.

When planning your meetings, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this meeting truly necessary?
• What needs to be achieved from this meeting?
• Who is completely relevant to this meeting and needs to be there to help achieve this goal?
• Is the timing for this meeting right?

Ask yourself each of these questions before you call a meeting; if any of your answers don’t seem relevant or necessary for the meeting at hand, then it probably isn’t the right time to call it.

You always need to remember that any time that an employee or director spends in a meeting is time that they aren’t working, and therefore earning revenue for the company, so meetings need to be weighed up directly against this.

You can assess the cost of a meeting using meeting calculators, with roughly $37 billion being wasted every year due to unnecessary meetings.

Keeping meetings relevant for your business

Despite the figure listed above, your business doesn’t need to follow the same trend! No matter which level of your organisation you’re planning to conduct your meeting on, follow the steps above and ask yourself those key questions about your meeting. This way, no matter if it’s with company directors or lower level employees, you can achieve exactly the outcomes that you want when holding your meeting.

It may seem strange to be thinking about the end of your time at your startup before you’ve even set it up, but you need to have a timeline and plan in place early on. This will allow you to focus and work towards your ultimate goal from day one. Below we explore whether or not you should have an exit strategy in place when you startup.

What is an exit strategy?

There are several exit strategies that you can have in place with your start up, which we have explored briefly below:

• Initial public offer (IPO): selling part of your business to the public in the form of shares
• Mergers: a merger is still considered an exit strategy, and may be needed should your startup be low on cash-flow and needs to stay afloat
• Private offerings: Similar to an IPO, this involves the selling of your shares to a private group, such as investors
• Cash cow: Cash cows are organisations that have high market shares in industries that have low growth, and can help startups to stay sustainable in tough situations
• Regulation A+: This is also similar to an IPO, but offers benefits as you can raise money without having to publish your accounts publicly
• Venture capital: this involves receiving large amounts of investment from venture capitalists to help your startup stay afloat, and will make your business look attractive to investors

Why should you have an exit strategy when you startup?

No matter what exit strategy you choose to have in place for your business, they can be an effective solution for your business plan. The chances are that you don’t quite have enough cash yourself to keep your business alive and that you are looking for third party investment.

You may feel that your business is in its early years and you’re just focusing on the beginning, but investors will want to see robust and money-making plans in place for the years to come. Exit strategies will help to show this.

You’re looking for investment to get the business started, but they’ll be looking at your business plan to know how much of a return they will get when you/they exit. Some investors may like the idea of your startup so much that they are investing in the business and not the exit strategy, but generally, they will be thinking about their return.

Exit strategies are also effective ways of bolstering your startup’s cash flow and preparing for means of expanding your business or keeping your company alive further down the line.

Why shouldn’t you have exit strategy when you startup?

However, having an exit strategy isn’t completely necessary when you startup. Highly successful businessman such as Mark Zuckerberg never had an exit strategy in place when he started. So what kind of reasons did people like Zuckerberg have for not thinking of exit early-on?

Your focus, and rightly so, in the early years should be on profitability and not of being a millionaire at a young age. While this is a nice idea, if you have a good idea with a large market potential, then it may be better to focus on where you can take this rather than exiting before you know what you might be able to achieve.

It is also much better to focus on the consumer and the market that will benefit your business and your target customer first, rather than focusing on the consumer and market that will enable you to sell your business successfully. Focusing on the former will help you to establish a successful business, at which point you may be in a better position to sell. For example, Zappos built themselves up and were acquired by Amazon by focusing on the consumer, rather than the exit strategy.

Some investors actually find an exit strategy a disappointing route to highlight in pitches as they may want to see your startup thrive in your hands.

Finally, focusing on the end-goal and that big pay date can be de-motivating for your employees. If you’re only concerned with a big pay check rather than actually trying to create and build something, your employees may not see the point in trying to be creative or innovative.

What is right for my business?

Every business is different, and each will have different aims. If you don’t believe this is right for your business then don’t waste time trying to craft an exit strategy. If you do take this route, just make sure that you clearly have your reasons why, as you’ll need to sell this to investors.

Gone are the days where we need to queue up in a physical bank to conduct all of our financial needs; we can now do everything we need from handy smartphone apps. However, some businesses still treat their application equivalents as afterthoughts, without putting enough focus and attention to it. Below we have reviewed the various smartphone applications for the main UK banks.

Lloyds

A review of mobile apps was recently carried out by Forrester, and Lloyds secured the top spot with a score of 77 out of 100. The Lloyds business bank app has all of the most basic features, such as money transfers, but also places a good focus on more complex features such as financial product comparisons. All-in-all, it offers a streamlined and easy experience.

The Lloyds business bank app scores almost perfect 5/5’s on the iTunes Store and Google Play, but common complaints include it being slow and buggy.

Barclays

The Barclays banking app is also one of the best on the market and secured second place in the review. It provides an effortless and seamless experience that makes mobile banking easy. It supports both business and personal accounts and is slick and quick to load. It’s easy to send payments and make transfers, and each account is easily separated and accessible, making it an almost perfect design.

There have been some complaints with newer versions where some features have been dropped. It no longer displays a running balance on your account activity, making it harder to track a balance between transactions. These are minor issues, but they do take away from the overall experience.

NatWest

The NatWest app came third in the review, although Forrester noted that it is the best app on the market for its range of account management features. One handy feature is that it allows for the withdrawal of cash from an ATM without needing a card, by providing the user with a one-time use code.

Its service capabilities and customer enrolment features are its downfall, and are somewhat limited compared to the account management features. The app only scores 2.5/5 stars on the iTunes store, with issues of complexity or lag being commonly cited as letting the overall experience of the app down.

Santander

The Santander business bank app took fourth place, with many of the same features as the previous banking apps. Santander is attempting to be innovative, by claiming that they will be the first ones to offer international payments and wants to incorporate a virtual assistant similar to Apple’s Siri to help provide advice on spending habits.

However, the design of the Santander app lets it down. It is clunky and quite slow for the user, and so when in comparison to the Lloyd’s or Barclays’ app it doesn’t really compare.

HSBC

The HSBC business bank app ranked fifth in the Forrester review, although it was given credit for being smooth and simple when it came to enrolling and logging in. It also helps by offering useful budgeting information for those that are looking for a loan.

However, it has limited service and account management features. It doesn’t fare too well on the iTunes store, with only one star. Users complain about its poor design and lack of functionality when rating it.

Banking apps as an experience

There are, of course, other banks in the UK, but the ones presented above offer the top five mobile banking experiences. The other banks’ apps, unfortunately, didn’t offer the customer enough in the way of features and seem to be treated more as afterthoughts. The Lloyd’s and Barclays’ apps came top of the pile, giving their customers a robust enough experience so that they won’t need to use browser banking again!