Why fintech has to die

Fintech – the bastard child of finance and technology. The unwanted offspring of two industries infatuated by god-awful, unnecessary terms and abbreviations. It has to die.

Nobody can work out what the hell it is. Or where the capital letters should go. Or even the bloody grammar – if you’ve pluralised it to ‘fintechs’, hang your head in grammatical shame.

It’s meaningless.  Call it what you like – but I call time on ‘fintech’.

The term implies there’s never been technology in a bank before. Take a look around the City of London – they’re not short of computers. Or developers.

Finance has been changing for decades and guess what – tech’s been there the whole time. Is the ATM fintech? Or your mobile app? Who cares.

I’m not downplaying the significance of newbies like Monzo, TransferWise and Starling – they are shaking things up for the better.

But their customers don’t need to know or care if they’re spending with a ‘fintech’ or not. And neither should you.

When does a bank become a ‘fintech’?

And if banks like Barclays and Nationwide continue to pump out great apps – do they become ‘fintech’? Or just banks?

Don’t kid yourself for a minute – ‘fintech’ isn’t a revolution – it’s a catchall term with no weight.

But this is my real beef – ‘fintech’ is an ugly term that confuses and excludes.  

I’ve seen people baffled it numerous times, at events, meetings, even inside No.10 Downing St. We live in a world where our politicians think they need ‘the necessary hashtags’ – let’s not make this any more difficult for them.

Jokes aside – the only people who benefit are those selling conference tickets with buzzwordy names and ‘digital consultants’ peddling ‘fintech’ solutions to anxious people, who wrongly think they’re behind the curve.

I’m unashamedly enthusiastic about technology and what it’s doing to finance. But if we want people to switch to app-only mobile banks, we have to cut the crap language out.

Finance has been drowning in cryptic words for decades – this is a rare opportunity to turn things around.

Peak fintech

Thankfully, ‘fintech’ peaked in November last year, according to Google Trends, the international barometer of what everybody’s talking about.

And after reading this I hope you’ll join me in my cause to make it disappear for good.

So here’s what you need to do:

If you hear someone trying to sound clever by saying ‘fintech’ – call them out. If it’s a bank, it’s a bank. If they do loans, they do loans. You get the idea.

And if you hear someone say ‘regtech’, ‘martech’, ‘madtech’, ‘insurtech’ or anything similar, that’s your cue to walk away. You can thank me later.