FinTech

transforming
finance

About ACCA
ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is
the global body for professional accountants. It offers
business-relevant, first-choice qualifications to people of
application, ability and ambition around the world who seek
a rewarding career in accountancy, finance and management.
ACCA supports its 188,000 members and 480,000 students
in 181 countries, helping them to develop successful careers
in accounting and business, with the skills required by
employers. ACCA works through a network of 95 offices and
centres and more than 7,110 Approved Employers
worldwide, who provide high standards of employee learning
and development. Through its public interest remit, ACCA
promotes appropriate regulation of accounting and conducts
relevant research to ensure accountancy continues to grow in
reputation and influence.

The report explores

the transformation
underway as a result of
the continued expansion
of FinTech and its ongoing
impact across the financial
services landscape.

Founded in 1904, ACCA has consistently held unique core

values: opportunity, diversity, innovation, integrity and
accountability. It believes that accountants bring value to
economies in all stages of development and seek to develop
capacity in the profession and encourage the adoption of
global standards. ACCAs core values are aligned to the
needs of employers in all sectors and it ensures that, through
its range of qualifications, it prepares accountants for
business. ACCA seeks to open up the profession to people
of all backgrounds and remove artificial barriers, innovating
its qualifications and delivery to meet the diverse needs of
trainee professionals and their employers.
In June 2016 ACCA formed a strategic alliance with
Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ).
The alliance represents the voice of 788,000 members and
future professional accountants around the world, who share
the commitment to uphold the highest ethical, professional
and technical standards.
More information is available at: www.accaglobal.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This report was prepared with the help of:
Yoni Assia, Founder and CEO, eToro

Steve Bailey, Founder, Carbon Architecture

David Barnes, Global Managing Director for Public Policy,

Deloitte
Richard Brown, Partner, Santander InnoVentures
Taavet Hinrikus, Co-founder, TransferWise

Alastair Lukies, Chairman, Innovate Finance

Julie Meyer, Managing Partner, Ariadne Capital

Bivek Sharma, Partner and Head of Small Business

Accounting, KPMG
The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
September 2016

Dr Dominik Steinkuehler, Co-founder and Group Managing

Director, Lendico
Michael Wood, Co-founder, Receipt Bank

Foreword

Technology has become the driving force

behind many changes to society and the
global economy. That technology has
caused the rapid and continuous
disruption of a succession of industries is a
given. In the financial services industry, with
the growth of financial technology
(FinTech), we are witnessing significant
transformations to systems and processes
that had stood the test of time. What
makes FinTech so potentially
transformative is the scope for materially
altering the fundamentals underpinning
the applications that make up the
backbone of our commercial lives.
A range of systems and processes in areas
including payment, lending, retail banking,
asset management, fraud protection and
regulatory compliance are now populated
not just by well-known and established
institutions but also by challenger start-ups
vying for a say in the future. These new
entrants, alongside reconfiguring
incumbents, are reformulating service
design and delivery through technological
developments and advancements in
software, user experience and data mining.

At the same time, regulators around the

world, operating in countries whose
financial services sector is in varying stages
of development, must find the right
balance between harnessing the
possibilities offered by FinTech and the
right level of forward looking legislation to
give it the best chance of flourishing.
Fintech transforming finance explores
the features of this new landscape,
highlighting the many ways in which this
revolution is taking place. For professional
accountants, this new terrain will provide
many opportunities as it permeates deeper
and deeper into the fabric of society.
From the promise of blockchain, to the
demands of valuation in a digital era,
finance more than ever needs an
experienced, knowledgeable guide to
make the most of the opportunities ahead.
Ng Boon Yew
Executive Chairman,
Raffles Campus Pte Ltd
and Chairman, ACCA
Accountancy Futures Academy

Executive summary

Financial Technology (FinTech)

is here sweeping through
finance and, if some proponents
are to be believed, threatening
traditional edifices that have
stood for centuries.

Financial Technology (FinTech) is here

sweeping through finance and, if some
proponents are to be believed, threatening
traditional edifices that have stood for
centuries. This great surge is being fronted
by a host of new start-ups taking their lead
from the big tech innovators. Their
maverick approach is helping to push the
FinTech industry into new territory across
the financial services landscape, raising
billions of dollars and worrying the
incumbents. So what are the main trends
and driving forces shaping FinTech today?
FinTech start-ups span the spectrum of
financial services, from lending and
advice to foreign exchange and
payments. One aspect that many of them
share is strong growth: thousands of per
cent in some cases. Not surprisingly, this
has been attracting attention from investors.
And as technologies evolve at pace (did
someone say blockchain?), the potential
for further disruption is ever present.
New technology means new banks.
Without the need for bricks, mortar or even
physical money, many start-ups are
changing perceptions of what a bank can,
and should, be. Many of these new banks
have appeared in the UK, owing to the
countrys FinTech pull. FinTech is changing
not only how banks operate, but also the
way people invest. By sidelining financial
advisers, FinTech firms reduce the cost of
investing and make it simpler.
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are
presaging deeper disruption. The
technology that underpins bitcoin
blockchain could transform the way in
which many financial transactions are
conducted. From trading shares to wiring

remittances, intermediaries, upon whose

security and technology everyone once
relied, are becoming redundant.
Some commentators believe the banks
are finished, while others see this as
their chance to fight back. Most big
banks lack the agility of smaller rivals and
still rely on legacy IT systems that are
outmoded and unwieldy. Nevertheless,
they are also trying to adjust to the
potential of FinTech by acquiring
challengers, or, increasingly, finding ways
to collaborate with nimbler new entrants.
Regulation could turn out to work in the
banks favour. The FinTech upstarts face a
raft of legislation that, depending on
jurisdiction, limits what they can do.
Nonetheless, regulation itself is under
constant review and some countries,
including the UK, are supporting innovators
and entrepreneurs and the banks as
they navigate the rules. The Regulation
Technology (RegTech) sector, made up of
firms that provide technology solutions to
enable better compliance with regulatory
requirements, is also set to play a
significant role in redefining the landscape.
For professional accountants, helping
companies manage the regulatory, tax
and financial implications of the FinTech
surge offers considerable opportunity.
The banks and many professional
accountancy firms are starting to adapt.
Like the rest of the financial services sector,
all professional accountants and other
finance professionals will need to engage
with the wider opportunities presented by
the digitisation shift and continue to
provide analysis that helps companies
understand the value they are creating.

1. This is an evolution

Tech-enabled disintermediation
of finance is responding to pentup demand for change.

FinTech is already big business. According

to Accenture, investment in global FinTech
grew by 75% in 2015 to $22.3bn (Accenture
2016). Around the world, FinTech
companies exist across the entire spectrum
of finance. These services include:
borrowing money peer-to-peer
lenders such as Lendico, Zopa, Prosper
and OnDeck connect savers with
borrowers to cut out banks

foreign currency peer-to-peer money
transfer service TransferWise is the
market leader in the foreign currency
exchange sector
international money transfer
innovators here include Xoom, Azimo,
and CurrencyFair
credit reports Credit Karma is
challenging Experian in the market for
personal credit information

fraud protection V-key provides
multi-factor authentication and payment
security solutions for mobile applications
payments/e-commerce Klarna is
changing internet retail with a unique
payment proposition that lets consumers
receive goods before they pay
fi
 nancial advice Scalable Capital
reduces the costs of expensive faceto-face advice by using algorithms to
make decisions about when and in
what to invest
insurance Trov is an on-demand,
app-based insurance provider for
personal belongings; it forms part of a
growing Insurance Technology
(InsurTech) sector.

All this action is worrying incumbents

whose long unchallenged run has
weakened their ability to adapt and evolve
effectively, as emerging technologies do to
finance what they have already done to a
range of other industries. As with other
sectors, this fertile period of tech-enabled
disintermediation of finance is responding
to pent-up demand for change in a part of
the economy that has been resistant to
altering the status quo.
GEOMETRIC, NOT ARITHMETIC,
GROWTH
The term exponential growth is often
used to characterise the FinTech
landscapes extremely rapid success stories
and rising valuations. For example, Lufax
is a Chinese peer-to-peer lender founded
in 2012. It made loans of $24m in year one,
$538m in year two, and $2.3bn in year three
(Jones 2014). At its peak, that represents
2100% growth. In 2015, Lufax surpassed
10m registered users and in January 2016,
after its most recent funding round, was
valued at $18.5bn.
Exponential growth is a profound concept.
Intel founder Gordon Moore forecast in the
1960s that computer chips would double in
transistor density every two years. For 50
years, Moores Law has held true. The
principle is visible in many science and tech
fields. The cost of computer storage, the
cost of sequencing a base pair of DNA
molecules, the price of bandwidth these
and other metrics are examples of how
exponential growth in processing power
has cut costs.

Look at Netflix. Blockbuster [a video hiring chain] was huge! And now? Gone.
Spotify is doing the same in the music industry. The established players
always say, We are safe, nothing can touch us.
Dr Dominik Steinkuehler, Co-founder and Managing Director, Lendico

People are used to dealing with linear growth. When a company like
TransferWise has 1% of FX transactions in Europe, people say thats nothing.
But it, like Receipt Bank, is growing exponentially. That 1% becomes a huge
number in a short space of time. The compound interest fools people.
Michael Wood, Co-founder, Receipt Bank

2. New banks are launching

A sign of the growing maturity

of FinTech is the emergence
of app-based, user design
focused banks.

A sign of the growing maturity of FinTech is

the emergence of new banks. The logic is
attractive: a bank that starts from ground
zero can use the latest technology and
business models. By contrast, high street
banks are encumbered by a branch
network, legacy software and systems. In
practice, launching a bank is hard and does
not rely on new technology alone: there are
also regulatory hurdles to overcome. It had
been 100 years since the UK had last issued
a new banking licence when newcomer
Metro Bank began trading in 2010.
Today, banking provision has moved
beyond physical branches. Open-access
platforms allow software developers to
create their own apps and straight-through
processing for a highly automated loan
process. An example is Fidor Bank, a digital
bank founded in Germany, which operates
online-only. Fidor has a set of Application
Protocol Interfaces (APIs) that allow
software developers to become partners
and build services and tools that link into
Fidors platform. This enhances Fidors offer
by, for example, providing crowdfinance,
peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and
cryptocurrency services on top of a bank
account. This approach seems to be
working, given that by the time it launched
in the UK in 2016 Fidor had already
amassed 100,000 customers since its 2009
debut. Fidor recently announced that it had
been acquired by Frances second largest
bank, Groupe BPCE, a move that will to
support its international expansion plans.

The UK is home to a number of online-only

bank start-ups. Atom Bank, led by the
former chief executive of First Direct Bank
and the co-founder of Metro Bank, is a
mobile-app-based bank: it has no call
centre, no branches. It also boasts a recent
45m investment from Spanish bank BBVA.
Atom is by no means alone and is launching
in the UK against at least four rivals:
Mondo, Starling, Tandem and Secco, each
of which offers a unique take on banking.
Tandem Bank, which secured Financial
Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential
Regulation Authority (PRA) accreditation in
November 2015, provides a good example
of how the new breed of banks are setting
themselves apart. Created by a co-founder
of FinTech remittance service provider
Azimo and a former Capital One Bank
director, Tandem is committed to creating
an app-based retail banking service
proposition that is personalised to help its
users identify money-saving opportunities.
This is in marked contrast to the traditional
UK retail banking sector that it is
challenging, which is more commonly
associated with vigorous sales tactics and
suboptimal customer experiences. Tandem
hosts regular events, such as build it break
it breakfasts, and has a community of over
5,000 co-founders who have signed up to
contribute to the co-design of the ideal
banking experience. Demonstrating its
popularity, it also raised 2.3 million through
a crowdfunding campaign that reached
850,000 within 10 seconds of its launch.

3. London is a key player,

but keep an eye on Asia

There are many FinTech centres around

the world but global progress is disjointed
some jurisdictions are powering ahead,
while others are emerging and gathering
pace. According to accountancy firm EY,
the four core attributes required for a
FinTech ecosystem to thrive are: pools
of high-quality talent; availability of a mix
of financial resources; the right type of
policy support; and enough end user
demand (EY 2016).

Pools of high-quality talent;

availability of a mix of financial
resources; the right type of
policy support and enough end
user demand allow FinTech
centres to thrive.

Currently, the US dominates the landscape,

thanks to California the home of the
global technology sector and New York.
China and India have begun to draw in
more investment, $4.2bn in 2015, to
challenge North Americas dominance.
Singapore has also become a major
FinTech hub in Asia-Pacific as both a
regional base for global FinTech firms and
for national start-ups. In May 2016, the
Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)
and the FCA signed a cooperation
agreement, referred to as a FinTech
bridge. This agreement sets out how the
two authorities can share knowledge about
engagement with certain types of company
and co-design innovative approaches that
help nurture, develop and internationalise
FinTech businesses.

Yet despite the near-term uncertainty cast

over the city by the UKs recent referendum
on EU membership, it is Londons
continued status as a global financial
centre and growing relevance as a tech
entrepreneurship hub, combined with the
countrys disposition towards adopting new
technology, that has seen London cement
its position as a leading centre for FinTech.
In 2015, UK-based companies raised
$962m (KMPG 2016).Eileen Burbidge,
partner at Passion Capital, a VC firm and
HM Treasurys special envoy for FinTech,
noted of London: The city has become
such a tech powerhouse because it excels
over other tech hubs around the world.
London combines the technology and
digital innovation of Silicon Valley with the
Wall Street financing heritage of New York
and the policymaking of Washington DC
all in one phenomenal city.
Elsewhere, countries such as the
Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and
Israel have become highly developed
FinTech hubs. eToro, for example, a global
social trading network, has established
divisions in multiple territories, including
Russia and China.

Figure 3.1: FinTech VC investment 2015 (US$)

United Kingdom
962m

Germany
193m

USA

China

7.3bn

2.7bn

India

1.5bn

Africa
55m

Source: KPMG 2016, Tracxn 2016, Finextra 2016

South East Asia

151m

FinTech transforming finance

As the final outcome

of the UKs split from
Europe is as yet unknown,
and unlikely to become
definitive for at least
24 months after formal
separation proceedings
have begun, so too are
possible consequences.

London is a key player, but keep an eye on Asia

BREXIT: THE IMPACT ON FINTECH IN

THE UK
Britains referendum decision to leave the
EU has sparked many forecasts about the
impact on FinTech. Will Berlin or Amsterdam
become a more attractive home for
European FinTech start-ups thanks to their
single market access, which a post-leave UK
may end up renouncing? Or, will the UK and
London keep powering on, unperturbed by
the uncertainty and maybe even buoyed by
a newfound internationalism?
The truth is likely to sit somewhere between
the two extremes of doom and bloom.
What is currently certain is that it is too early
to tell. As the final outcome of the UKs split
from Europe is as yet unknown, and unlikely
to become definitive for at least 24 months
after formal separation proceedings have
begun, so too are possible consequences.
Two areas for concern are recruitment and
regulatory integration. While recruitment
may become an issue, with FinTech facing
similar issues to other sectors accustomed
to hiring from the EU, the actual final detail
of working arrangements are not yet
known. At present, FinTech is estimated to
employ 66,000 people in the UK with
approximately one-third coming from
Europe. London benefits from the UKs
flexible employment arrangements and its
position as an unrivalled global destination
in which to work and play, but it is also
afflicted by exorbitant living costs. Although

the final Brexit outcome is some way off, it

would be remiss of companies to fail to
plan for the future. Among its members
surveyed by UK FinTech trade body,
Innovate Finance, 47% strongly agreed or
agreed that in light of the referendum
result they were considering relocating
jobs and expanding their teams primarily
outside the UK (Innovate Finance 2016).
Secondly, there is the regulatory angle.
The possible loss of passporting rights for
UK FinTech firms permission for those
with banking licences to operate across
EU borders is a concern for those
operating in multiple European territories.
Furthermore, increased regulatory
burden from a lack of harmonisation in
certain areas, including data legislation
and payment services, could dampen
growth prospects, add costs and lessen
investor appetite.
These potential downsides should be
tempered by positive factors unlikely to
disappear overnight that have established
the UK as a world-leading FinTech centre.
For example, the UKs regulatory
environment, under the auspices of the
FCA, is conducive to finding innovative and
proactive ways of nurturing the sector. On
balance, FinTech companies with global
ambitions already established in London
will probably be undeterred, maintaining
Londons attractiveness for the industry
long into the future.

4. Asset management is now consumer-friendly

Investors now have access

via digital platforms to techenabled investment approaches
that are transforming the sector.

In the pre-FinTech era, only a dedicated

minority of consumers had the tools at their
disposal to understand where their money
was invested. This has now changed.
Availability of financial information, access
via digital platforms to tech-enabled
investment approaches and deep reductions
in the fee structures traditionally found in
the industry are transforming the sector. A
number of FinTech companies, including
well-known names such as Wealthfront and
Betterment, which each hold billions of
dollars of assets under management, have
emerged, offering low-cost advice for retail
investors. These companies use algorithms
to create diversified portfolios for investors
that take into consideration their degree of
risk appetite and automatically rebalance
portfolios to maintain the level of risk
within defined parameters.

Cost is a major selling point as the services

dramatically undercut human financial
advisers. For example, at British investment
platform Nutmeg, fees are below 1%,
investments can be withdrawn at any time
without incurring large charges and all
information about performance and fees is
easily accessible.
FinTech is also shifting bargaining
power towards consumers, who now
have reduced reliance on intermediaries
for information. Alongside a lower cost,
direct access to information allows
customers to get what they need, when
they need it changing behaviours and
opening up new business models. For
example, eToro, all trades and portfolios
are open and visible, allowing traders to
mimic the top performers.

Traditionally, you would change your fund manager once every two or three
years. With eToro, people change who they copy maybe two or three times a
month. When you copy an investor with a great record there are zero fees.
No 2 and 20 brokerage.
Yoni Assia, Founder, eToro

5. Blockchain and the distributed ledger

It is the distributed ledger

of blockchain that has the
potential to alter the world
of finance radically.

Blockchain is the underlying distributed

ledger technology that underpins Bitcoin a
peer-to-peer currency generated, or mined,
by computers solving mathematical puzzles.
It is the distributed ledger of blockchain
that, according to some, has the potential
to alter the world of finance radically.
A CHAIN OF BLOCKS
The distributed ledger is a database of
assets or transactions that is shared with a
network so that all parties have their own
identical copy of the ledger. When a
change is made to the ledger, every copy
of the ledger across the network is
updated almost simultaneously.
In the case of blockchain, each transaction,
or database entry, is recorded as a block
of data, and each new block has an
encrypted copy of the previous block
within it, so connecting the two together.
Blocks are then linked together using
cryptographic signatures, creating a chain
of activity or transactions that are timestamped, distributed according to their
nature and tamper-proof.
In short, blockchain creates an
incorruptible ledger of blocks of
information, and the information it stores
can be potentially anything, from the
ownership of works of art, to copyright
information and financial transactions.
Distributed ledgers can be public or
private. Bitcoin was based on a public
model, so anyone could own a copy of the
ledger and update it (Rae 2016).

Blockchain and other new

technologies will have a marked
impact on financial systems.
We want to ensure [that] those
systems remain trusted, as well
as evolutionary.
David Barnes, Global Managing Director
for Public Policy, Deloitte

10

A SOURCE OF FUTURE INNOVATION

In essence, blockchain has four strengths.
1. It is an open book anyone who has
agreed to join a database underpinned
by blockchain can, without permission,
access all the information the database
includes, making it easy to investigate
who has done what.
2. It is distributed there can be millions of
copies, all identical, and each participant
may own one. All copies are updated with
new transactions as they occur, without
the approval of a central authority.
3. It is secure updating the blockchain
involves complex algorithms and
changes made to the ledger are
individually immutable.
4. It has low cost as the blockchain is
distributed over a network and not
controlled by one single authority,
overheads are low.
Blockchain could become the digital
infrastructure for everything from
processing payments and trading shares to
verification and even land title registration.
Some areas of finance appear ripe for
blockchain disruption, such as back-office
processes. A recent study by Autonomous
Research estimates that within five years
blockchain could allow for $16bn of cost
savings by simplifying back-office and
settlement processes (Autonomous
Research LLP 2016).
A modification of the original blockchain
technology private, or permissioned,
distributed ledgers goes some way to
explaining the flurry of recent innovation
activity in FinTech. Whereas a public
distributed ledger, as developed for
bitcoin, is visible to everyone and does not
have barriers to participation, private
ledgers can be used by a closed group of
participants to monitor and record
transactions among themselves.

6. Old banks are striking back

The banks recognise the

challenge and are facing up
to the challenge with a mix of
adaptation, acquisition and,
increasingly, collaboration.

Do FinTech challengers pose a threat to

the high street banks? Their backers
clearly believe a niche exists. For some
commentators, the reliability of the
incumbent banks is underrated. The
banks themselves recognise the
challenge and believe they can face it,
with a mix of adaptation, acquisition and,
increasingly, collaboration.
Bank-supported corporate venture capital
(CVC) has become one of the tools used to
support this type of innovation and
collaboration. CVC is direct investment in
start-ups that provides sponsor institutions
with a stake in innovative ideas that could,
if successful, produce products and
services back to parts of their businesses.
A host of institutions, including Citibank,
UBS, Barclays and DBS Bank, are using a
range of different techniques to engage
with FinTech start-ups. Innovation labs,
challenge prizes, venture funds,
accelerators and workspace hubs have
been launched around the world in an
attempt to attract and nurture future talent
and tap into potential big ideas. Whatever
the reaction, among all market participants

11

there is growing acceptance of the need

for partnership, connecting the disruptive
innovation of FinTech with the benefits that
come from incumbents scale and reach.
Can banks adapt fast enough? Opinions
vary along a spectrum, from the more
conservative who believe banks will
remain central to the doom-mongers who
believe the end is nigh. Some are confident
that banks will be able to evolve and have
the incentives and resources to do so.
The process of change will be expensive.
It has been estimated that IT spending by
financial services companies will reach
480bn globally in 2016, with more than
half of the total spending coming from the
banking sector (IDC 2016). One would be
hard pressed to find a large financial
institution that does not have a billiondollar tech infrastructure investment plan
in place. Deutsche Bank, for example,
has committed to a 10-year, multi-billiondollar IT programme with Hewlett Packard
to re-engineer its wholesale banking arm.
Arguably, all this spending is not
necessarily well directed and the sceptics
are not impressed.

Its about collaboration, learning, and spreading an entrepreneurial culture

in the bank as well as making a financial return. Banks can benefit through
collaboration. We can bring our huge scale to start-ups. Winning user
adoption is a huge challenge for start-ups.
Richard Brown, Partner, Santander InnoVentures

Were in the cycle where the Empire Strikes Back, where the Goliaths
embrace the Davids.
Julie Meyer, Chief Executive, Ariadne Capital

I recently saw a job advertisement for a Swiss bank looking for a Fortran
programmer. Its [a programming language] thats not even taught at
universities anymore.
Dr Dominik Steinkuehler, Co-founder and Managing Director, Lendico

7. Regulation is an obstacle

Progressive regulatory practices

combined with a growing
RegTech sector are taking on
traditional bottlenecks.

Some FinTech companies are finding

themselves caught up in legal wrangles.
New banks are facing delays in obtaining
licences. Prohibitive peer-to-peer lending
rules in certain countries have dampened
the sectors prospects. For example, in the
US, the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business
Startup (JOBS) Act, set out to modify
securities legislation and in so doing allow
for equity-based crowdfunding to begin to
achieve its potential. The long-awaited
Title III of the Act, passed in 2016, which
aims to open up equity crowdfunding more
broadly to retail investors, has been
deemed by some to fall far short of
expectations (Barnett 2016).
Since October 2014, the UKs FCA has
been running its own innovation hub,
Project Innovate, to help entrepreneurs
navigate these rules. In May 2016, the FCA
began operation of its regulatory

12

sandbox, which is referred to as a limited

safe space where firms can experiment
with new products and services without the
fear of losses attached to an untested
commercial launch that could end in
failure. This is an approach that is also
being applied by MAS in Singapore.
The burgeoning RegTech sector is radically
altering the way in which regulatory
requirements are fulfilled. Increasing
automation alongside better interpretation
of, and compliance with, a growing number
of regulatory requirements will reduce
costs and simplify an area of burgeoning
complexity. Improved ability to interpret
large amounts of data is essential for
effective risk management, and RegTech
providers, much like their FinTech peers,
can provide lower-cost, intelligent
solutions fit for a data-driven and digital
operating environment.

Expanding has not been easy because regulations are different in each
market. We had to devise a different regulatory solution in each market. In
South Africa and the Netherlands we applied for credit licences. In others,
like Germany, you need a full banking licence.
Dr Dominik Steinkuehler, Founder and Managing Director, Lendico

8. What does this mean for professional

accountants and finance professionals?
The sound analysis that
professional accountants
provide will prove essential to
FinTech as it becomes evermore
embedded in the fabric of the
economy and society.

Professional accountants are adapting to

FinTech. For example, bookkeeping has
been completely automated and cloud
accounting platforms are now universal.
New Zealand-based Xero provides a
cloud-accounting and reporting platform,
while Receipt Bank, from the UK, enables
invoices and receipts to be processed via
smartphone photos and email.
The plethora of rules facing FinTech
companies also present an opportunity for
finance professionals. For example,
Kingston Smith, an accountancy practice,
has a dedicated team of FinTech
accountants to help with the specificities of
compliance, audit and tax. The firms roster
is complemented with advisers to assist
companies in developing processes and
structures suited to the rigours of the sector.

13

 MERGING RISKS AND THE

E
STEADY HAND
A number of recent high-profile shocks
have shown up the risks that exist in this
space. Powa technologies, for example,
an e-commerce firm once valued at $2.7bn,
ended up in administration in February 2016.
The resignation of the CEO of P2P lending
firm Lending Club, which managed
$1.15bn-worth of funds as of December
2015, over alleged internal mismanagement
of loans, has further highlighted the
importance of good ethical conduct and
sound financial management practices.
There are also related issues that need to
be understood better, such as the extent to
which the technology platform plays the
role of a pure intermediary, or whether the
firm operating it bears any responsibility

FinTech frees us to work on better things. Accountants are now in the

data analytics sphere. We are in software procurement. We can help clients
with cash flow, with funding. We can work with clients so they sell more,
and structure their business in the best way. We are now free to become
consultants and FDs [finance directors].
Bivek Sharma, Head of Small Business Accounting, KPMG

FinTech transforming finance

What does this mean for professional

accountants and finance professionals?

for the quality of loans that are passing

through it (or indeed has any other type of
connection with these). These issues link to
how the regulatory framework for some of
these products will evolve and form an area
where professional accountants can
contribute relevant perspectives.
Equally, as FinTech firms become more
mature for example, exploring the
possibility of taking steps towards a banking
licence the professional accountant can
be their first port of call for explaining the
relevant regulatory dimensions.
 IGITAL CAPABILITIES ENHANCING
D
PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTANTS
FinTech is one of the major drivers of a wider
digitisation shift that is accelerating the rate
of change within the profession. This shift is
enhancing the value that the profession can
create, particularly for start-ups and SMEs.
For example, online, real-time trading
combined with outsourcing of stock holding
and logistics mean that sale, payment and

14

provisioning can take place at the same

time, greatly simplifying the administration
of sales and purchase accounting processes.
Traditional valuation techniques are less
applicable to the technology and FinTech
sectors, where the five, largely intangible,
elements of brand, intellectual property, data
assets, client numbers and recurring income
form the basis for valuations, particularly
where initial public offerings (IPOs) and
mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity is
concerned. Professional accountants can
create value in this fast-moving sector, not
just through supporting effective fundraising
and management of capital to enable
growth, but also by playing an essential role
when compiling these types of valuation.
The sound analysis that professional
accountants provide will prove essential to
FinTech as it becomes evermore embedded
in the fabric of the economy and society.
This enhanced remit, accelerated by the
coming together of the financial and
technological worlds, must be embraced.

Accounting responsibilities are also growing to include new data-driven areas

such as carbon accounting and cryptocurrencies and associated growing
volumes of data have increased reporting and regulatory requirements.
Steve Bailey, Founder, Carbon Architecture

The way that you get to the future is to do what every entrepreneur
does. They take out a clean sheet of paper and they ask themselves some
fundamental questions. How should this industry work? And what do I know
for a fact to be the future of my business? Once you start trying to build the
future from the future, then you start doing it differently.
Julie Meyer, Managing Partner, Ariadne Capital

References

15

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Autonomous Research LLP (n.d.), Blockchain: Back-office Block-buster

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Rae, D (2016), Beyond Bitcoin: Blockchain and the Distributed Ledger,

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PI-FINTECH

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