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Digital Health Ecosystems Part 3: Emerging Possibilities, Unfettered Potential

  This concluding part extends the narrative from insurtech orchestrators (Part-1) and pioneers like Discovery’s Vitality (Part-2) to emerging ecosystem impacts, based on examples of Manulife and John Hancock, its US subsidiary. Customer-focused health ecosystems are being designed to seamlessly deliver the right care in the right setting at the right time. Globally, they are […]

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apple, Consumer Banking, credit cards, data, goldman sachs, Marcus, WealthTech

`You Can Marcus`

Goldman Sachs is one to watch.

It is an example of how sticky a banking brand name is – It has shredded off scandals in the past and the recent Malaysian state-run fund scandal seems no different. Sack Goldmans – a 2010 slogan – did not stick.

Goldman Sachs is an example of how an incumbent builds a Fintech business positioned in the value stack below its established competence – an investment bank getting into retail banking and wealth management for mass affluent & the hoi polloi.

Goldman Sachs is an example of how an incumbent financial institution can grow Data pools by offering free access to its analytical tools SecDB – explained in my article in the 2018 WealthTech Book  `Empowering Asset Owners and the Buy Side`.

Goldman Sachs is an example of how an incumbent financial institution can grow Data pools by partnering with Apple on a credit card – Apple has 900 million devices and it is expected that the Apple Card will bring 21 million users to GS by year end[1].

Goldman Sachs is a publicly traded company that is trading right now below book value and there are more than enough GS analysts out there to get estimates on the revenues from the different GS `consumer banking` new initiatives.

For now, Goldman Sachs has been building up aggressively deposits (the usual way of offering above-market deposit rates when entering a new market). The 3yr old deposit business has accumulated now $46billion across the US and the UK! The expected growth is in the order of $10billion per year going forward.

Marcus has issued $5billion in personal loans. These are unsecured loans that naturally, may worry shareholders, who typically get nervous easily (even though this is crumbs when taken in context).

The credit card part of the Goldman Sachs business is newer and could also grow at double-digit annual rates. Goldman Sachs knows well that credit card lending gets favorable regulatory treatment – less capital is required against this kind of debt – and as long as this holds it is a win-win situation. Why? Simply because Goldman Sachs will get their hands on valuable data from retailers and their shoppers, in order to process the Apple credit card application.

Goldman Sachs hits two birds with one stone. It gets to issue consumer debt on a global scale with lighter capital requirements, and it gets to process new, valuable consumer data globally.

The Apple & Goldman Sachs card economic terms are not known. Even if they are not that juicy for Goldman Sachs and even though the GS logo is on the back of the Apple card; the consumer data access and processing from 40 countries that this brings to the table is invaluable.

The Apple & Goldman card will grow an important global data pool for Goldman Sachs to leverage in its planned WealthTech offering.

In case you haven’t noticed, Marcus has been moved into the Goldman Sachs asset management unit, which will be renamed the consumer and investment management division. The October 2018 memo says that Marcus has plans to “launch a broader wealth management offering.”

A global consumer outreach is being built in preparation of this broader wealth management offering. And for all those concerned about a growing unsecured loan book, Goldman has great risk management experience and could with great elegance securitize part of this debt, once there is enough to do so. Elizabeth Dilts and Anna Irrera, raise this point too in ` Goldman’s Apple pairing furthers bank’s mass market ambitions`.

Marcus is a brand whose heritage is in risk management and investment banking. They will use these competences to manage growth in their retail-focused wealth management offering. This is a huge advantage compared to Fintechs that started with unbundling a specific financial service (be it loans, or deposits, or investments) and is now, growing by rebundbling additional services (e.g. adding robo-advisors to loans, or deposits to trading, ect).

I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.

I have written about Marcus several times.

Just after the launch of Marcus in late 2016, Will Goldman become a verb? Watch the Marcus ads!

Just after the Marcus rebranding and UK launch in Fall 2018, Welcome Marcus to the rebranded Goldman asset mgt division and to the UK

Screen Shot 2019-04-25 at 10.01.03.png

I must however, confess that I have no idea how to interpret the new Marcus Campaign ‘You Can Money’.  Is this an example of new Fintech language? If you have other such rarities, please send them to me, as I collect them. Maybe we can tokenize them, with the hope that they become the next non-fungible craze.

[1] A Seeking Alpha article that includes several links, for anyone who wants to dive into more details https://seekingalpha.com/article/4251792-buy-goldman-sachs-apple-card

Sources: CNBC, Barrons, Financial Brand, Crowdfundinsider, The economist

Efi Pylarinou is the founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer.

Subscribe by email to join the 25,000 other Fintech leaders who read our research daily to stay ahead of the curve. Check out our advisory services (how we pay for this free original research).

alibaba, apple, apple card, Consumer Banking, credit card, Payments, techfin

The battle of Fintech is over, the battle of TechFin is about to begin

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Jack Ma famously called Alibaba and their tech giant peer group – TechFins, declaring their intention to sneak into financial services. Banks were too focused on their battle with Fintechs then, that they perhaps were blindsided by the rise of TechFins. The first quarter of 2019 has been eventful, with major headlines from big tech firms like Facebook, Apple and Alipay.

Over the past few years, since the Fintech boom has been afoot, talks of Fintechs vs Banks have been rife. But only when China saw leap frog moments in its payments landscape, via, Alipay and WeChat, did the industry (both banks and Fintechs) pay any attention to the big tech giants. I have always said that the Tech giants had two big advantages.

They have what the banks don’t have – agility in innovation, and they have what the Fintechs don’t have – Massive Customer base (and their data).

The challenge in exploding into Financial Services for the tech giants was that, it was non-core to them. However, the evolution of Fintech use cases, and the seamless integration of these applications into consumer’s routine, have made them almost invisible. So, all the tech giants had to do was pick use cases where they could be mostly invisible – payments was a low hanging fruit.

Two weeks ago Barclays and Alipay announced their partnership. Alipay will now be available with several merchants across the UK, and allow for seamless payment experience for half a million Chinese residents, tourists and students in the UK.

“Barclaycard, which processes nearly half of the UK’s credit and debit card transactions, today announced a new agreement with Alipay, the world’s leading payment and lifestyle platform, which will allow retailers to accept Alipay transactions in stores across the UK “

The partnership is for UK retailers to accept Alipay payments without replacing their existing point-of-sale system. Alipay users on the other hand will enjoy the benefits of the seamless journey that they have at home.

The other key event of the last couple of weeks has been THE APPLE CARD. If you haven’t yet heard, good for you and I suggest you google at your peril. But atleast for me, the social media reaction was a bit too overwhelming. My take on the announcement –

THE GOOD

  • Secure card numbers – many of us have faced credit card frauds, but most of us wouldn’t have thought of getting rid of the card details from the face of the card.
  • No fees – Really? Is there a catch? I still can’t believe that. Especially on international transactions.
  • User experience in staying on top of expenses, card balance, interest etc.,
  • Data privacy – Apple have declared that they would stay away from customer data

THE BAD

  • Cashback of 2% is underwhelming. Many providers, including Amazon offer better benefits.

THE UGLY

  • Plastic cards? Let’s all go back to the cave. For how long are we going to hang on to plastic credit cards? That was perhaps the most disappointing thing about the launch for me. And the worst part is, the card only supports chip and pin and won’t support contactless.
  • No Android compatibility – of course, they have always been a closed ecosystem.

Irrespective of the disappointing aspects of the card, I believe, Apple has rocked the boat, and banks are feeling the heat. They are cash rich, know how to create digital+physical products, have a brand following, and can disrupt payments in a bigger way, if they chose to.

With IBM entering the remittance market through World Wire, Facebook testing out Whatsapp payments, Alipay entering the UK market in a big way, and Apple’s recent announcement, the Penny should have Dropped for the banks. And the realization should hit them that Fintechs were more of a distraction, the real battle has just begun.

Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a Venture Capital investor at Green Shores Capital focusing on Inclusion and a podcast host.

I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.

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