Branchenkompetenz FinTech – Hamburger Boutique PR-Agentur Frau Wenk +++

What is Fintech?

The term Fintech – short for financial technologies – describes all digital innovations in the financial services sector. It thus represents the part of the financial industry in which new technologies are used to optimise transactions, services or value chains. As the Fintech market evolves rapidly and is an ideal breeding ground for innovators, the term is often used in connection with start-ups.

Why does Fintech need PR?

The Fintech industry faces the challenge that it is difficult to distinguish clearly from related fields such as Insurtech, Wealthtech or Paytech. In the media, Fintech is often equated with companies, but not with the technologies that enable them to offer innovative financial products. There is also uncertainty about what Fintech solutions can do and how they will change our lives in the future. PR is an important vehicle for companies, both in B2B and consumer communications, to educate them about the benefits of their technologies and to dispel any fears they may have. Of course, PR also works in the direction of investors by creating visibility for the new business model, creating a competitive edge and conveying the vision of the founders.

What are the Top 5 Fintechs from Germany?

N26

The bank with account management solely by app. N26 does completely without paperwork. Setting up a checking account, paying at the supermarket checkout, transferring money – the customer can do everything with a smartphone. The Fintech app provider started 2019 with a financing round of 300 million US dollars, increasing its value to around 2.7 billion dollars.

DEPOSIT SOLUTIONS

Deposit Solutions offers an open banking platform for savings deposits under the Zinspilot brand. After registering once with Zinspilot, users can manage overnight deposits and time deposits on various accounts throughout the EU from their account. The company was founded in Hamburg in 2011 and is worth around half a billion US dollars after another round of financing in August 2018.

SOLARISBANK

Solarisbank, a Berlin-based tech company founded in 2016, which offers Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and enables its customers to individually compile various banking services via the APIs of the BaaS platform. What’s special: Solarisbank holds a banking license and is well connected in the Fintech scene with many start-ups.

FINLEAP

The Berlin holding company Finleap was founded in 2014 and sees itself as a platform for Fintech start-ups and provides start-up support for new companies (including the Solaris Bank, which emerged from Finleap). With 41.5 million US dollars, the company builder also brought in a considerable financing round in autumn 2018. The investor is the Chinese insurance group Ping An.

SMAVA

The company Smava is an online credit marketplace and also originates from the German Fintech stronghold of Berlin. As early as 2006, Alexander Artopé founded the consumer credit portal and more than ten years later caused a sensation in the Fintech scene with his negative interest rate for installment loans. According to own data, the credit comparison portal offers its users an overview of 70 bank credits and offers of private backers. In the most recent financing round in January 2018, Smava collected 65 million US dollars from investors.

The three most important events and platforms for Fintechs

PAYMENT & BANKING.COM

As early as 2012, the Payment & Banking platform was fully dedicated to the niche topic of technologies in the banking industry at the time. Visionary, as today Fintech has long outgrown its niche. This is also reflected in the number of users of the domain: Payment & Banking recorded 400,000 page impressions in 2017 alone. In addition to a glossary, infographics and a “who’s who” of the Fintech scene, the creators of the platform have been offering a podcast since 2016, which is listened to by around 35,000 interested people per month.

FINTECH WEEK

For the fourth time in a row, around 1,000 players from the Fintech industry will be coming to Hamburg for conferences, barcamps and networking events as part of Fintech Week. With many individual events, the entire city will become the nucleus of the digital future of the financial sector for five days. This year, the focus will be on diversity. The organisers would like to put the women of the Fintech sector in the spotlight.

DIGITAL FINANCE CONFERENCE

Bitkom, the Digital Association of Germany, organizes the annual Digital Finance Conference. #digifin19 presents the Fintech industry in a larger European context and looks into the future with innovative distribution channels such as mobile, voice and the IoT. The Digital Finance Conference focuses on cooperation and exchange within the European Fintech scene. News and interesting facts about the event can be found on the Digifin blog.

Everything else you need to know about Fintech

Smava boss Alexander Artopé Interview with CLUTCH Online
In an interview with CLUTCH Online, Dr. Saskia Appelhoff, Chief Marketing Officer at Raisin GmbH, reveals how brands make saving sexy and how Fintechs have changed the financial sector.
Overview of the Fintech landscape in Germany (infographic)