Transformation of conventional Banking. Opportunities and risks of Fintech companies in Asset Management (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,3, Berlin School of Economics and Law, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this work was to find out whether Fintechs are able to compete with Banks in the field of Asset Management. Companies providing Robo Advisory services are considered to be the banks of the future. Several interviews with companies working in this field have been conducted to investigate if the algorithms are prepared for the next financial crash.

This work contains 7 chapters, starting with the motivation and research question. Sec-ondly, the general situation on the market will be described, including the changes of customer behavior. This serves the purpose to give an understanding about the current market conditions. Thirdly, the banking sector will be described, considering definitions and regulations. In this work the focus will be on the German market, therefore, con-sumer behavior and details about the German retail banking industry are relevant. Sub-sequently, chapter 4 deals with asset management and the new trends in the industry. Chapter 5 describes the development of the fintech industry. Definitions and regulations of the fintech companies are part of this chapter. In chapter 6 the scientific investigation will be conducted and presented. The results will show how stable the new technologies are, in order to give an outlook for the future in the next chapter. Prospects for the future of retail banking and especially asset management will be mentioned in chapter 7. General current trends and forecasts are also part of this chapter.

Since only limited literature is available about the fintech industry and especially robo advisory, the investigation part includes a qualitative approach with interviews that have been conducted with qualified specialists that work or research in the robo advisory industry. The question of whether and how the robo advisors will survive the next fi-nancial crisis, is topic of the interviews. There has been no financial crisis that might have caused unforeseen problems for the systems, ever since the creation of robo advi-sory. Thus, it is unknown how those technologies will react to chaotic market situations. The idea was to ask companies to what extent they are prepared for a financial crisis. The findings of this investigation will deal with the possible future outline of those fintechs providing algorithm-based asset management. The question about the security framework has been answered with a view to examining the future development of the robo advisory industry.