Effective communication between corporates and their banks is essential as it enables banks to fine tune their service approach to businesses  and enables businesses to communicate their requirements. However as we all know the day to day work invariably gets in the way and the urgent often displaces the ideal.  A group of experienced bankers who have suffered at the hands of poor communication and less than optimal feedback loops with their business customers, have set out to solve the...

We all hate penalties, most of us are familiar with that stomach turning feeling of impotence that strike us when when we are hit with one. Yet, cynical critics may say that penalties exist as an integral part of the business models of many companies behind our bills and invoices.  60% of our monthly income goes into paying bills and invoices an activity that torments 100% of adults. Seems like a widespread problem in search for a solution with a significant addressable market. Enter Bill...

The disruption of the financial industry has come in waves. First there was the Fintech wave, where those taking the pulse of the market were worried that banks and other financial institutions would die by a thousand cuts as a myriad of fintechs took nibbles at their marketshare. Then there was the Big Tech wave, where Google, Facebook Amazon and Apple appeared to be readying themselves for an offensive play with their sleek customer experiences, deep pockets, massive user bases and superior...

The majority of us are unaffected by financial crime, at least not directly. Unless we’ve had our bank accounts hacked, or our identity stolen and used for fraud,  it’s unlikely that we would’ve suffered at the hands of money launderers and criminals who cheat the financial system. Yet financial crime and money laundering is a significant and pervasive problem with estimates placing it at around 2 -5 % of the Global GDP! Thats anywhere between 800 billion and 2 trillion USD every year in...

Saying that digitalisation has revolutionised financial services is to state the obvious. What’s not so obvious however, is that much has changed about how Financial Institutions have gone about digitalising their services. In hindsight we can see that automating away customer interactions, replacing them with bots and online forms has optimised operations at the expense of distancing customers from their financial service providers. After an initial wave of "exploratory" digitalisation, the...

Welcome to the ownership economy where you will be able to capitalize on your existing digital assets in previously unimaginable ways! Web 3 continues to be the talk of the town as more clarity emerges on how this technological revolution will reshape the way we use and think about the internet.   As decentralized models for interaction and transaction between parties continue to take hold, visionaries and innovators are developing the services of the future that will allow us to capitalize...

How do you reach 1/3 of your addressable local market in 7 years? Aur, the Icelandic peer to peer and online payment solution has managed to do just that with the characteristic mix of elegance, simplicity and powerful functionality that consistently sets Nordic innovation aside.  One of the most consistent findings that we hear from entrepreneurs and startup founders is that if you want people to adopt your product, you need to make it as simple and frictionless as possible. Aur, which was...

For many years Estonia has quietly but steadily built a name for itself in the startup world. With its 10 Unicorns, and its astounding 1 unicorn for every 130,000 inhabitants this small but extremely progressive nation is now capturing the attention of the world.  Nordic Fintech Magazine recently traveled to the wonderful capital city of Tallinn to try to puzzle together what makes Estonia the Startup Nation. And who better to start with in our quest to uncover the ingredients of Estonia’s...

What is the best way to solve the problem of hidden fees  in insurance? Simple, get rid of fees altogether.  Exciting changes are happening in the insurance space. An industry that traditionally has been very analogue and opaque is reinventing itself through digitalisation, creating simpler, more accessible customer experiences and rethinking customers needs when it comes to protecting themselves against risks.    We recently had the chance to sit down with Sophie Bohr Groenbaek , CEO and...

We have been closely following the democratization of wealth management for some time.  Demand from retail customers for new and more accessible products that allow them to build wealth has exploded in recent years. A number of visionaries have seized the opportunity to create services that enable people to get their foot in the investment ladder and start building wealth. Within this trend we’ve observed the emergence of companies that provide easy and convenient access to stock, crypto...

Payments was one of the first areas in Financial services disrupted by digitalisation. In the past 10 years technology has not only changed our relationship with credit, debit and cash, but has also lowered the barriers to entry into the industry, unleashing fierce competition amongst payment companies for customers and merchants. The niche focus of challengers has also accelerated the fragmentation of new modalities of payments in the e-commerce space fundamentally changing the traditional...

The trend in Financial Services to decarbonize industries with a little nudge from capital flows has been thoroughly embraced by the financial system in the west. As investment funds and assets managers rushed to label their products as "Sustainable" in the hope to capture the attention of investors with a conscience, the ugly face of green washing started to show its true colours. The lack of standards and home grown measuring methods have caused all manner of confusion and ambiguity in the...

"It is in payments, that we all, rich or poor, have an interest in money.” We all have a relationship with money, whether we like it or not, money is a way in which we communicate our wants, preferences, ideals and priorities. However, as pivotal as money is to civilization, we rarely stop to think about the fact that what is so foundational about money is not money in an of itself, but the way in which we move it around.   In this fascinating conversation with Natasha de Terán, Co-Author...

Embedded finance will be everywhere, quite literally. As this new trend sweeps through financial services, it promises to turn every company, inside and outside Financial Services into a Fintech and to turn every business into a new channel to market for financial products.  With the promise of making financial products like payments, loans, insurance and even investment available to consumers as part as other industries customer journeys, Embedded finance has the allure of not only adding a...

🇮🇸“We are the geographical midpoint between the Nordics and North America so we combine the go getter attitude of the US and Nordic values“ 👈 Brace yourselves! If you’ve never heard about the mightily innovative fintech scene in Iceland 🇮🇸, that’s about to change. Because of its geographical position Iceland presents a unique and unequivocal mix of entrepreneurship and creativity, masterfully wielded to disrupt the status quo across all industries. A land that has historically relied on its...

We are only scraping the surface of what technology can do to completely overhaul industries. Funding for startups has traditionally lacked innovation, but new disruptors in this space are combining the power of data and technology to radically improve precision and transparency in debt funding for companies that are changing the world. We had a wonderful opportunity to chat to Elin Bäcklund, Forbes 30 under 30 and CTO at ArK Kapital to find out what it is that attracts her about working in...

The role of Marketing and Communications in any financial services organisation cannot be understated. It is this function that opens a door between the output of all internal processes and the needs of the customers.  Most importantly, this is the only function tasked with creating emotional relationships with customers, and to do so successfully, requires a deep psychological understanding of peoples' highly emotional and highly personal relationship with money. In this fascinating...

We often marvel at the heroic feats of entrepreneurship that founders and innovators achieve when they combine their determination and execution ability to bring new products and services into existence. However, for most of us, how capital flows behind the scene to fuel all this innovation is still a bit of a mystery. We had a chance to catch up with Mathias Kaasgaard, Investment Associate at Vækstfonden who was able to expertly explain the role of Venture Capital and how it powers the...

Step aside. The new generation is coming with tall orders and high demands and financial institutions better be willing to listen! We’ve recently been covering the trend of democratisation of Financial Services, especially within the wealth management space. A number of movements, especially amongst the younger generations, like the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), the Antiwork movement are causing millennials and Gen Zeters to rethink their approach to earning, saving and...

Having to wait 30, 60 or even 90 days for a company to do good on their invoices often without the certainty that the payment will come can be critical to SMEs. The wealth of data available to companies these days is bolstering the creation insights and predictive power businesses have at their fingertips. One of the areas in finance that is seeing an enormous amount of transformation from more data and new ways of putting it to use is the area of credit worthiness and credit risk assessment....

Culture is changing faster than ever before and with it people's aims and ambitions. Strong trends amongst the young, like the FIRE - Financial Independence Retire early and the Antiwork movements are not only disrupting the whole idea of what it means to work for a living, but also what it means to accumulate wealth. And as we all know, where there is demand, supply follows. A new wave of disruption is hitting wealth management, a part of financial services that was traditionally reserved...

The volatility of Crypto, which is typically used as an argument against the whole concept has definitely put the the whole idea of a decentralised alternative financial and monetary system to test, especially in recent days as we’ve seen heavy drops in the cryptomarket. But as the dust settles we need to start an honest and balanced conversation about the risk and benefits of new asset classes, and the revolutionary potential that new forms of capturing and exchanging value have for the...

Wonderful things happen when subject matter experts combine their knowledge with technology. A sound business model can all of a sudden become exponentially scaleable, more precise, timely and multiply its value manyfold.  Swedish Debt Funding firm ArK Kapital uses artificial intelligence to empower technology companies to grow faster, achieve their potential and make the world better for all. Its founding team of senior technologists and bankers have masterfully combined the power of data...

Some things in live were meant to go together. Peanut butter & jam, bacon & eggs, Netflix and chill. However, amongst all the things that could be harmoniously combined, one would be excused for not arriving at the conclusion that Design & Law could fit the bill. And yet, this may be one of the most revolutionary ideas we have come across in a while. It's been suggested that "Design adds value faster than it adds costs" and in this fascinating talk with the outstanding Abda...

Not long ago, online payments and specially mobile ones, required a tiresome and inefficient process of taking out your card, typing in your name, card number, expiry date and CVV. This feat was often done on a tiny phone keyboard only to find out that your payment had been declined, either because you missed a number in the long chain of characters you were forced to enter or because your bank had rejected the transaction. Things have improved significantly in the last few years as payments...