Banks, FinTechs’ Collaboration’ll Become Competition– Agbaje

• Banks, FinTechs’ Collaboration’ll Become Competition– Agbaje

The Managing Director of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Mr. Segun Agbaje, says the current collaboration between banks and financial technology firms will become competition in the future as soon as FinTechs grow big and have large customer base.

He, therefore, emphasised the need for the Deposit Money Banks in the country to become more innovative and fashion ways to generate more revenue.

Agbaje spoke in Lagos on Tuesday during the Social Media Week organised by the lender.

The GTBank MD spoke during an interaction with journalists shortly after making a presentation on, “Making Sense of a world in motion,”

He said, “Today it (the relationship between banks and FinTechs is collaboration. I think eventually it would become competition. That is because once the FinTechs become big enough and have enough of your customer base, you will become competitors. I think it is collaboration, but it would migrate to competition.”

GTBank boss said his continuous thought was how to make banking easier and seamless in a digital world.

According to him, his bank is continuously working to improve customer experience and ensure that it offers what its clients need.

Agbaje said GTBank’s aim was “to build a business model where you create a platform and partner with anybody who has a service to offer, so that if as a customer, you come into our ecosystem, you can just buy anything, you can do your banking business, you can buy your tickets, you can buy insurance, you can travel, if you want to get a 10-day loan, you can come in and do it. So, really, we want you to come into our ecosystem, maybe five times a day to do something more than banking.”

On how the spate of fraud in the country could be a challenge to banks in a fast-growing digital banking era, the top banker said, “Let me be honest to you, the percentage of transactions that are susceptible to fraud is immaterial to the larger level. So, I don’t think people should be scared. We are beginning to build more security around it and I think there are more transactions that are carried out without fraud.”