This is a guest post by Matthias Kroener, a Bavarian who created Fidor Bank and then disappeared into the depths of gaming. Banking on the game The difference between gaming and gamification in banking Back in 1994, when I founded Direkt Anlage Bank (the first European discount broker) with a number of colleagues, it was […]

Check24 has recently announced that it has applied for a banking license. Although banks continue to be regarded as partners, they also want to address their customers directly with their own new products. The established banks are thus threatened with another strong competitor. On all slides of the Fidor Bank , on which we had […]

In my previous section I´ve set the groundwork by outlining the challenges faced by the banking industry today, especially in regard to the increasing demands of digitization. In this second section we’ll examine some specific strategies that incumbent banks could consider in order to meet these challenges. Of course, that list is not completed. There […]

Build, Buy or Partner: Is Change Inevitable? The financial services industry is currently facing a perfect storm of disruption and upheaval, and the challenges that lie ahead will require an unprecedented level of agility and adaptability. To survive and succeed, organizations must be ready to anticipate, prepare for and pre-empt this disruption. In this, the […]

Do you know about and are you using Google Trends? The service instantly shows how search queries change over time. This is particularly useful if you want to understand whether, when and where innovations are developing or demand is arising, in other words where trends are emerging from hype. Just try this with the term “financial […]

Innovation is the key to success for any company. But with innovation also comes a need for new leadership skills, new people skills, new processes and a focus on new opportunities. Even though the banking industry is not known for promoting a culture of innovation, it is affected by new business models, the fragmentation of traditional […]

To be successful means being open to new ideas, never standing still, and always reinventing oneself. For this reason, change and challenges are part of Fidor’s DNA. 2019 will be a particularly challenging year for the Fidor team that has successfully managed change on many occasions. This year promises to be a turning point. Let us […]