Fintech vs banks — a possible strategy to win at scale
A blueprint for scaling a Challenger Bank in America and hitting a $25bn+ valuation
It’s getting easier to launch a Challenger Bank but harder to scale one — it’s not enough to be new, you have got to be different too
Published in
9 min readJun 5, 2019
There are 11,652 financial institutions in the US as of April 2018 a number that has dropped significantly from 1984 when FDIC-insured financial institutions reached their peak of 17,900, while the number of credit unions apexed in 1969 at 23,866. Mergers and failures has been reshaping the market for decades. During this time the largest banks have grown in their share of the market from 16% in 1994 to 59% in 2018.
Competition is fierce with 7 banks spending near or over $1bn in marketing annually, with 2 (Chase and Amex) spending in excess of $2bn.
