Benjamin Quinlan launched his eponymous consulting firm 10 years ago. Based in Hong Kong, he’s established Quinlan & Associates as a leading provider of advice across many aspects of digital finance here and globally.
The anniversary seemed like a great excuse to speak with him about the most important trends in that period, the impact on incumbent financial institutions, and the opportunities it has brought to users of financial services.
This conversation is wider than usual for The J.DB Report, but the advent of generative AI is clearly leading us into a new era, including fintech. It can be useful to occasionally take stock in order to put today and tomorrow into a useful context.
Timecodes:
0:00 - Ben Quinlan, Quinlan & Associates
0:21 - The early days of fintech and ideas of doing finance better
04:08 - Fintech disruptors evolving into ‘frenemy’ relationships with incumbents
07:08 - Platform economics versus siloed financial verticals, and the ‘holy grail’ of superpps
10:00 - Fintech profitability and whether successful models are universal
13:12 - Financial inclusion, access, and creating new ecosystems
17:31 - Crypto and its institutionalization
22:42 - GenAI: “the biggest disruption”
29:09 - Pricing power and how to remain different in an AI world
