Ask HN: What fintech area problems would you like to see solved in 2018? - rorykoehler
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gaius
I’ve seen too many fintech pitches that go something like:

Fintech: here is our amazing solution to a problem you didn’t even know you
had!

Banker: oh you mean like <some common piece of banking terminology>

Fintech: _blank stares_

A fintech that is all ex-bank who spun off to solve a problem they knew they
had, will probably succeed. A fintech that is all web devs solving problems
that they only imagine exist will not.

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rahimnathwani
This is true in many cases, because either:

A) There's no problem to be solved (which I think is your point), or

B) The problem looks unsolved because it's harder than it looks (e.g. payment
fraud).

But I imagine there are spaces (e.g. consumer payments) where a pair of fresh
eyes wouldn't suffer from either of the above.

I don't know whether companies like Revolut or Transferwise were founded by ex
retail bankers, but I could imagine someone from outside the industry
identifying the problems they solve, purely from their customer perspective.

~~~
gaius
Also C) what they propose would be illegal under the regulatory regime of at
least one jurisdiction the bank operates in, and that’s the only reason the
bank hasn’t already done it

 _could imagine someone from outside the industry identifying the problems
they solve, purely from their customer perspective_

That’s a fair point

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BjoernKW
Not exactly fintech but somewhat related: Manual bookkeeping.

I suppose though that probably short of artificial general intelligence
there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for this because bookkeeping is too
varied and complex.

If everyone agreed on a digital standard for sending invoices and receipts
that’d be a first step (no, that standard isn’t PDF). Unfortunately, as long
as there are even companies that still send paper invoices we still have a
long way to go.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Book-keeping as a whole might be too complex and varied, but you can split the
problems into smaller pieces. For a start, split accounts payable and accounts
receivable. Then, within AP, split between invoice entering objective data,
matching against purchase orders, getting payment authorization, and coding
appropriately.

Some of these part need some company-specific work flow, but not much
intelligence so can be coded by any internal dev team. But some parts (e.g.
extracting the objective info from PDF or scan) are harder but more
standardised, and could be provided as an API. Some other (allocating to the
right accounts in the GL) should be automatable for 90% of invoices, just
because most received invoices are for the same thing each month.

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segmondy
The challenge with fintech is regulation and integration.

The tech is easy, meeting compliance and getting other businesses to integrate
not so.

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marenkay
So the sad thing is fintech startups do not really solve things for now. They
just push some banks to improve their tech.

Here is a real issue: transaction speed of SEPA wire transfers.

Here is another issue: no fintech will be able to solve it, since fintechs are
no banks, and (typical for "disruptive" startups) can not solve this for the
whole system as it is a regulated system for tons of reasons.

So what could fintech really solve?

How about focussing on customer facing technology? A fintech proposing and
providing an open standard for banking apps where security and compliance is
enforced by default would at least one problem solved.

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rdlecler1
Maybe this is more regulatory or financial engineering, but I’d like to see a
solution to the 99 investor limitation for private funds.

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SirLJ
Please do not "solve" anything, I like the situation with the stock market as
is... Thanks a lot!

