
BBVA acquires Finnish banking startup Holvi - Sujan
https://info.bbva.com/en/news/general/bbva-acquires-finnish-banking-start-holvi/
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jelmerdejong
BBVA is expanding, first the acquisition of (Bank) Simple [0] and now Holvi.

One thing i'm not sure about: is this a sign that BBVA has a good digital
strategy by acquiring these neo-banks. Or does this show that a stand-alone
neo-bank is not a easy / realistic thing to accomplish (yet)? Most, if not
all, neo-banks struggle to get real customers (e.g. regular users, outside the
'TechCrunch PR wave group') and are either acquired (BBVA doing well here) or
becoming software vendors to banks, vs a challenger to banks (e.g. Moven
(bank) [1]).

[0] [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/bbva-buys-banking-
sta...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/bbva-buys-banking-start-up-
simple-for-117-million/?_r=0) [1]
[https://newsroom.accenture.com/industries/banking/accenture-...](https://newsroom.accenture.com/industries/banking/accenture-
and-moven-join-forces-to-transform-digital-banking-solutions.htm)

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Mahn
Perhaps these acquisitions are not so much a bet on "neo-banks", but rather
serve as an insurance to make sure they never grow large and pose a threat?

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ganeumann
BBVA barely had a footprint in the US before the Simple acquisition so it
wasn't insurance, it was one of the cheapest ways to enter the US market.

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stevedomin
BBVA Compass(1) was 30th in the ranking of the 50 largest banks in the U.S.
(SNL financial data from 2013), definitely not the biggest one but it's harsh
to say that it barely had any footprint.

(1) BBVA bought Compass in 2007

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ganeumann
Sure, but bank size falls off very quickly after the biggest four. Compass is
about 3% of the size of JPMorgan by assets (source:
[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/03/ranking-
the-50-big...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/03/ranking-
the-50-biggest-banks-from-j-p-morgan-to-firstmerit/)), and 10% of the size of
JPMorgan by branches ([http://www.usbanklocations.com/bank-rank/number-of-
branches....](http://www.usbanklocations.com/bank-rank/number-of-
branches.html)). Theirs are less than 0.7% of bank branches in the US,
compared to JPMorgan's 6.6% of branches.

You can disagree with whether this means they had barely any footprint or not,
I guess that's semantics, but it certainly makes more sense that they would
buy them to expand, not to get rid of a competitor.

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pasiaj
Fintech has been heating up immensely in Europe. Innovation labs & internal
startups within old school banks are scooping up tech talent around the
continent, and trying to find innovation partners with any kind of fintech
understanding: payments, distributed ledger, know-your-customer-tech, etc.

European ranking regulation is forcing banks to open up API's to 3rd parties
during next couple of years. Not much is clear at this point as to what it
will actually enable, but if there is ever going to be a opening for banking
disruption in Europe it would be starting about now.

~~~
juandbarraza24
Indeed the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) has pave the way for the
realization of third party 'access to account' (XS2A). This will aceelerate
the trend of digital transformation in banking even more!
[http://www.sepaforcorporates.com/single-euro-payments-
area/5...](http://www.sepaforcorporates.com/single-euro-payments-
area/5-things-need-know-psd2-payment-services-directive/)

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tomblomfield
Congratulations to the Holvi team. Johan, the CEO, is one of the nicest guys
in the industry.

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tersiag
Congratulations to the Holvi team, great service

