Challenger banks have become one of the hottest trends in fintech with companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars all over the globe; the onset of the current crisis has forced traditional banks into an all digital mode which could spell big trouble for the challenger market; in his weekly Forbes column Accenture’s Alan McIntyre points out that app downloads for European challengers has fallen off a cliff and VC funding has dried up; in 2019 Accenture’s ACN research found that 12 percent of traditional banks truly embraced digital with 38 percent working towards embracing digital; the current crisis has allowed banks to catch-up quickly, almost all traditional banks were forced to go mostly digital with branches being closed; access to credit is something not all challengers have and it is something customers have indicated they will need to help them bridge the gap; banks have always been wary of fraud when moving to all digital, now that they are forced to move they will also need to address their fraud concerns; while the lockdown part of the crisis might last only a few more months it could end of having a lasting impact on the challenger bank market. Forbes
