23 OCT 2025 (THU) 16:05- 16:25

Rethinking Financial Technology: Strategies for Ecosystem Development and Technology Adoption

Mr Liam Nicholas Seth REEVE 

( Supervisor: Prof Frank van der Wouden )

Abstract:

Financial technology (FinTech) is a hot topic due to its impact on national, regional, and local economies. Financial innovation has long been crucial to finance, and the financialization of economies and societies. From coins, to electronic trading, innovation has allowed FinTech to develop. These developments have been crucial for international financial centres (IFC), and in recent decades financial geographers have studied the impacts of financial innovation therein.

Despite the interest of scholars and policymakers in understanding FinTech’s effects within IFCs, less attention has focused on (1) knowledge flows within FinTech ecosystems and (2) how incumbent financial institutions cope with FinTech on-boarding. While certain frameworks and theories have been used in the past to explore similar phenomena, they have not been applied towards these gaps. Through the lens of academia-industry knowledge flows, as well as private banking technology on-boarding pressures, this research fills gaps by investigating two separate but related lines of enquiry regarding FinTech development.

The flow of knowledge from academia to industry is key to understanding the growth of knowledge-based economies. Yet, little is known regarding FinTech knowledge transfers within leading IFCs. Using state-of-the-art natural language processing to analyze the similarity between FinTech start-ups (FinTechs) and academic literature, I address this gap. The results show that higher-ranked IFCs have a lower similarity between academia and FinTechs.

Furthermore, while venture capital is positively associated with academia-FinTechs similarity, I find that incubators are negatively associated with the same similarity. This has important geographic implications, as it would appear that knowledge can be more "sticky" in leading IFCs, but that certain institutions make moving novel knowledge across space easier. Furthermore, private banking is not on-boarding new FinTech as fast as other finance sectors. Yet, little is known on the specific dynamics behind this. I address this gap by interviewing senior private bankers regarding technology on-boarding pressures. The results indicate that two related, but separate types of pressures, internal and external, are responsible for private banking technology inertia. Interestingly, it is the internal pressures which are much more interconnected within the general business landscape, suggesting that they are more deeply embedded within private banks’ decision-making processes. However, I found no significant difference in private banking technology onboarding between Hong Kong or Singapore, advocating that across geographies the same technology inertia persists.

Given the interdisciplinarity of this thesis, and its empirical and theoretical findings, it contributes to diverse yet interconnected groups of literature, including financial geography, knowledge flows, innovation studies, and technology on-boarding. The policy and business implications of this thesis are germane to facilitating effective adaptation and innovation within finance, both for FinTechs and incumbent firms. Based on the findings, I recommend that (1) IFCs should encourage venture capital as a means of moving novel knowledge across space from academia to industry, and that (2) technology inertia in private banking can be best tackled by new processes which support a culture of service, are cross-functional, incremental, and include parallel strategies for current and younger clientele.