Australian Fintech Hub Stone & Chalk Is Ready to Digital Disruption
| Updated
by Eugenia Romanenko · 3 min read
Photo: Stone&Chalk/Flickr
Digital disruption is transforming the financial services industry. The growth of capital being invested in FinTech startups determines how technology and the Internet are radically changing the nature of money and financial services.
The world observes the FinTech industry developing really fast and becoming quite popular today. Lots of major banks and financial services companies are facilitating the development of startups and their technology in the FinTech space. Generally, Fintech is one of the fastest growing sectors in the financial services industry. Particularly, Australia has many of the ingredients to be a successful Fintech centre.
Stone & Chalk, an independent, not-for-profit Fintech hub, is growing as well. It’s becoming a great place which aims to help enhance the development of world-leading Fintech start-ups. It is a physical “centre of gravity” for the local Fintech eco-system, states the company’s website.
It’s worth mentioning that investments into FinTech startups have recently boosted, growing from just over $3 billion in 2013 to over $12 billion in 2014. The growth of capital being invested in FinTech startups determines how technology and the Internet are radically changing the nature of money and financial services.
It’s obvious that digital disruption is transforming the financial services industry. Stone & Chalk is an example of an industry reflecting a collaborative effort between Fintech entrepreneurs, corporates and government, to create and support financial services-focused tech start-ups.
The fintech hub will be launched on Tuesday night at a big shindig in Sydney, reads The Australian Financial Review. The foundation partners of Stone & Chalk are American Express, Thomson Reuters, Westpac Banking Corp and Woolworths, and others. In a nutshell, Stone & Chalk aims to launch a forum for collaboration to give fintech start-ups access to the resources of the incumbents, while teaching the latter about innovation and customer engagement in the new economy.
“We want to help Sydney as a market work together to co-create the future of financial services, rather than seeing a 20th century mindset of a David and Goliath battle [between disrupters and incumbents],” says Alex Scandurra, Stone & Chalk’s chief executive.
“People often look to the government for a lot of support, but private enterprise needs to take a lead. When the government sees the private sector committed and putting their own resources in, it will have a lot more confidence that this is worth backing,” adds Stone & Chalk chairman Craig Dunn.
While Stone & Chalk will become a hub of activity for new firms and will help banks identify potential acquisition targets or partners, it will also develop policy ideas that will be taken to government to improve the fintech sector more broadly.
As the financial system inquiry final report put it, “the innovative potential of Australia’s financial system and broader economy can be galvanised by taking action to ensure policy settings facilitate future innovation that benefits consumers, businesses and government.”
Eugenia graduated from Minsk State Linguistic University with a degree in Intercultural Communication, Translation/Interpretation (Italian, English). Currently she works as a business analyst, freelance interpreter and tutor. She’s fond of numismatics, photos, good books and sports, adores travelling and cooking.
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