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Bank Negara calls for ideas with Fintech Hacks

  • Malaysian Central Bank keen to spur, inspire development of innovative solutions
  • PwC report shows 42% of FIs feel their customers are ready to embrace fintech

Bank Negara calls for ideas with Fintech Hacks

SAY what you want about fintech, “it’s yet another example of how the internet ecosystem is so full of itself” or “this time the possible disruptive potential is real because consumers are demanding more digital oriented services”. But the fact remains that a lot of smart people are putting in a lot of money behind startups that are trying to solve problems in the financial services sector. And actually, some of those people are the banks themselves.

Meanwhile in a Dec 2016 report done specifically on the fintech space in Malaysia by PwC Malaysia in partnership with the Asian Institute of Chartered Bankers (AICB), it was noted that an astounding 81% of financial institutions (FIs) in Malaysia worried about losing out to fintechs.

Before fintechs rejoice, it just means that FIs now have fintech innovation and disruption on their radar and have either started partnering with existing players or are supporting various activities such as hackhatons and accelerators in the hopes for finding early gems among the fintechs.

Could your idea be one of the ones they want to bet on? If you think so, but have not gotten out of your comfort zone to work on your idea, the central bank of Malaysia, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), is encouraging you to come and join its own hackhaton, Fintech Hacks, starting with the call for submission that will be open until 31 May 2017.

In essence, the call for participation for Fintech Hacks is Bank Negara Malaysia’s initiative to encourage and spur society to identify pain points in the delivery and consumption of financial services, and encourage the application of technology to address the gaps society sees.

The bolder, the bigger your ideas, the better! For instance, at the just concluded Wild Digital conference, Singapore fintech company MatchMove Pay has gone beyond just creating a financial service app to building an operating system for mobile wallets that has seen the BaaS (banking as a service) startup get funded by Axiata Digital Services as well. Even MasterCard has partnered with MatchMove to offer credit cards. The point being that bold innovative ideas – executed well – will attract funding and strong partners.

The PwC report on the Malaysian fintech space also revealed that between 2015 and the first half of 2016, US$345 million (RM1.47 billion), representing 11% of total venture capital funding in Southeast Asia went into fintech.

With that kind of funding being pumped into disruptive businesses, BNM too is keen to spur and inspire the development of fintech solutions that have the potential to revolutionalise the way financial services are delivered to consumers in Malaysia. And even FIs feel that customers are ready to embrace fintech with 42% indicating so in the PwC report.

Keen to get all sectors of society to contribute their ideas and to participate, BNM and the Fintech Association of Malaysia (FAOM) have been going on a cross-country University awareness drive, in support of Fintech Hacks.

It’s time to be bold and unwrap your idea as well with Fintech Hacks. Submissions can be made through the Financial Technology Enabler Group’s (FTEG) website, through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter through #fintechhacks.

 
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