FinTECH Report - The go to site to learn about new FinTech products.

techguy

Hello!
I've been working on FinTECH Report for the last couple of weeks and I have just launched version 1.0 in order to get feedback.
The assumption I have been working on is that there are loads of new FinTechs coming about these days. That number is set to grow even more with PSD2 and OpenBanking coming on stream this year. Working in London in FinTech I have began to lose track of these companies, leading me to assume that regular folk must feel completely lost and even unaware of all this new innovation.
FinTECH Report is aimed at aggregating all the various products and giving as much meaningful information to regular users. The intention is that users can make an informed decision when choosing products and be made aware of the breadth of the market. Be it Banking, FX/Remittance, Insurance, Investment, Lending etc.
I also have a quick page up there explaining the direct I plan going with the site.
The website is available at http://www.fintechreport.info
Some items to note and my thoughts on the current version:

• I have already implemented "Category filtering" including a dropdown in the navbar. Not yet released.
• I'm not sure what categories I should have on the site. I don't want too many. Next release will have { FX, Payments, Investment, Remittance, Banking, Cryptocurrency, Mortgage, Lending }. What do you think?
• I plan on running a blog also, which I can use to write articles on PSD2, OpenBanking etc and use it to drive content to the site.
• This is all static at the moment and hosted on AWS S3. I need to move towards a more dynamic site. My web dev skills are lagging now and I am trying to decide on a traditional MVC site or SPA (I don't believe SPA is the best for a site like this, for SEO/Linking purposes).
• Currently, most products are London based but I don't plan on restricting geography. That said. I need a smart filter to prioritise products that are server in the visitors location, before implement geography related stuff. I am more than happy to seek out Irish companies and start putting them on there.
• Should I have a category that shows more "legacy" companies such as Bank of Ireland, Barclays etc. As a kind of benchmark or something?
• I think the smartest feature and USP of the site (once developed) will be a comparison tool that lets visitors compare in great detail, products within the same category. Very much like PhoneArena and GSMArena. I know I always use those sites when choosing a new phone.

Please let me know what you think.

Many thanks,
Conor

the-macho-man

Hello,

I like the general idea and that you have something live - fair play! I found your post as I'm currently investigating PSD2 for a personal project. I have some feedback for you.

I'm not sure what categories I should have on the site. I don't want too many. Next release will have { FX, Payments, Investment, Remittance, Banking, Cryptocurrency, Mortgage, Lending }. What do you think?

My first thought is that "Remittance" shouldn't be a category as it in my opinion would fall under payments. Another reason to drop it as a category is that I reckon most non-finance people wouldn't know what it is. My background is in software engineering in non-finance industries and I haven't come across it in my day-to-day life. Perhaps it would catch the eye of business people although I'm only guessing.

My web dev skills are lagging now and I am trying to decide on a traditional MVC site or SPA (I don't believe SPA is the best for a site like this, for SEO/Linking purposes).

I don't want to discourage you from improving your website from a technical standpoint but my suggestion would be to use a stable and reliable content management system like Wordpress to publish your content for now. As you already probably know, it's quick and easy to get set up without any technical knowledge and would allow you to focus on producing content for your site rather than getting bogged down and burning time with technical issues.

You can always improve the website technically later and I think it's better to get feedback about the content and direction you're taking from users before spending a lot of time in development before release.

I need a smart filter to prioritise products that are server in the visitors location, before implement geography related stuff.

While I haven't used it it seems that there is a Wordpress plugin called "GeoIP" which would allow you to hook into various services that are available for this and would allow you to customize a Wordpress site based on the visitor's country.

You would need to write some code to integrate this into your site I believe.

I think the smartest feature and USP of the site (once developed) will be a comparison tool that lets visitors compare in great detail, products within the same category. Very much like PhoneArena and GSMArena. I know I always use those sites when choosing a new phone.

If you haven't heard of it I'd highly recommend checking out the Irish government funded financial information website ccpc.ie (it used to be called "itsyourmoney.ie" which I think is a much better name but anyway). The financial comparison section of ccpc.ie allows consumers to quickly compare, filter and sort legacy financial products such as bank accounts, mortgages and loans. For me this is a great way of finding the best rate for a Savings account for example. Someone else has done the leg work of putting all the information I need into a nice table for me to find what I'm looking for.

I think you need to hone in on your use cases a little more and focus on one or the other - will you be providing articles which users can peruse at their leisure to learn about what's going on in the world of Fintech or perhaps will you provide detailed tables providing tables which users can use to filter, sort and compare fintech services as you mentioned something like PhoneArena? Or both?

Your site is interesting because it must explain what these new financial products can do, how they are different to legacy products and then provide some kind of use comparison so users will get a useful answer they can take action on. Then perhaps you could get paid for sending them in the right direction.

So I guess the questions I would like to know for each category would be:

• What is or will be different about each financial category because of the ongoing FinTech changes? My very short and off the cuff example answer for the "Lending" category would be "Before the FinTech revolution customers could only get a loan from a bank or credit union. Now there are a lot more options for getting credit, a loan or simply asking for money online for projects." Very basic I know but hopefully it illustrates what I'm thinking.
• What are the new products that are now in this category and what problem are each of them trying to solve? Why does crowd funding exist? Why does Bitcoin exist? etc.
• What is the best way to find the product that solves my problem and how can I compare these products so I can use the best one of those that match my problem? Perhaps you could have a wizard for the Lending category that asks the user a series of questions about what they want to do with the money they will get. The new FinTech services out there are focused on a number of sub-categories of lending such as small personal loans (P2P lending) or startup funding. Once people understand the problems these new products are solving they can begin to formulate in their heads how to compare them. Seeing a table which they can sort and interact with products in the same sub-categories might then reinforce that new found understanding and potentially help users find the product they need easily.

Again - I like the general idea and I hope you keep it up!

maccored

when you click on a page like say, http://www.fintechreport.info/product/glintpay.html, you'll find the main site link on the right doesnt work. Looks like you need to put in http:// when inputting the links themselves

techguy

the-macho-man wrote: »

My first thought is that "Remittance" shouldn't be a category as it in my opinion would fall under payments. Another reason to drop it as a category is that I reckon most non-finance people wouldn't know what it is. My background is in software engineering in non-finance industries and I haven't come across it in my day-to-day life. Perhaps it would catch the eye of business people although I'm only guessing.

I agree, FX/Payments/Remittance could be bundled into one. I'll remove remittance. FX will become "Foreign Exchange" and be used where the main feature is currency exchange (e.g. TransferWise, CurrencyFair). I may rename "Payments" to become "Card Payment" i.e. A product that provides you with a payment card, as that was kind of what I had in mind.

the-macho-man wrote: »

I don't want to discourage you from improving your website from a technical standpoint but my suggestion would be to use a stable and reliable content management system like Wordpress to publish your content for now. As you already probably know, it's quick and easy to get set up without any technical knowledge and would allow you to focus on producing content for your site rather than getting bogged down and burning time with technical issues.

You can always improve the website technically later and I think it's better to get feedback about the content and direction you're taking from users before spending a lot of time in development before release.

Again, I agree. I am from engineering also and I know the rabbit whole that is learning something new and constantly tweaking stuff. The site will definitely have a much better chance of success if I focus on content and traffic before the engineering effort.

That plan was always to focus on Content/Marketing for a few months with an MVP and see what kind of feedback / traction I can gain before starting into engineering. I should stick to that. Wordpress is a good shout. The biggest challenge is getting the current static design converted into a Wordpress theme. I'll try and find somebody on the cheap. (I'm currently unemployed and trying to run as little expense as possible )

the-macho-man wrote: »

While I haven't used it it seems that there is a Wordpress plugin called "GeoIP" which would allow you to hook into various services that are available for this and would allow you to customize a Wordpress site based on the visitor's country.

You would need to write some code to integrate this into your site I believe.

Cool, i'll look at this - thanks!

the-macho-man wrote: »

If you haven't heard of it I'd highly recommend checking out the Irish government funded financial information website ccpc.ie (it used to be called "itsyourmoney.ie" which I think is a much better name but anyway). The financial comparison section of ccpc.ie allows consumers to quickly compare, filter and sort legacy financial products such as bank accounts, mortgages and loans. For me this is a great way of finding the best rate for a Savings account for example. Someone else has done the leg work of putting all the information I need into a nice table for me to find what I'm looking for.

I think you need to hone in on your use cases a little more and focus on one or the other - will you be providing articles which users can peruse at their leisure to learn about what's going on in the world of Fintech or perhaps will you provide detailed tables providing tables which users can use to filter, sort and compare fintech services as you mentioned something like PhoneArena? Or both?

Eh, from "itsyourmoney.ie" to "ccpc.ie" hmm. It's a great site, though. I love the interactivity of these types of sites and that's what I am aiming for with FinTECH Report. I am trying to practice "LEAN" and make small iterations based on feedback. All of this comparison stuff is a little further out as I think it will require quite a bit of work to get right.

the-macho-man wrote: »

Your site is interesting because it must explain what these new financial products can do, how they are different to legacy products and then provide some kind of use comparison so users will get a useful answer they can take action on. Then
perhaps you could get paid for sending them in the right direction.

Yes, that is ultimately the aim. I am aware that the more mature FinTechs do have affiliate platforms so that is good.

the-macho-man wrote: »

So I guess the questions I would like to know for each category would be:

• What is or will be different about each financial category because of the ongoing FinTech changes? My very short and off the cuff example answer for the "Lending" category would be "Before the FinTech revolution customers could only get a loan from a bank or credit union. Now there are a lot more options for getting credit, a loan or simply asking for money online for projects." Very basic I know but hopefully it illustrates what I'm thinking.
• What are the new products that are now in this category and what problem are each of them trying to solve? Why does crowd funding exist? Why does Bitcoin exist? etc.
• What is the best way to find the product that solves my problem and how can I compare these products so I can use the best one of those that match my problem? Perhaps you could have a wizard for the Lending category that asks the user a series of questions about what they want to do with the money they will get. The new FinTech services out there are focused on a number of sub-categories of lending such as small personal loans (P2P lending) or startup funding. Once people understand the problems these new products are solving they can begin to formulate in their heads how to compare them. Seeing a table which they can sort and interact with products in the same sub-categories might then reinforce that new found understanding and potentially help users find the product they need easily.

• Good question and I don't have an immediate answer for each category. Yes, Lending is a prime example with the advent of P2P. There is also banking with the Digital approach where resources are put into user experience and customer service instead of say building bricks and mortar branches. When it comes to advice and investment there are things like RoboAdvisors and products with a much lower barrier to entry. In the next iteration of the site I have a dropdown for categories and the categories of each product are clickable. On the category pages I should have an explanation of each category and how the new age FinTech differs from legacy providers.
• Good questions - I plan on having rich data that helps people identify the products that will solve their issues. Not figured out how yet though . Wizard is a good idea.
• I agree. I need to spend time to study each category and see what the primary/secondary features and differentiators are.

I am currently focusing on the B2C market. There are also a number of FinTechs that provide B2B services and I am not really considering them as the needs of business customers are different I think. There may be value there but currently focusing on B2C.

the-macho-man wrote: »

Again - I like the general idea and I hope you keep it up!

Thanks a million for the encouragement and absolutely fantastic feedback. Thanks for taking the time Feel free to subscribe to the mailing list as I will be posting out updates on functionality and testing new features etc via that channel. Cheers.

maccored wrote: »

when you click on a page like say, http://www.fintechreport.info/product/glintpay.html, you'll find the main site link on the right doesnt work. Looks like you need to put in http:// when inputting the links themselves

Fantastic, thanks! I will fix that.