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New Book Charts the Future of the Rapidly Changing Financial Services Industry.

November 18, 2020

Toronto - The financial services industry is in the midst of a sweeping transformation due to heightened regulation, technological disruption, and changing demographics. What changes can we expect to see across the sector in response to such forces over the coming decade? Senior financial practitioners from across North America share their views on this topic in a new volume targeted towards other industry leaders, The Technological Revolution in Financial Services: How Banks, FinTechs and Customers Win Together, edited by Michael R. King and Richard W. Nesbitt, with a foreword by Paul Desmarais III.

King and Nesbitt's collection offers an inside look at how lowering barriers to entry has increased competition within today's financial industry. Newcomers are challenging banks and incumbents to the benefit of end-customers. These entrants range from entrepreneurial financial technology (fintech) start-ups to large, non-financial technology-based companies. While the ongoing fintech-versus-incumbent debate is explored in the book, the authors refuse to take a side. Instead, they contend that the most successful banks and incumbents will partner with fintechs to provide a better experience to retail customers and small businesses.

Throughout the book, contributors offer a range of actionable insights and tips about such partnerships. Successful incumbents will have to shift their focus, for instance, from a product-centric perspective to a customer-centric orientation. Working with fintech collaborators, they'll leverage new technologies to give customers a better experience at a lower cost. King and Nesbitt's collection also addresses systemic overhauls – incumbents will need to transform their cultures, incentive structures, and governance to be able to meet these challenges.

The Technological Revolution in Financial Services is not only a comprehensive account of how fintech is upending today's financial services industry. King and Nesbitt provide readers both within and beyond the sector with a coherent map to the digital landscape ahead.

Michael R. King is the Lansdowne Chair in Finance at University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business.

Richard W. Nesbitt is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Advance praise for The Technological Revolution in Financial Services

"As COVID-19 forces the world to rethink how customers and stakeholders will interact with a ‘new normal’ of financial services, King and Nesbitt distill years of fintech developments into foundational knowledge that accurately portrays how emerging technologies, regulation, and other core drivers of change are pushing both incumbent banks and fintechs to a smarter and more transparent, data-enabled, and consumer-centric future." Craig Asano, Founder and CEO, National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association of Canada (NCFA Canada)

"This book reaffirms my assertion that banking is being fundamentally changed by technology, but will survive with some new players and some old players coming together in a new model of providing and distributing value." Chris Skinner, CEO of The Finanser, Chair of The Financial Services Club, and Author of Doing Digital: Lessons from Leaders , Digital Bank, ValueWeb and Digital Human

"King and Nesbitt bring forth a great perspective on the digital transformation happening at every level of the financial services sector. This is a reference book to put into every hand across the industry." Peggy Van De Plassche, Managing Partner, Roar Growth

"A very timely compendium of informed and insightful analyses and forecasts of the effects of technology on the structure, dynamics and organizational architecture of the financial services industry. I highly recommend this to both technologists eyeing opportunities for change and long-time incumbents of this - overly established - industry." Mihnea Moldoveanu, Director of Desaultels Centre for Integrative Thinking, Marcel Desautels Professor of Integrative Thinking, and the Director of Rotman Digital, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

"For fintech aficionados and neophytes alike, this is a great overview of the nuances and complexities of the history, impact, and future of technology in financial services. That the tech itself isn’t a strategy, but how it’s being deployed to challenge our engrained assumptions about how financial services should be shaped and delivered – and why that matters -– is made clear. This work is a thoughtful analysis with deep dives into use cases, and well worth reading." Ghela Boskovich, Founder of FemTechGlobal and Head of Europe at Financial Data and Technology Association

"This book insightfully analyzes the benefits of the first wave of the fintech revolution, bank-fintech partnerships, which will greatly benefit customers over the next few years. A second wave looms on the horizon, decentralized finance, but that book has yet to been written." Campbell R. Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Finance, Duke University, and 2016 President, American Finance Association

Rotman-UTP Publishing is an imprint of University of Toronto Press. Founded in 1901, University of Toronto Press (UTP) is Canada’s leading academic publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America. UTP has published over 6,500 books, with well over 3,500 of these still in print. Each year, UTP publishes approximately 200 new scholarly, course, reference, and general interest books. For more information, visit https://utorontopress.com/.

The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more information:

Chris Reed
Publicist, University of Toronto Press
creed@utorontopress.com

Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca