The Flux And Flow Of Enterprise FinServ Competition

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The data from last week highlights the flux and flow of enterprise FinServ competition. New numbers suggest that the U.K. may want to embrace the competition between major banks and alternative lenders when it comes to SME finance, while data hints at a new wave of competition for the corporate expense management industry. Meanwhile, Apple and Android continue their head-butting competitiveness to secure more share of the enterprise market. The one area of collaboration? Major financial institutions across the globe, as it turns out, joining together for a common cause in financial innovation. We break down the data below. 

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30 Billion: The value in U.S. dollars (about £20 billion) that the U.K. economy may lose out on if small businesses remain unaware of their financing options. New research from GLI Finance published last week found that SMEs today are strikingly unaware of their alternative lending choices. The report found that 80 percent of all small business lending is done by the Big Four banks and that more than half (56 percent) of SMEs are unaware of any kind of alternative source of financing. The findings were used by GLI Finance to call on the government to campaign for better awareness among SMEs of their options when it comes to accessing working capital, in part through the Small Business Enterprise and Employment Act’s mandatory bank referral program, which sees traditional banks referring small business borrowers to alternative lenders should they get rejected for a traditional bank loan.

66: The percentage of mobile devices activated by an enterprise user that were iOS devices in Q3 2015. The figure signals a bit of an increase in popularity among the enterprise crowd for Apple, which saw just 64 percent of enterprise mobile device activations in Q2, according to Good Technology analysis published last week. Meanwhile, just 31 percent of enterprise device activations in the quarter went to Android handsets; three percent went to Windows mobile devices, the report found. However, when looking at the statistics over the last three years, Apple’s iPad has actually lost a bit of ground within the enterprise to the Android tablet; researchers deduced that this suggests more diversity within the enterprise of mobile devices over time.

30: The number of major financial institutions that have now placed their muscle behind technology firm R3’s blockchain innovation efforts. The number was reached after five more banks — BNP Paribas, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, ING, MacQuarie and Wells Fargo — joined the ranks of several others, like Bank of America, Citi and JPMorgan. The FIs are collaborating with R3 on blockchain technology and the potential implications for easing B2B payments, cross-border payments and the entirety of the global payments system as a whole. According to ING Global Head of Transaction Services Mark Buitenhek, there is power in numbers. “We want to make the most of what blockchain technology has to offer our customers, and the best way to achieve this is through global collaboration,” he said in a statement. “Working together, we will develop innovative banking solutions for our clients with consistent standards and protocols guaranteeing widespread adoption.”

19.2: The compound annual growth rate percentage for the cloud-based corporate expense management industry over the next four years, according to the latest research. Market Research Store recently published new analysis of the expense management industry across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Middle East to uncover why the sector is slated for such growth. Key to its success, researchers said, is the need for businesses to cut costs worldwide. Potentially stunting the growth of the expense management Software-as-a-Service market? Cloud and data security, Market Research Store found. So far, the research pointed to Ariba, Concur, IBM and Oracle as leading the charge.

To wrap it up: Android and Apple will likely continue their rivalry in the workplace for the foreseeable future, and the expense software industry will likely see greater competition to snag a piece of new financial gains this decade. And while the U.K. may want to embrace SME financing competition between banks and alternative lenders, financial institutions across the globe are dropping their rivalries — at least for blockchain development.