We provide a spatial framework to study competition between banks and fintechs in the lending market and examine the impact on investment and welfare. Based on the key differences between banks and fintechs, we derive results consistent with the empirical evidence available. We find that fintechs with inferior monitoring efficiency can successfully enter because of their superior flexibility in pricing and that higher bank concentration leads to higher fintech loan volume. If fintechs and banks have similar funding costs, fintech borrowers pay lower loan rates and have higher default rates than bank borrowers with similar characteristics; however, the result will flip if fintechs have much higher funding costs than banks. The advantage of fintechs in offering convenience can also induce them to charge higher loan rates than banks. Fintech entry will improve welfare if fintechs have high monitoring efficiency and inter-fintech competition intensity is intermediate. Fintech entry may induce banks’ exit and reduce investment; however, it will increase investment if inter-fintech competition is intense enough

We examine the impact of fintech on firm labor demand, job turnover, and firm performance. Occupations with higher exposure to fintech experience a net decline in job postings and employment, though both complementary and substitutive effects emerge across different sectors. Fintech blurs traditional industry boundaries, creating demand for workers with a combination of finance and technology skills. In response, firms upskill through hiring, reallocate talent internally, and pivot innovation to new areas. As a result, firms are better equipped to absorb the shock than individual workers, with innovative firms even experiencing growth in employment, sales, and productivity upon fintech disruption

This paper studies the role of trust in incumbent lenders (banks) as an entry barrier to emerging FinTech lenders in credit markets. The empirical setting exploits the outbreak of the Wells Fargo scandal as a negative shock to borrowers’ trust in banks. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I find that increased exposure to the Wells Fargo scandal leads to an increase in the probability of borrowers using FinTech as mortgage originators. Utilizing political affiliation to proxy for the magnitude of trust erosion in banks in a triple-differences specification, I find that, conditional on the same exposure to the scandal, a county experiencing a greater erosion of trust has a larger increase in FinTech share relative to a county experiencing less of an erosion of trust. Estimating treatment effect heterogeneity using generic machine learning inference suggests that borrowers with the greatest decrease in trust in banks and the greatest increase in FinTech adoption have similar characteristics

Open banking (OB) empowers bank customers to share their financial transaction data with fintechs and other banks. New cross-country data shows 49 countries adopted OB policies, privacy preferences predict policy adoption, and adoption spurs fintech entry. UK microdata shows that OB enables: (i) consumers to access both financial advice and credit; (ii) SMEs to establish new lending relationships. In a calibrated model, OB universally improves welfare through entry and product improvements when used for advice. When used for credit, OB promotes entry and competition by reducing adverse selection, but higher prices for costlier or privacy-conscious consumers partially offset these benefits