Bankloch

The last few years I have done quite some   market studies   for potential new business ideas, mainly in the Fintech, banking and insurance industry, but also in the IT, FoodTech, horeca and mobility sector. Such an exercise typically starts with identifying the   trends in the market , i.e.   how the market is evolving , as this is key to ensure your business idea is in line (and preferably ahead) with what is happening in the market. While every industry has its specific challenges and opportunities, most trends seem to reappear across all sectors. These   universal trends   result from a general change in our lives. Obviously technological evolutions, and more specifically digitalization, is impacting all sectors and results in a number of widespread "universal" trends. Overall, I identified   eight of those universal trends : Pressure on margins The   margins of almost any existing player in any sector are under pressure . The underlying cause is two-fold. At the one hand

Due to the Covid crisis, we have arrived in a   major global recession . Not only were there the enormous impacts on the economy of the (semi) lock-downs, but consumption dropped also enormously as consumers are worried of getting infected while shopping, don’t like the shopping experience due to the different sanitary measures or they prefer to increase their safety cushion by saving more money, as they fear for the future (e.g. fear of increasing taxes or losing their jobs). While such a postponement of consumer spending makes perfect sense at a micro-scale (at the level of an individual), at a macro-scale this is the ideal ingredient for accelerating and worsening the economic crisis. Governments are well aware of this phenomenon and do everything in their power to   boost the short-term consumption , via: All kind of   subsidies and fiscal stimuli   helping to promote investments (e.g. subsidies for house renovations or business investments) All kind of measures to avoid   liquidit

Due to the Covid-crisis and the resulting confinements, many of us have been forced to work from home.  As such   collaborating   with colleagues has become   virtual , but also all other types of professional practices have radically changed, like team events, conferences, trainings…​ As a result a whole new   ecosystem of tools and companies   has emerged to fill the resulting gap. Everything in this ecosystem aspires 1 common goal, i.e. work safely together in the physical world and even more importantly   collaborate and network efficiently in the virtual world . This is truly exciting to have a look at, as never in the history was there such a radical adoption of new habits as in the last year. It shows that in times of crisis, agility and creativity is present in all of us (even in large, often bureaucratic, corporations). But let’s have a look at a few evolutions: The most obvious one is naturally the exponential rise of the   video conferencing and chat tools   (cfr. my blog &q