The Money Hackers Quotes

“Blythe Masters, who has spent all of her professional life inside the world of finance, notices another trend that’s emerging as the economy’s ten-year pendulum moves into its next swing: “If you look at what happened from 2009 onward for the next decade, the financial sector went through a regulatory tsunami, an extraordinary amount of pain and restructuring. That pain led to what is, ten years on, a very strong financial services sector, at least in the US. The wave of reregulation is more or less complete. But,” she said, “it’s just beginning to hit the likes of Google and Facebook.”
― Dan P. Simon, The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever

“Who will learn the best lessons from the past decade’s fintech revolution? The innovations in financial services haven’t just been a consequence of the iPhone and the App Store, of high-speed downloads and always-online connections. They have also been a consequence of new kinds of thinking—thinking that prioritizes transparency, democratization of access, a frictionless and customer-centric user experience, and an evolving understanding of the role of a brand in that experience. There is no going back. What remains to be seen is, who will lead us forward?”
― Dan P. Simon, The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever

“The big institutions are not so much worried about what a Lending Tree or a SoFi are doing to them. They’re worrying about Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. They’re worrying about what happens if Apple, Amazon, Facebook, or Google really, really make significant headway into creating their own financial ecosystems that are leveraged off the back of their existing networks.” They have reason to worry. Big Tech is coming, and the bankers—at least the bankers who “know they’re screwed”—know it.”
― Dan P. Simon, The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever

“If banks fail to learn the right lessons from fintech, Silicon Valley will almost certainly come to eat their lunch. “The writing is on the wall,” said Adam Dell. “There’s no one in these banks who doesn’t know that they’re fleecing the consumer and delivering very little value.”
― Dan P. Simon, The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever

“Other fintechs followed similar trajectories, growing slowly until an economy of scale led them to grow, very suddenly, into ubiquity. Because fintechs mostly focus on smaller dollar amounts than the big banks, scale matters. A wealth manager who only deals with high-net-worth individuals may consider everyone else “lobby trash,” but as wealth consolidates among fewer and fewer people, the wealth manager’s potential client base keeps shrinking. Meanwhile, the fintechs have earned the loyalty of all the “lobby trash.” When three hundred or three thousand individuals withdraw their savings from their bank and move their money into Betterment or Acorns or Chime, the amount is an insignificant percentage of a bank’s holdings; the bank doesn’t notice or especially care.”
― Dan P. Simon, The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever