Finn’s Manifesto for the Future of Fintech
By Finn O’Potamus
As we stampede into the fourth quarter with our eyes fixed on 2027, it’s important to look back at how far we’ve come this year, as well as what it all means for next year and beyond.
When we launched Finopotamus in the summer of 2020, we had a simple goal: Write exceptional tech content for our beloved credit union industry. With more than a hundred combined years of fintech journalism experience under their collective belt, our founders knew there was a void in technology reporting and knew they should be the ones to fill it.
From One-Way Street to Multi-Lane Freeway
As time went by and we talked with more and more people on both sides of the industry, we were faced with an unexpected realization. We discovered that just as badly as credit unions need information about fintechs, fintechs need information about credit unions.
Most fintechs that we talk with tend to see community financial institutions as a singular opportunity, heaping credit unions and community banks into the same pile. We think that’s a mistake. A big mistake.
Finopotamus firmly believes that when a fintech is looking for an FI partner, credit unions represent a significantly better opportunity than banks. Banks don’t share information with each other the way credit unions do. Banks don’t have CUSOs where multiple institutions work together to achieve a shared goal. Banks focus on boosting shareholder equity whereas credit unions focus on boosting their members’ financial lives. At banks, good enough tech often is good enough; at credit unions, good enough seldom is.
I could continue, but you get the point. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with community banks. They’re just not credit unions.
For these reasons, we’ve transitioned from providing a one-way flow of information for credit unions to serving as a two-way conduit for information flow between credit unions and fintechs. If you’ve wondered why, for example, you read articles in Finopotamus written for a fintech audience, now you know why. We serve the industry best by nurturing the entire credit union/fintech ecosystem.
Speaking the Universal Language
As we were getting started back in 2020, our focus was on U.S. credit unions. Afterall, that’s where our founders had spent most of their careers. It’s what they knew. However, just as we realized that we could better serve the industry by serving credit unions and fintechs, we had another epiphany: Finopotamus speaks the universal language of fintech. And even though credit unions and other financial cooperatives around the world face different regulatory constraints and political pressures, they all share that same language. By sharing fintech information from across the globe, we can help lift up the entire financial cooperative movement.
We’ve already established relationships with both credit union and fintech organizations in Canada. We’ve published some Canadian-focused content and plan to add a couple of Canadian conferences to our 2027 schedule.
We’ve also made some headway in the UK and Europe. Most importantly, Finopotamus is an official media partner for both the inaugural Fintech Meetup Europe later this month and Money20/20 Europe next June. We will be onsite at both.
Most recently, we have begun to explore the vibrant Caribbean credit union community and what we can do to help there.
A Reflection of the Movement
People helping people. It’s what the credit union movement is all about. And it’s exactly what we’re doing by expanding our outreach in these two important ways. Finopotamus’ goal is to be the trusted resource for credit union technology information worldwide.
