36 One encouraging and somewhat unexpected finding from our research is that the financial institution/fintech partnerships represent a slow but pervasive industry shift toward customer-centricity. Benoit Legrand, global head of fintech for ING, described banks’ historical assumption that customers would come if the banks built good products. Now, he says, “Banks need to reinvent themselves to be platforms where customers are empowered. Banks have to learn how to move and rotate around customers.” Our research suggests that this realignment is indeed occurring—and “do-gooderism” has little to do with it. The institutions we studied saw financial inclusion as an immense business opportunity. They saw fintech partnerships as a way to make that opportunity a reality, and customer-centricity as the way to make it sustainable. If that approach amounts to “development by other means,” then these partnerships might contain useful lessons for the banking industry, both now and as the partnerships deepen and expand. View the original article on NextBillion Source: From the foreword of Lessons from the Frontline. “You need more than just tech. Interoperability is about people. To get a startup’s innovations to work with your organization—and to add value to your business—you need the tech to interoperate, of course. But you also, crucially, need people.” —Zia Zaman, Chief Innovation Officer, MetLife Asia and CEO, LumenLab