Banking and Digital Transformation: Towards an Integration of Fintechs’ Activities to Develop Innovation

Abstract

The emergence of Fintechs, these new entrants whose vocation is to associate digital technologies with finance, is today overturning the business models of traditional banking institutions. While traditional banks are still dependent on existing bureaucratic systems, Fintechs provide new financial solutions enabling customers to adopt new, faster and more flexible ways to manage their finances in a digital environment. Also, given the new competitive environment, banks have realized that Fintechs have a disruptive potential that needs to be integrated in order to maintain a competitive advantage. In this research, we wish to mobilize the theoretical framework of "absorptive capacity" (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Zahra and George, 2002) in order to identify and understand the determinants and mechanisms implemented by banks to integrate the skills developed by fintechs. The results show that the integration of these skills could enable banks to keep pace with a changing banking industry by appropriating disruptive services and business models, while leveraging their own strengths.