The Vault mobile bank from Great Britain, launched two years ago, is expanding to the Croatian market. The bank, supported by one of the major international financial advisors, DeVere Group, is part of the new business strategy of this company which wants to expand in the fintech sector. Vault offers similar services like Revolut or N26, but claims that their bank accounts are not limited just to the EU, reports Poslovni.hr on May 9, 2019.
Dimitris Litsikakis, head of DeVere’s global fintech business, who spent the previous year running Revolut’s business in Greece, Cyprus and Malta, says that everyone in Croatia can apply through the app, get a bank account and a bank card, and open an account for their children to teach them about financial literacy.
“We have entered retail banking to expand the pool of potential clients for financial consulting services, but also to show banks, retailers and other companies that we can offer them banking and other services through a subscription,” Litsikakis said. He added that DeVere already had users of its financial consulting services in Croatia. The group was established in 2002 and manages ten billion dollars in capital for 80,000 clients in more than 100 countries.
It has offices in 70 countries and employs 500 financial consultants. Litsikakis said that Vault wants to present to the banks a regulated software solution for rapid digital transformation. He added that, due to the liberalisation of payment transactions and links with retail loyalty programmes, this solution could also help traders. “We are testing a project in which the technology underlying Vault has been delivered to a retailer which now has its own payment application, under its brand, and has received it within three months,” said Litsikakis.
He added that before this approach the business cooperation with retailers was most often realised in the form of co-branding, with banks requiring at least half a million cards or customers from the retailer. Fintech companies have reduced this to 250,000, and DeVere sees profitability with as few as 5,000 to 10,000 users. They expect fintech companies to have a strong influence on banks because of the need to capitalise investments in the sector. “According to KPMG’s report last year, investments in the fintech sector have reached 111.8 billion dollars, indicating the trends underlying the sector.”
More news about banking in Croatia can be found in the Business section.
Translated from Poslovni.hr (reported by Bernard Ivezić).
