Empowering Africa's tomorrow, together

Masterclass: Challenges and opportunities in FinTech

Leif Sjöblom, IMD Professor of Financial Management

The last 10 years have seen an unprecedented number of FinTech startups trying to disrupt the established financial services industry. While most of them are perceived as threats, the financial services sector has also missed several opportunities to innovate its traditional business models. In this interactive session, Professor Sjöblom will present two business challenges that require innovative solutions. The first challenge is related to the highly fragmented “general retail trade” that forms 75% of retail in sub-Saharan Africa.

The second challenge is the CapEx-OpEx tradeoff, meaning creative leasing models to remove the hurdle of a high initial purchase price for low-income consumers. In this session, we will look at the challenges and see if together we can come up with some creative solutions.

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