Traditional banks and financial companies are making ever more use of digital distribution channels. The number of intermediaries managing the whole life cycle of a product entirely at a distance – marketing, acquiring new customers, providing services – is on the increase.
Business models that envisage collaboration between different kinds of financial intermediaries or between intermediaries and non-financial corporations are spreading; there is a marked rise in the use of ‘platforms’ that give techno-financial conglomerates the chance to offer customers access to a growing variety of services, such as the outsourcing of corporate functions, including key ones.