Fintech, Pandemic, and the Financial System: Challenges and Opportunities

Financial institutions, especially commercial banks, are facing unprecedented challenges brought on by the coronavirus Pandemic, less than a decade after recovering from the Global Financial Crisis and the Eurozone debt crisis. These challenges were exogenous and unpredictable, and their consequences will re-shape the financial system architecture around the world. Volume 22, Fintech, Pandemic, and the Financial System, examines systemic challenges faced by a wide range of financial firms and the continued disruptions introduced by financial innovations (Fintech).

Fintech, once dismissed as no more than a novel approach in servicing the segment of the population often overlooked by established financial intermediaries, is now challenging the traditional model of commercial and investment banking. Moreover, the inevitable future introduction of digital currencies that could replace national currencies in many business transactions has the potential to fundamentally change the business models of financial firms and how the financial system functions. The causes of these challenges that contributed to the current difficulties that financial firms face are very different from the previous crises that they themselves had contributed to a large extent.

International Finance Review publishes theme-oriented volumes on various issues in international finance, such as international business finance, international investment and capital markets, global risk management, international corporate governance and institution, currency markets, emerging market finance, international economic integration, and related issues.