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First published online November 11, 2019

Strategic coupling between finance, technology and the state: Cultivating a Fintech ecosystem for incumbent finance

Reijer Hendrikse [email protected], Michiel van Meeteren https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8188-1660, and David BassensView all authors and affiliations

Volume 52, Issue 8

https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19887967

Abstract

The rise of Fintech challenges established financial centres and incumbent financial institutions to rethink their strategies to remain obligatory passage points in the age of digitizing finance. To appreciate these changes, it is important to maintain theoretical interchange between developments in financial geography and economic geography, its parent discipline. In this paper, we argue that the ways in which evolutionary economic geography impacts strategic coupling in global financial networks are crucial to grasp tomorrow’s geographies of Fintech. Through an in-depth examination of Brussels, we analyse the potential of Fintech opening a window of locational opportunity in financial services. Belgium has put together a strategy to seize this window by leveraging its politically neutral image and Brussels’ existing niche in financial collaboration and infrastructural plumbing. The latter status is exemplified by the presence of global players SWIFT and Euroclear. We analyse how Belgian entrepreneurs and politicians assess Brussels’ locational resources, and strategically couple big financial institutions with small tech startups in order to cultivate a Fintech ecosystem in the service of incumbent finance, constituting a Fin-Tech-State triangle. As such, we document and analyse how the coalescence of finance and technology offers new opportunities for second-tier financial centres, while highlighting the difficulties in reaping these in practice.

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List of anonymised interviewees cited in text:

Cabinet Van Overtveldt, interview conducted on 26 April 2018, Brussels, Belgium.

Eggsplore representative, interview conducted on 17 June 2016, Diegem, Belgium.

Fintech entrepreneur, interview conducted on 11 June 2018, Brussels, Belgium.

Infrastructure partner, interview conducted on 13 June 2018, Brussels, Belgium.

Member startup, interview conducted on 9 March 2018, Schaarbeek, Belgium.

Law firm, interview conducted on 15 November 2017, Antwerp, Belgium.

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Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Volume 52, Issue 8

Pages: 1516 - 1538

Article first published online: November 11, 2019

Issue published: November 2020

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Reijer Hendrikse

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Cosmopolis: Centre for Urban Research, Department of Geography, Belgium

[email protected]

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Michiel van Meeteren

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Cosmopolis: Centre for Urban Research, Department of Geography, Belgium; Loughborough University, Geography and Environment, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, UK

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8188-1660

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David Bassens

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Cosmopolis: Centre for Urban Research, Department of Geography, Belgium

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Notes

Reijer Hendrikse, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Cosmopolis: Centre for Urban Research, Department of Geography, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium. Email: [email protected]

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