Embedded Finance Review Podcast, episode 13. Published 14 November 2024. Guest: Dr Manuel Thomet, associate partner at Synpulse. Host: Lars Markull.
Lars Markull: Welcome to the Embedded Finance Review Podcast. My name is Lars Markull. Today I'm speaking with Dr Manuel Thomet, who is associate partner at Synpulse. Manuel and his team published the very first study about embedded finance and banking as a service in Switzerland. The study was conducted with an academic partner, and you can download it via embeddedfinance.ch. In this podcast I'm speaking with Manuel about the embedded finance landscape in Switzerland, what outcome of the study surprised them the most, and where Manuel would put embedded finance on the hype cycle. Let's dive in.
Welcome
Lars Markull: Hi Manuel, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, and in what part of the world are you actually located in right now?
Manuel Thomet: Hi Lars. Good to see you, and thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm doing fantastic. I'm in Zurich in the Synpulse office and outside the weather is not that great, but I'm very much looking forward to our podcast.
Lars Markull: Same here in Berlin. So maybe even better. We spend it inside and talk about a very exciting topic, obviously, embedded finance. And we chose for this interview to talk a little bit more specifically about embedded finance in Switzerland. And of course there's a very specific reason for that. You and your team, you have published the very first study about embedded finance and banking as a service in Switzerland. I think you had a nice launch event of the study as well a couple of weeks ago. So maybe first open a question, what was your learning? Maybe the most interesting learnings that you got out of the study.
What the study found
Manuel Thomet: There are actually a couple of ones, but let's maybe highlight some of the most important ones.
So first and foremost, I think we could show that consumers in Switzerland, they are ready for embedded banking. So over 75% of Swiss consumers have used embedded finance offerings at least once. And we could also show that the so-called tipping point is reached in three out of five banking service areas. So what does it mean? The tipping point is basically the point where an innovation is being adopted by consumers, and in payments, pensions and investments, in those areas the tipping point has actually been surpassed significantly. But also in two other ones, like savings and financing, the tipping point has not been reached, but we're very close to that.