The future of Latam Fintech isn’t fintech. It’s data.

This week we jammed about the future of finance, tech and fintech in Latin America with great Overboost VC and my friend Toni Peña. It was a wide ranging conversation, but a couple of highlights stood out as high level hypothesis: 

1. The region is full of advanced and sophisticated financial tooling.
   But it’s unevenly distributed. The andean region lags far behind countries like Brazil or Argentina, where intra-banking infrastructure is decades ahead of the curve. If we’re smart about it in the smaller countries we’ll be able to leapfrog a ton of unnecessary investments and just swipe from the best. The biggest blockers here are highly centralized power dynamics. More on that soon.
   

2. Credit is where it’s at right now.
   There’s so much work to do here, and the market is there for the taking. We’ve seen booms of success diving into new approaches to lending with companies like Nubank, but it still feels like a blue ocean out there. The wave of credit-focussed startups, combined with the ludicrous rates for existing loan products speaks volumes. Nailing the disease without being distracted by symptoms is key.
   

3. The future of fintech isn’t fintech.
   It’s about the data. The challenge is aligning input quality, quantity and model sophistication. It’s about taking an immense amount of incredibly valuable data and turning it into something useful for the wave of startup survivors out there.