Fintech consolidation - the future (and T.E Lawrence)

Fintech is a field that is expanding and changing rapidly.  Recently your author spoke at the SimCorp International User Community Meeting in Milan. The topic was "Front-Office Vendor Consolidation, what it means for the buy-side?"

Amongst discussion of the acquisition of CRD by StateStreet and Eze by SS&C your author proposed his theory of Fintech consolidation.

In summary, the world is coalescing back to front-to-back stacks from different vendors.  As such we will see a market where the roof is held up by seven pillars.

IHS Markit

Thomson Reuters Finance and Risk - soon to be Refinitiv

SS&C

FIS

Bloomberg

Factset

One more which could be ION or SimCorp (or SimION) 

Where does this leave everyone else? On the outside, looking in.  There is a wonderful Americanism that covers this 'Go big or go home'. Hence our earlier piece on "The Enterprise Fintech Start-up"

The financial technology industry is normalising and becoming more like every other industry - regulated and with normal rates of return. The skeletons in the closets that built many fintech firms may rattle from time-to-time (and hopefully get picked up by due diligence) but the halcyon days are receding from memory...