TU Munich team wins Postbank Finance Award

Digitalization megatrend … or how I learned to love fintechs

The team from the Chair of Business Informatics at TU Munich comprising Gabriela Galic, Christian Olenberger, Maximilian Siegert, Andreas Sperling and Florian Zyprian convinced the jury with their project, “Learn to love fintechs.”

Together with their lecturer Dr. Markus Böhm, the TU Munich students described the market of finance technology companies (fintechs) comprehensively and then analyzed and systemized them. They investigated the business models of the fintechs with regard to their strengths and weaknesses and put them into relation with the business model of a typical German full-service bank.

They successfully worked out how fintechs compete or cooperate with banks, and also augment each other. Furthermore, they calculated the effect of these kinds of relationships on the value flow networks of the model bank. From this, the team ultimately derived convincing recommendations for business actions at full-service banks.

Opportunities in digitalization

“The work of the students clearly demonstrates the priority Postbank places on taking advantage of the opportunities of digitalization,” says Frank Strauß, Postbank Chairman and patron of the award. “It is not enough that we offer our customers digitized products and services at the highest technical level. In fact, they expect, above all, services that only become possible following a personal contact. Digitalization, alongside intelligent technologies, can facilitate cost and time savings that allow us to be there for them where they really need us.”

The second place, endowed with 25,000 euro, went to the University of Regensburg. Students from the University of Bayreuth won the third place, endowed with 15,000 euro. A special prize for presentations with particularly convincing application orientation endowed with 20,000 euro went to the Weserbergland University of Applied Sciences.

In all, 25 student teams from 25 universities in Germany took part in the competition. The winners were chosen by a jury of nine experts from research and business. Prof. Erik Theissen of the University of Mannheim was the jury chairman.