The value of FinTech innovations for the finance industry: Evidence from China

This paper explores the value effects of FinTech innovations on the finance industry in China, focussing on the banking system. We use a crawler-like application programme to grab patent filing information and manually identify and classify FinTech innovations based on their application fields. FinTech patents generally bring adverse value effects to various finance sectors, revealing a competitive relationship between innovators and financial firms. FinTech innovations applied to insurance and asset management cause the most harm to the industry, especially to state-owned and joint-stock commercial banks. Moreover, disruptive FinTech innovations by start-up firms appear to pose more potential threats to commercial banks.