Acquire or Be Acquired (AOBA) 2022: Review & Recap
After going virtual in 2021, the Omicron waved peaked just in time for the Acquire or Be Acquired (AOBA) conference to resume its normal physical presence in Phoenix, Arizona during late January. The virtual sessions in 2021 lacked their normal impact, given the inability, through face-to-face communications, to delve deeper into emerging strategies and industry trends with peers and subject matter experts. The most common sentiment expressed this year was simply the gratitude that we could gather once again, connecting with existing industry contacts and establishing new relationships.
AOBA’s emphasis has evolved. When we first attended the conference, the sessions emphasized acquisitions of failed banks to such a degree that presenters struggled to avoid overlapping content. Then, the conference shifted to emerging from the Great Financial Crisis and the transition to unassisted M&A transactions. We still remember the years that distressed debt buyers roamed the halls looking for unsuspecting bankers with loans to sell.
More recently, the traditional financial services industry structure—with separate, and somewhat inviolable, silos for banking, insurance, wealth management—has been fractured by new challengers from the FinTech sector. Armed with venture capital funding, a willingness to tolerate near-term losses, and a mindset not shackled by traditional operating strategies, the FinTech challengers have sought product lines prone to automation and homogeneity, like consumer checking accounts and small business lending. However, while seeking to disrupt the banking industry, FinTech companies also need the banking industry for compliance expertise, funding, access to payment rails, and the ability to conduct business across state lines.
AOBA 2022 sought to unify several discordant themes. The first theme is fracturing and convergence. While FinTech companies seek to challenge the traditional banking industry, they rely on the industry and, indeed, have entered into M&A transactions to acquire banks. The second theme is threat and opportunity. Banks face challenges from FinTech companies for certain customer segments, but FinTech products and partnerships offer access to new products, new markets, and more efficient operations. For fans of price/tangible book value multiples, though, AOBA 2022 still offered plenty of perspective on recent bank M&A trends. We’ll cover four themes from AOBA 2022.
1. FinTech Competitors/Partners & the Nature of Competition
FinTech’s presence continued to increase at AOBA, both in terms of conference sponsors and mentions throughout the conference. The most popular breakout session we attended was entitled “Crypto/Digital Assets – A Threat or Opportunity for Your Bank,” although it is difficult to ascertain whether the attendance reflects mere curiosity or a leading indicator that more banks will enter the Crypto space.
One common thread of FinTech-related presentations is that bankers should take a more expansive view of their competitors. Three FinTech-related companies would rank among the twenty largest U.S. banks, as measured by market capitalization, including Paypal Holdings (#4), Square (#9), and Chime (#12, based on the value implied by its last funding round). One speaker encouraged banks to adopt an “ecosystem” strategy instead of an “industry” strategy, noting that families often have 30 to 40 relationships with financial services providers, defined broadly.1 Thus, banks’ strategies should not be defined by traditional boundaries but rather embrace the entire financial “ecosystem” in which a range of competitors seek to displace banks from their traditional roles. In this view banks compete for customers from the “inside out,” while FinTech companies challenge from the “outside in.”