The bank-fintech battle rages on

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Editor's note: From new regulatory regimes in payments and digital lending to crackdowns on bad practices by a few firms, this year saw regulation and compliance take centre stage for the fintech industry. The new regulations, though well-meaning, have also led to tensions between fintechs and bankers. While fintech founders and bankers publicly display a “symbiotic relationship”, fissures lurk beneath the surface.  As disruptors of the banking system, fintechs and their cohorts of engineers have a grouse: For all their deposits and assets under management, bankers have been inefficient and only marginally improved the access to credit and other financial products despite decades of operations. Fintech players point out that nothing would have changed if they hadn’t stepped in.  Bankers, on the other hand, are of the view that fintech founders want to run without learning to walk first. The founders do not know what it is like to run an institution, a branch network and take care of thousands of employees, they say. Banks have experienced decadal changes in economic growth and policy, but fintech founders, they say, have seen no …