The Early Days of Neobanks in Europe: Identification, Performance, and Riskiness

Abstract

This paper identifies banks born with a digital business model (‘neobanks’) and examines their performance and riskiness vis-à-vis traditional peers. We propose a novel approach to identify neobanks, based on non-financial hand-collected data, and identify 65 neobanks operating in Europe. We show that neobanks perform worse than their traditional peers, while recording a similar level of risk. Namely, neobanks charge higher interest income, record higher impairment charges, and face higher non-staff expenses. Further analysis suggests the presence of economies of scale and scope in digital banking. Our findings are robust to endogeneity concerns and changes to our baseline specification.