Financials are at a crossroads. On the one hand, banks and insurance companies are set to benefit from recovering global growth and higher interest rates. However, many financials face increasing competition from fintech disruptors, often backed by the world’s largest technology companies such as Alipay, Apple Pay, and Ant Financial.

Australia has a good portion of both the new and the old, so we put a selection to our panellists to see where the best opportunities are. Clydesdale Bank spun out of NAB, but which one is a buy? AMP’s financial planning business is disrupted by platforms like Hub24 and netwealth – are there better opportunities in the disruptors, or the disrupted?

Hosted by Matthew Kidman from Centennial Funds, this week’s panellists are Geoff Wilson AO from Wilson Asset Management and Charlie Aitken from Aitken Investment Management.

Key points:

• NAB is a key beneficiary of rising interest rates
• Clydesdale Bank is a cost-out story that could have significant upside, but Wilson thinks it’s fully valued
• After a 50% share price increase in recent months, Hub24 is trading on a lofty multiple
• netwealth looks “incredibly cheap” compared to Hub24, with both panellists confirming they’d picked up stock in the IPO
• Perennial underperformer AMP has consistently failed to live up to expectations since listing nearly 20-years ago, but neither Wilson nor Aitken sees any improvement from here.

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