The rise of platforms in regulated industries: ownership, curation, and the asymmetric strategies of challenger versus incumbent banks

Journal article

How do platforms emerge in regulated, data-sensitive industries? Drawing on 82 interviews and archival data on UK retail banking from 2016 to 2024, we show that challenger banks build platforms easily but struggle to grow their user base, as data sensitivity and partial outsourcing of resource-intensive infrastructure create a self-reinforcing cycle of trust, resilience, and resource strain. Incumbents face the opposite problem: established user bases offer a network-effect advantage, yet legacy IT, compliance siloes, and cannibalization fears constrain ownership and curation. We show how platform-as-a-service providers emerge in response, but powerful incumbent buyers reverse the platform power asymmetry by forcing closed curation. We develop a theoretical framework with implications for other data-sensitive sectors such as healthcare and insurance.

Authors: Ozcan, P; Dinckol, D; Zachariadis, M

• Publication status: In press
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Research Policy
• Article number: 105499
• Publication date: 2026-05-20
• Acceptance date: 2025-10-18
• DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2026.105499
• EISSN: 1873-7625
• ISSN: 0048-7333
• Language: English
• Keywords: open banking; platform formation; regulated industries; data-sensitive industries; product-to-platform transition; fintech