Bulder Bank on a potential disruptive path

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of Bulder Bank, based on the literature of Bower and Christensen (1995). Today, most banks operate as “financial supermarkets” and offer everything from daily banking to loans to insurance etc. Therefore, the entrance of an actor like Bulder Bank, who has developed a fully app-based bank, was highly surprising. Despite the digitalization of the world these past years, the banking industry has been moving at a slower pace when it comes to innovation and technology. Bulder is a niche concept with a value proposition for automatically lowered interest rate on mortgages and a fully app-based bank. Can they be categorized as a disruptive innovation? And where in the process are they in regards of potentially disrupting the market? We will dive deeper into these questions throughout this study, by using the theoretical framework of disruptive innovation as a foundation.