The rise of platforms in regulated industries: Ownership, curation, and the asymmetric strategies of challenger versus incumbent banks
基于2016至2024年英国零售银行业的82次访谈和档案数据，研究发现挑战者银行易建平台但难扩用户，而在位银行虽有用户优势却受制于旧系统和内部阻力，平台即服务提供商的出现反而被大买家逆转了权力不对称。
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.