I used to work at a financial data provider. Our clients were institutional investors (e.g. banks, mutual funds). We would FTP our data directly to our client's machine (or SFTP for our more savvy clients).
Indeed, FTP makes the fintech world go round. Banks do a lot of things in batch (e.g. clearing, settlement) and FTP matches that nicely. At least in North America, this is starting to be disrupted a bit as faster payment instruments and transfer options arise.