Fintech News Issue #210 Thursday, March 28th 2019 08:00AM

A year ago I blogged about invisible banking and that I have some issues with it, namely that the bank brand disappears and the customer finds it too easy to spend without thinking. Now, I read more and more about embedded banking, contextual banking, frictionless banking and more, and I think people have got this all wrong.

I can understand why bankers can be sceptical about what technologists say. For years, technologists have been telling them that their business is threatened by technological change.

I’ve mentioned quite often that you cannot sort out all of the banks systems and structures overnight. It has to be a slow burn and often takes more than five years. It also appears to take place in three phases.

This week saw global service outages taking Facebook off the grid on Wednesday, the longest outage in 15 years. The ignominy of having to announce this on Twitter must have had Facebook executives wincing.

Last month, the regional banks SunTrust and BB&T announced the largest bank merger since the 2008 financial crisis, one that would create the sixth-largest bank in the U.S.

FinTech Futures‘ editorial team is keeping its finger on the fintech pulse, with these comprehensive and free guides on the challenger banks/banking services and their technology in various countries.

I know few CFOs who take the time to forecast the cash flow more than once a quarter, but in my book that’s a mistake. Cash flow forecasts are critical tools for monitoring the health of a company, and should be done monthly.

Don’t you even tell me you have not been tempted. To run away. And join the circus. Not literally

From why it’s riskier to not take risks when it comes to retail banking, to whether or not robots are going to need passports in the future (hint: they will!), to what trends these experts are keeping a close eye on this year.

Five years ago, no one in financial services was talking much about customer experience. Customer service? Sure. Customer satisfaction? Perhaps.

Banks must start small and ensure that incremental development enables them to learn about their systems, while a sudden, “big bang” launch should be avoided at all costs.

Close to half of banks (41%) failed to meet a recent deadline for the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) to provide a testing environment or 'sandbox' for any third party service providers (TPPs).

In 2015, the Chinese insurance company Ping An launched what would soon become one of the largest fintech Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies in Asia.

Advanced technologies are creating more opportunities for growth, but many insurers are failing to convert potential into value