Fintech News Issue #120 Thursday, June 1st 2017 10:58AM

Bitcoin has often been dismissed as the currency of criminals and frauds, but those in the FinTech space have thought differently for a long time. Even when they didn’t defend bitcoin explicitly, the interest in blockchain has only grown.

The maturity levels of CX practices across the financial services industry are varied. The average bank, insurance company, and wealth management center have been building up legacy systems and siloes that CX executives are challenged to work across.

PSD2 appears to create a level playing field for all market participants. It is democratising customer data held by banks (with permission) and gives customers choice in how they use some banking services without necessarily using their banks.

A recent Reuters article explored how companies like Cobol Cowboys make a fortune helping banks who struggle to keep their legacy systems running.

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The focus on fintech disruption of banks has largely been about services: better customer experiences and challenges to the core infrastructure of banking. As a result of fintech disruption, bank services as we know them will change more in the coming years than they have for decades.

The role of the CFO is widely recognised to facilitate and support business strategy so that the organization can achieve its goals and objectives – be it of profitability, capital, growth or anything else. Shareholders and investors cherish these metrics too.

With the litany of new Fintech startups and existing Fintech businesses, and even Fintech specific incubators and accelerators popping up, the Fintech revolution is clearly in full effect. As with any fast growing industry however, the current laws are often ill-suited to cover the substantive issues and it takes time for regulatory bodies to catch up.

Big data is driving revolutionary change in a host of industries. But it is now, more than ever, susceptible to misuse

Most Blockchain initiatives have a singular goal: to introduce a new Blockchain platform - Ethereum, July 2015; Lisk, May 2016; Waves, January 2017.

Long overshadowed by their consumer counterparts, B2B payment firms are seeing greater interest from venture capital, private equity and strategic investors.

So why are banks - who are typically the most capable and tech-intensive players in the business world - acting like Luddites with AI?

A senior official at the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has given a speech on “The Adoption of RegTech within the Financial Services”.

The insurance industry is facing tremendous change and so are the tasks of those working in this field. We talked to Sebastian Heithoff, Marketing Manager at German InsurTech startup versicherungsberatercheck.de – a platform that looks to increase the quality of insurance brokerage and consumer decision making in the digital age.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing so rapidly that even its developers are being caught off guard. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in Davos, Switzerland, in January that it “touches every single one of our main projects, ranging from search to photos to ads