Fintech News Issue #131 Thursday, August 31st 2017 09:29AM

Sam Maule is joined by David Brear, Jason Bates and Simon Taylor for this week's news show. They discuss: the possibility of US banks making a massive profit if deregulation goes ahead, and at what cost to the consumers?; Co-op Bank's stake falls to just 1%, what happens to the 4M loyal customers who buy into Co-op's ideals if only 1% is still managed by them?;

For years, traditional financial institutions have kept their distance from the fintech industry, loath to embrace the trend that is threatening their monopoly over banking, finance, loans and investment.

Investing in ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) or functional new currencies can be extremely profitable from an investor’s perspective. For companies, it is a crowdfunding alternative that helps them raise funds for new projects. An ICO is an easy and efficient method for startups to generate capital for their new projects.

The growth in digital banking is showing no signs of slowing down. Convenience, speed and security aren’t just extra benefits in consumers’ minds anymore. They are now a standard requirement of the rapidly changing customer-bank relationship.

Future Branches, a three day networking event, will explore how financial institutions are capitalizing on their physical spaces by revamping in-store technology, revitalizing their front line associates and reimagining branch processes to meet the ever-changing demands of their customers.

A two-hour session to take away the fears from startups of the Due Diligence process. VCs and founders with vast experience explain the DOs and DONTs and let you know how to approach the process confidently.

As banks slowly, gingerly start to provide account and transaction data to their customers over Facebook Messenger and Amazon Alexa, they’re navigating a minefield of uncertainties when it comes to privacy and security.

Just one look at your smartphone is all it takes to remind you that digitization and automation in financial services is nothing new. But the recent heightened interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and banking is. (Go ahead. Ask Alexa.) The Financial Brand’s Jim Marous chalks it up to technological advances and real business needs:

Whenever I start any presentation to banking folk, which I do pretty frequently these days, I start by talking about money. I do this not because I’m obsessed with the stuff, although I’m pretty fond of it, but because I think money is a pretty great barometer of the level of importance that organisations place upon something.

Today, financial institutions face two major challenges. Meeting these challenges is taxing, especially when customer demands for service availability keep increasing and IT budgets and staff are both limited.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently released its latest ‘State of the Nation’ report on fintech globally, in collaboration with Deloitte.

Blockchain, the technology that digital currencies like Bitcoin are based on, ought to be ideal for business applications – if only it was fast enough and coped better with scale. Bitcoin, for example, could only cope with a fraction of the numbers of card transactions that Visa or Mastercard handle. Coco Framework aims to remove persistent stumbling blocks.

Ex-Barclays boss Antony Jenkins told CNBC that banks "tend to be quite good at innovation" but lag behind with regard to "transformation". He said the banking system's focus on central authorities and middle men could inhibit progress it could harness from technologies like blockchain. Distributed ledger technology could mean mortgages and credit being granted to customers in a matter of minutes, he added.

Western Union’s president of global payments, Jean Claude Farah, has indicated the 116-year-old money transfer giant isn’t at risk of being usurped by FinTechs but does realise the value of partnerships, admitting “today, no one can do it on their own”.

Euro-pack when it comes to Fintech investment for many years. A combination of a robust early stage funding ecosystem and a regulatory environment that has embraced disruption (and competition) in financial services have been vital catalysts.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may shake up even the most innovative insurtech ventures in the near future. That’s the prediction of Spiros Margaris, an active venture capitalist in the insurtech and fintech space, recently interviewed by Irish Tech News.