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FinTech Weekly Magazine

  • Making sense of data access approaches [Whitepaper]

    [SPONSORED] Consumer access to financial data has become a hot topic of late—and with good reason. U.S. consumers are embracing a proliferation of digital financial services, spanning everything from alternative lending to automated investing. Innovation in this space rests on consumers’ ability to grant access to their personal financial data, which often sits within a bank or other financial institution. This dynamic has raised difficult questions around security, data, and user experience, to name a few.

  • An industry matured: highlights from Mobey Day 2016

    Sirpa Nordlund, Executive Director, Mobey Forum, shares key takeaways from the international association’s Mobey Day banking and fintech conference, held in Barcelona last week.

  • Putting the "Investor" Back into "Investor Relations" for Alternative Investments

    Private funds are the fastest growing category of investments, with estimates of current assets reaching $10T, and projected to grow to $18T by 2020. As the economy has recovered from the Great Recession, more and more investors have entered into alternative investments.

  • On the attack: How FinTech is piling the pressure on banks

    Banks are staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. Preparing to squeeze the trigger is an army of agile FinTech businesses. Here, Mike Galarza, the CEO and founder of Entryless, discusses how FinTech - aided by startups - is taking the fight to traditional financial institutions.

  • Hack a bank from the inside – and why innovating hurts

    Hacking a bank is serious business. This is true in terms of hacking as an illegal activity aimed at getting unauthorized access to data and information. Hacking a bank with the institution supporting the action is another matter. And it is a completely wonderful experience.

  • Planning for the Bank’s Future: Why Advanced Data Analytics Is Paramount in 2017?

    2016 has been a big year for advanced analytics. Banks that are already turning customer data into smart, actionable insights see major pay-offs in new business, better customer targeting and segmentation, faster decision-making, efficiencies in operations, and progress in risk management. As the banking industry approaches strategic planning season, it’s time for leadership to think long-term about the bank’s goals and future growth and how advanced analytics can support these objectives. Why should data science and advanced analytics be a critical component to the bank’s 2017 business plan? Consider these compelling reasons:

  • The Benefits of Record & Replay to Wealth Managers

    Whether for business or pleasure, the Internet, social media and digital access to information and applications, are a fundamental and fully integrated aspect of modern life. With so much personal technology now used day-to-day – from smart phones, to mobile applications, to the computerization of everyday activities that we all take for granted - wealth management customers increasingly expect 24/7 access to both digitally-delivered financial information and online assistance.

  • How [And Which] FinTech Startups Are Breaking Banking

    I’ve talked about how the global financial system is broken and how that freelancers are getting the short end of the stick. The free banking economy goes much deeper than you may think.

  • FinTech Sector at Risk From Attack on Patentable Subject Matter

    Innovation in the United States could be at risk due to a recent patent ruling having a detrimental effect on patent enforcement efforts and obtaining patents on business methods including financial technologies. Certain rulings disfavor patent owners and could hurt many sectors, such as FinTech. In particular, The Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank decision—has led to the invalidation of a multitude of software and business method patents in the FinTech sector (“pro-infringer measures”).

  • A Cloud-Based Controlled Open Web Container for the Fintech Market

    As the demand for faster and more sophisticated financial trading tools increase it is envisaged that future trading platforms will need to adapt in terms of functionality and flexibility.

  • Aligning CRA Efforts Within the Changing Climate of Corporate Social Responsibility

    For almost 40 years, a key piece of banks’ social responsibility strategies has been related to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), the 1977 enactment which ensures that banks are continually addressing the needs of low to moderate income neighborhoods and other underserved areas of the communities in which they are located. The CRA requires that financial institutions are periodically evaluated for these efforts, and this record is taken into account when an institution seeks to open a new location or participate in M&A activities.

  • Is Big Data a big foe?

    Sensational headlines in the media describing Big Data as "the next big thing" somehow do not impress anymore. After all, sensational headlines sometimes are just ... sensational and not necessarily true. Behind all these boosted names and future forecasts the most important somehow lies unnoticed: numbers and the actual operational facts. And we need to turn the focus from talking to rather doing.

  • Real-time transfer technologies have given rise to a new class of customers in the United States: we call them the Overbanked. The Overbanked are people with open accounts with three or more depository institutions.

  • A Brave New World of Microservices

    We have the web at our fingertips. We connect more and more parts of our lives to the internet. We are moving whole business segments from brick and mortar to the online space. That's not really big news - it is called progress and we observe it with more or less interest day in, day out. With the digitalization also comes a shift in the nature of the services offered to us. Consumers will change, the service landscape will change and banks will need to adapt - which means they will drastically change, too.

  • Africa - FinTech's Natural Fit and Next Frontier

    We’ve heard the sensationalism before – That the unbridled array of opportunities in Africa are either being “squandered”, “exploited” or just now seeping to the surface for globalization to capitalize on the ‘Rising Continent’ in timely fashion.

  • Composite Lending: Why a Hybrid of Balance Sheet and Marketplace Lending  Makes The Most Sense

    A few years ago, marketplace lending platforms quickly gained steam and emerged as Wall Street darlings, promising to bring greater access, speed and efficiencies to all parties involved in the borrowing process – borrowers (small businesses and consumers), the marketplace lenders themselves,  and secondary investors. In recent weeks, however, a series of high profile incidents and disappointing earnings statements have called into question the transparency, stability and viability of the marketplace lending business model. Apparently, the headlines read, it is not time to ring the death knell for traditional banks just yet.

  • Blockchain Technology - The Next Disruptive Computing Innovation

    Yamini Kona has around 15 years of experience in Financial Services. She comes with a strong research and business analysis background and has authored various case studies and thought papers in the past.

  • Big Banks can be Challengers too

    Paul Bowman from Market Gravity shares his insights on how traditional long-term strategies are dead and banking organisations are finding new ways to innovate quickly.

  • What the Gig Economy Means for the Emerging Fintech Industry

    When thinking about the implications of the gig economy, all industries must take notice of its disruptive nature in order to remain smart and streamlined, adapting to consumer needs. And, they can achieve this mainly by making their workforces more flexible. But particularly how can it affect the traditional finance industry and the new disruptive trend in fintech? The traditional financial industry is one of the anchors of the world economy, but it is undergoing a reinvention thanks to fintech. When you combine two major disruptive shifts -- fintech and the gig economy -- the results are powerful and game-changing.

  • FinTech Customer Experience is Changing Financial Services to Become Trusted Again

    We interviewed Kevin Bottoms, Global Vice President of TELUS International, about the importance of customer service and experience in financial services and beyond. Customer don't only need to be acquired, they need to be retained – by building trust.

  • Ways for Risk Management Departments to Provide a Winning Customer Experience

    It is generally calculated that businesses must spend between four and ten times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one [1]. With that in mind, we would like to share several strategies risk departments can employ to help deliver a strong customer experience, an important component of customer loyalty.

  • Cookies – "Pay the Street Musicians Digitally"

    We were interested in the P2P payment startup Cookies for quite a while now. When we met co-founder Lamine Cheloufi at the Pioneers Festival 2016 in Vienna, it was about time for an interview.

  • There will be rebundling after unbundling – Interview with NUMBER26

    At the Pioneers Festival 2016 in Vienna, we met Maximilian Tayenthal of the rapidly growing mobile banking startup NUMBER26 and talked to him about the evolution in finance and what it means for their business.

  • Interview with Raj Singh & Jürgen Hütter from Avant

    We interviewed Raj Singh and Jürgen Hütter from online lender Avant about the reasons alternative lenders gain ground, why the US offers better prerequisites for the business and what the bank of the future will look like.