I was invited by the New York Federal Reserve #Bank to moderate a panel at its annual #Culture Conference on the challenges and opportunities that #FinTech is raising for the culture of financial institutions. &160;As this is a topic that has long interested me I was happy to accept. &160;At tomorrow’s session (October 20, 2016) the […]
Bank Innovation
Yesterday’s #ethereum hard fork went according to plan, but the attacker has yet to be thwarted.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. (#MUFG), the parent company of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, has begun work on a new #blockchain trial.
#Walmart and IBM are working together to help bring more transparency to China’s massive #pork industry.
External forces from demographic, social, economic and regulatory phenomena have contributed to one of biggest revolution in the banking world: the emergence of #challenger #banks.
Digitally-focused challengers such as Atom, Fidor Bank, Mondo and Starling, have grown significantly in 2015 and 2016, fueled by changing customer expectations, the new Generation Z, the heavy smartphone use in accessing finance and emerging technologies.
Most of the innovation around #fintech and challenger banks have occurred in regional hubs and heavily supportive countries and environments, according to a new #report by Burnmark, including the UK and the US.
“The UK holds the first mover advantage as a home for challenger banks, but new geographies are gaining ground with support from government, regulators, investors and entrepreneurs,” the report says.
&8220;The US, Singapore and Australia, in particular, are actively competing to create best-in-class financial innovation ecosystems and are increasingly progressive in their use of government and regulatory policy to support challenger banks.&8221;
In early 2014, the UK Financial Conduct Authority launched the Project Innovate to support regulation for innovative businesses. Singapore has a £100m financial sector #technology and innovation scheme and Australia has announced a £500m national innovation and science agenda.
The UK also leads in terms of fintech investment, having generated £524 million in 2015 compared with £3.6 billion in California and £1.4b in New York in 2015. The country has an unrivalled lead in terms of financial expertise, employing 1.2 million people in the financial services industry.
Following the UK, Singapore has been increasingly active in policy and benefits to make it an attractive fintech hub. In November, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s central bank and financial regulator, will organize the week long Fintech Festival which will bring together policymakers, fintech experts, entrepreneurs and VC to discuss the future of finance.
MAS has also opened its fintech innovation lab called Looking Glass @ MAS to experiment fintech solutions with financial institutions, startups and tech vendors.
According to the report, the emergence of challenger banks are &8220;multi-fold&8221; and dependent on the regions they belong to. For instance, in developed markets, challenger banks are gaining prominence due to the underlying inefficiencies of the incumbents in service the customer in the best possible and transparent manner.
Emerging markets on the other hand are looking at challengers as a medium to accelerate banking innovation as well as financial inclusion. With mobile penetration increasing significantly in these locations, banks utilizing digital channels to onboard, engage or serve customers are evolving to become an important medium for financial inclusion initiatives.
Notable ventures include Abacus, a digital bank backed by a UK-based private equity firm AnaCap; Metro Bank, which implemented Backbase’s Omnichannel Banking Platform for its digital banking front-end, FIS/SunGard’s Ambit Asset Liability Management solution and outsources mortgage processing to BancTec; Monzo Bank, which has been built on open source stack including Linux, Apache Cassandra, and Google&8217;s Go programming language; Secco Aura, which uses a distributed database similar to the #Bitcoin #blockchain which allows data to be stored on customer&8217;s devices as well as the bank; and Tandem Bank, which uses FiServ&8217;s core banking and its Agility platform on SaaS.
Featured image: Bank via Shutterstock.
The post Report: Challenger Banks Landscape appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Stock exchange giant #Nasdaq discussed its vision for #blockchain post-trade at an event in the UK last week.
Image source This is a two part investigation. Part two will be on Friday. Big: a big and fast growing middle class and a banking sector that has been asleep at the switch on the consumer side; the idea of #China as a consumer market is relatively new and ChineseRead More
Bank Innovation
I do have a question for you. Is the use of #Mobile Phone Banking making significant efforts in bridging the gap to universal #financial inclusion? Come to think of it!
Mobile banking is simply the act of performing financial transactions on a mobile device like a cell phone or a tablet to send remittances, pay fees and utility bills. Mobile devices are increasingly being use by people for banking, planning, and financial management. The commonness of mobile devices explains the extent to which they have suddenly become entrenched into our modern digital evolution.
Guess what, about 62% of Americans primarily bank online and 54% of consumers use mobile banking apps according to the Bank of America report on “Trends in Consumer Mobility” published in 2016. According to the Michelle Moore, head of digital banking at Bank of America, there are growing numbers of people adopting and using the mobile devices in managing their finances and navigating their lives. . According to the 2014 World Bank figures, the Sub-Sahara #Africa was leading the world with the fastest growth in new bank accounts premised on the penetration of mobile banking. About 12 percent adults in the region had a mobile money account compared with 2 percent globally. Kenya for instance, has championed the cause of Africa’s mobile banking evolution with more than 58 percent of her adult population having a mobile account.
Not long ago in my part of the world, it was difficult to locate a financial institution much more transact a basic financial transaction. There were quite a few #banks dotted around the country. The few ones available were established in the big towns and cities. As time evolves, the number of banks quadrupled but there is still a numberless of unbanked people left out of the formal financial system.
These groups who are mostly from poor rural communities are deprived of basic financial services and have to travel over a long distance from their rural setting to the big cities were the banks are located to transact financial services. Indeed, the hand of the traditional banking isn’t long enough to feed this rural folks.
Cost, time and infrastructural barriers prevent the conventional banks from establishing their branches in these deprived communities to serve the un/under banked customers thereby creating an economic opportunity for the telecoms and banks to deploy mobile #technology to serve this niche market.
It is estimated by the World Bank that about 2 billion working age adults are still left of the formal financial system. Most of these unbanked and under banked people live in remote communities distant from the financial institutions and are therefore practically cut off from the accessing financial services and products.
On the backdrop of technological advancement and as fate will have it, the advent of mobile phones came to answer the fore-said puzzle ,and attempt to wipe out the tears of the un-served customers, and complement the gains chalked by the conventional banks.
In the mobile phone money ecosystem are the telecommunication service providers, banks, regulators, and mobile agents who use mobile technology to reach out the poor in the rural settings at cost effective manner. Customers who are users of mobile money can conveniently check the balance on their wallets, transfer, earn interest on their deposits, and pay utility charges and other services. You don’t have to make a trip to an ATM or financial center either.
Why it matters? The proliferation of the use of mobile phones and other innovative technologies is helping to rope in the unbanked people especially in the rural setting to access financial services at affordable cost. This thereby provides a complementary channel to progress towards a universal financial inclusion. Along the value chain, it is believed that financial access enhances the quality of living as it allows customers banking access anytime and anywhere to save time and their money, and use it for transactional purposes. Again, families can easily plan and take precautionary measures against future uncertainties including deaths, poor farm harvest and illness. Households and small medium businesses with access to a transaction account can use it to conduct financial services that can improve their livelihood and diminish their operational costs. This branch-less banking is also a source of employment to large throng of youth who act as Mobile agents or merchants to earn revenue from the fees charged and commission received. Bank of America, HDFC, HSBC, Barclays, Ecobank, FNB and other banks with mobile phone banking platforms can leverage on it to expand their collection levels and make savings on their operational costs while the telecoms expand their mobile subscriber base and earn additional revenue on fees and charges.
However, adequate security measures must be maintained when using mobile phone banking to minimize the exposure to phishing scams (identity theft) and cyber related attacks by hackers who are sniffing around like vultures with amber eyes desperately looking for carcass.
Universal Financial Inclusion is now a flagship issue for boardroom discussions and a key priority for nations, development partners and policy makers globally. The World Bank group has identified financial inclusion as an instrument for combating the war against poverty and set to achieve a universal financial access by 2020. Member nations have demonstrated frantic efforts by crafting their national policies and strategies to foster universal financial inclusion via public financial literacy sensitization, establishing financial consumer protection frameworks and ICT infrastructural development, to reach out to the hard to reach citizens within the nooks and crannies of their countries with basic financial services.
The G20 leaders also took bold step to promoting access to financially neglected members globally by endorsing the G20 High Level principles for Digital Financial Inclusiveness at the recent summit held in Hangzhou, China, in September 2016.This is to further consolidate the gains reaped from the 2010 G20 Principles for Innovative Financial Inclusion which were earlier adopted in tickling the minds of global leaders and development partners to appreciate the importance of innovative financial inclusiveness. They underscore the relevance of financial inclusiveness to achieving economic growth and prosperity.
Repeated research shows that there is a positive nexus between financial inclusion and productivity, poverty reduction and prosperity. Mobile phone banking penetration is helping in tiptoeing towards the goal of global financial access. Today in the remotest part of the deprived communities in Africa, people with mobile account can access at least more than one mobile phone banking services like reload airtime, send money(remittances), loan receipt and repayment, bill payment, school fees, deposits and withdrawals. Latest survey findings from the 2016 Consumers and Mobile Financial Services report fielded by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board in November 2015 cited that the adoption and use of mobile banking continues to surge with 43 percent of all mobile phone owners with a bank account who had used mobile banking having uptick from 33 percent to 39 percent between 2013 and 2014 among the citizens of Americans.
The rapid growth of mobile financial services is a key springboard to achieving universal financial access. However, the fight to achieving a universal financial access is tense and requires un-relented efforts from all stakeholders including nations, development partners, and policy makers.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdul-bashit-abdulai-8543b045″ connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Abdul-Bashit Abdulai”] is MBA, BCOM, CA, CH. FE
#Blockchain #technology has the potential to revolutionise the profitability of #capital markets. The promise of risk mitigation, capital efficiency and operational benefits can only be realised through legal and #regulatory change.
Blockchain has generated significant interest in capital markets, as #FinTech start-ups, global #banks and other providers evaluate technology and potential use cases. Yet, many questions remain unanswered as to how blockchain, or other forms of distributed ledger technology (DLT), fit into the current regulatory and legal infrastructure.
To deliver viable and valuable solutions in the highly-regulated environment of capital markets, blockchain will need to navigate the legal and regulatory landscape – either by evolving solutions which conform or by engaging policymakers to reshape its current contours.
Innovate Finance has partnered with Hogan Lovells and EY to produce Blockchain and the Capital Markets Journey which outlines the legal and regulatory challenges of using DLT in capital markets, including the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market. This report focuses on the UK’s regulatory and legal environment as a stepping-stone to understanding analysis and issues that are similar to those in other jurisdictions.
We outline key themes that we believe will help shape the future architecture of blockchain:
In this report, we have helped to kick-start the debate by addressing important legal and regulatory questions that will impact the development of blockchain. Questions range from organisational to philosophical – all designed to encourage a wider agenda where regulators and law makers will collaborate with the industry to enact change.
Click here to learn more: http://www.ey.com/ukbanking
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/imran-gulamhuseinwala-b673701″ connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Imran Gulamhuseinwala”] is EY Partner – Head of FinTech
Lykke, a #Swiss #Fintech company building a global #blockchain-powered marketplace, concluded its initial coin offering (ICO) at midnight, October 11th, with the sale of 23,226,753 coins, raising 1,161,338 CHF. The sale lasted a month, during which over 1,200 new people downloaded Lykke wallets and registered with the service. The number of Lykke coin holders jumped #from 147 to 717.
“We are thrilled to welcome almost 500 new shareholders from 90 countries, who have invested a total of 1,161,338 CHF during our online sale,” said Lykke founder Richard Olsen. “Thank you to the many new stakeholders, who are helping us build our global marketplace.
” With this money, the company will continue to apply for broker and trading facility licenses in Europe, Asia and North America, and continue to build out its open-source trading platform for all to use.
The platform now offers trading of #Bitcoin, Swiss francs, dollars, euros, pounds, yen, and Lykke coins. Many other digital currencies, indices, community coins and crypto-equities are planned for the future. Lykke’s goal is to be the lowest-cost marketplace for trading all digital assets, using blockchain settlement for speed and security.
Lykke coins were priced at 0.05 CHF. As the company’s coins are now publicly traded, the market will set the price for the coins. Lykke has reserved ten percent of the money raised to provide liquidity. The company implements a first-of-its-kind agent-based algorithm for setting prices, offering liquidity to sellers, and reducing volatility.
You can still buy Lykke Coins here.
The post Swiss Blockchain-powered Exchange Captures $ 1 Million from Fans appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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