Why Rabobank’s Blockchain Cross-Border Tool Isn’t Just a Database
Dutch multinational bank Rabobank today announced a cross-border payments #tool its creators argue is more powerful than a #database.
Updates from user Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
user
-
user
Inside Bank of America’s New Microsoft-Powered Blockchain Project
The #inside story of how Microsoft and #Bank of America worked together to build a #blockchain prototype for trade finance.
-
user
Goldman is leading the “Buy-side empowers the Sell-side” movement.
The Daily #Fintech founders are at SIBOS in Geneva; reporting every day, snippets of insights on the Fintech Genome. Stay tuned on all SIBOS Insights conversations. For years the Sell side was the incubator of financial innovation and the marketplace where products and services were designed and the platforms where market making andRead More
Bank Innovation -
user
Forget Robo & Blockchain – Here’s the Next Big Thing.
A few months ago I had an ugly call with a big startup VC.
We discussed what the future would look like in banking. I pushed the ideas and concepts which I fully believed would push the wealth management space to it’s full potential but weirdly, and I wasn’t getting through to him. It’s like my points weren’t being listened to unless I mentioned “#robo-advisor” or “#blockchain“.
That’s when I realised, there is massive over-indexing towards these few trends.
Did everyone forget to create truly new value propositions?
I’m pretty sure we as the wealth management industry have lost four years to chasing the latest headlines.
“X-Vestor is the first fully automated portfolio advisor that re-balances ETFs based on the latest superheroes movies!”
“X-Bank is the first bank to create an automated parking place Blockchain exchange in Slovenia!”
Instead of discussing the merits of 100 different flavours of robo and blockchain, shouldn’t #banks and #fintech‘s be focused on creating truly new value propositions where customers need them most?
Today, in our BEST MakerZone yet we talk hardcore strategy, architecture and the BIG missed opportunity we see in wealth management and private wealth management.
(Note: 2,000+ of you listened on your commutes so you can download the official podcast here on iTunes and Podbean)
Q&A Transcript
Veronica asks, “After the un-bundling of financial services when does the re-bundling start and how will it happen?” (1:15)
Everyone in the industry is talking Customer-centric experience design thinking UX journey….but where’s the new digital stuff? We should all be worried. Since 2012, Payments have left the banking ecosystem, and Transfers are on their way out too. Those were two lucrative traditional businesses in the cash cow retail spaces of universal or regional banks that provided the cash flow to the rest of the business to serve higher-end wealthy customers.
Open Finance is our belief that customers need access to several providers to manage their wealth efficiently and effectively.
Digital creates totally new space for things that did not exist before – to shift existing business lines over to other faster, simpler ecosystems. Yet here we are at the end of 2016 – and after 10,000 FinTech conferences, newsletters and consultant briefings. We are something like 1-10% done in the wealth industry in terms of un-bundling and inventing truly new digital value propositions for customers:
I don’t see any Bank (or FinTech) who has an Amazon, AirBnB, ProductHunt, NetFlix or Glassdoor in their skunkworks.
People of Banking and FinTech! There is a huge greenfield out there to create new ways to locate and compare your private banking services. Comparison platforms that operate outside one captive banking structure and work across many providers – is a huge opportunity. YNOME is one strategic piece we are creating in the greenfield to see if it can prove the marketplace is needed – and so far all evidence points to we are right.
So much of the value chain in wealth management is baked into the actual human advisory process – and we think new services will look completely different than today’s mess of apps and services. We need something new – many new things. Replicating an asset allocation and simple execution? That’s not a full digital value prop and should be pivoting by now and filling in those missing pieces served today during the actual advisory process.
The internet for banking and un-bundling has just gotten started.
Arthur asks, “What are the Best Online Financial Services Platforms and how do they perform versus each other and Advisors?” (7:18)
The “platforms” out there are captive in bank’s ecosystem today but those are not truly platforms for banking. We think Google is a platform, Apple is a platform. We talk about Ynome (www.ynome.com) which is one of our attempts to build an actual extra-bank platform that will help customers assemble their own private banking services. We believe platforms are new systems that are not captive within single banks and part of their plumbing – but are truly user-centric as Uber, which as we all know was not invented by a taxi company, it was a new digital proposition fixing old problems and has only really just begin. I fully expect I will Uber all my transport needs in ten years and I won’t own a car. That’s what “platforms” really do to disrupt existing industries.
We also talk about the First 20 Days of the journey to find yourself better private banking services, which starts in the internet and returns largely paid advertising. We liken the future experience of banking to be more like Google Flights and Trip Advisor, where I don’t even know what the airline names are anymore (I usually just look as we are going to the airport). Travel or entertainment can be booked so simply, so should wealth management services.
So our challenge to you today is – go invent more platforms outside the captive banking system. Don’t just keep replicating single pieces of the value chain like strategic asset allocation, but try to create truly new digital user-centric (not bank-centric!) value propositions that make the job of managing your wealth much simpler and faster.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruno” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”David Bruno”] is Co-Founder YNOME, Head UBS WM Innovation, Advisory Board Member BONSEYES and this article was originally published on linkedin.
-
user
Connected insurance is here to stay—are you ready for this new insurance paradigm?
Italians want #connected insurance policies; they are not afraid of “Big Brother.” According to the Ania-Bain Observatory, #InsurTech can take off in the home and health sectors. Now is the time for both the model and management of connected insurance to be structured.
As of today, 22% of Italian households that have no home insurance are inclined to buy it—if it were connected insurance. This was the starting point of July’s meeting of the Connected Insurance Observatory, an Ania–Bain think-tank, which has put together executives from 30 insurance groups within the Internet of Things (IoT) sector to discuss the great potential of connected insurance, as well as the challenges it poses to the insurance business.
Among those challenges is the protection of auto insurance telematics data, a topic that the Data Protection Authority has recently tackled, promising to offer clients appropriate visibility into the usage of collected data.
“There has been an explicit acceptance of the validity of a try-before-you-buy application in auto insurance from the Italian regulator,” says Matteo Carbone, principal at Bain & Company and founder of the Observatory. Regulatory acceptance of the validity of this principle has proved that there are no real obstacles to innovation in this area—except when it comes to the rights of the insured, which have to be respected. (Of course, this includes the provision of a detailed explanation to insurance customers of the business purpose for which the data is being collected.) Carbone continues, “In Italy, if there is the will, innovation can be achieved just as easily as in Silicon Valley.”
A new model
On one hand, InsurTech and connected insurance are transforming insurance business lines. On the other, it is essential to create the conditions needed for insurers and other specialized players to fulfill their role as providers, each in its own sector: from e-health to antifraud and from driverless cars to electronic payments and product design. “A new and more connected insurance model has to be defined In order to achieve this, so that the full potential of the #technology can be exploited,” says Luigi Di Falco, Head of Life and Welfare, Ania. “In our opinion, there are many opportunities and areas to be explored within connected insurance that would allow for a more client-centric offering to be created. The demand would be easier to aggregate, and thus more client categories that are not insurable today would become insurable. Last, it reduces claims through the use of sensors with advantages for both the insurer and the insured.”
Managing an ecosystem
There are still plenty of challenges. Chief among them, according to Ania, are the evolution of rules and regulations on privacy, the risk of data monopoly from players like Google, the arrival of new insurance start-up competitors and the danger of insurance disintermediation. Di Falco warns that “the Observatory has to look at understanding both the advantages and the dangers that come with InsurTech.”
At the foundation of everything is the synergy between numerous partners that drives insurance toward becoming the coordinator of a highly complex system. According to Carbone, “Insurers today are aware that using external providers is simply not enough and that the orchestration of the whole ecosystem needs to happen. This is a relatively new trend that represents the next frontier of connected insurance and is essential for reaching full potential.”
LESS PRIVACY, MORE SERVICES
Regarding privacy issues, the accepted principle states that if the client wants additional services, he or she needs to enable the insurer to provide them. According to research conducted by the Observatory on the propensity of customers to buy home insurance policies, which include intelligent devices installed at home, there are positive signals: Clients that do not have home insurance show more interest in buying a connectedpolicy. As Di Falco confirms, “If the insured believes that a service is useful, he or she will be ready to renounce the privacy of his or her data. But this has to be reflected by a legal framework that specifies that the loss of privacy is strictly connected to perceived benefits on behalf of the client.”
Innovation are moving to the home and health sectors
Being aware of this, 76% of the insurance carriers participating at the Observatory expect to see significant innovation activity related to home products (the “connected home”) in the next 12 months. Also, 43% of companies believe the health sector—(“connected health”)— will be ripe for innovation, whereas in the life and industrial sectors, the potential for innovation is expected only in the medium term. Di Falco says that people are more likely to buy insurance for the home. But this is not the only sector experiencing innovation: Some specialized insurance companies are already offering health insurance coverage related to wearables, claim detection and sideline services, starting with health monitoring, second opinions and medical consultation via chat and continuing with access to networks of healthcare structures and drug stores. Di Falco underscores the point: “In a country where the proportion of people over 65 will grow to become a third of the entire population, it is important to develop forms of insurance protection in rehabilitation and long-term assistance where the state is less present and the nuclear family is not holding together as it once did.”
The Connected Insurance Observatory was created with the purpose synthesizingItalian excellence in the connected insurance sector. It has three main goals: first, to rationalize existing industry knowledge and experience; second, to identify together with the companies what needs to be improved, what the main challenges and critical points are, and what the main ambitions are; and third, to promote a culture of innovation in the insurance sector by encouraging dialogue between all players involved. “To sum it up,” says Carbone, “we have created a think-tank centered on the insurance sector that boasts the participation of more than 15 other players—including the Italian Association of Insurance Brokers (AIBA)—coming from different backgrounds that are interested in sharing their own experiences with the insurance carriers.”
Intermediaries’ interest on the rise
Forty percent of Italian brokers believe that connected insurance represents an interesting business opportunity in the medium term. A recent survey developed by AIBA and the Connected Insurance Observatory shows that, other than the growing interest of intermediaries in connected solutions, larger brokers are more likely to see the business opportunity within connected insurance: 67% of big brokers expressed this, compared to 60% of medium-size brokers and 40% of small brokers.
(The original version of this interview initially appeared in Insurance Review.)
Matteo is Principal in Bain & Company’s Financial Services and Digital Practices, Founder and Responsible of the Connected Insurance Observatory, Thought Leader in InsurTech, Top 50 InsurTech Influencer.
-
user
IBM: Banks Expect Commercial Blockchains By 2017
Some of the world’s #banks and financial markets are bullish on #blockchain products, new survey data shows.
-
user
What Do People Use Venmo For? Check the Emojis.
The classic use case for peer-to-peer payments is splitting a #check — it’s straightforward, easy to understand, and the #people doing it are young and having fun (probably.) But the problem is that the average P2P payment, according to JPMorgan Chase, anyway, is $ 300, rather expensive for a dinner bill.Read More
Bank Innovation -
user
US Central Bank Chair: Blockchain Could Have ‘Significant’ Impact
The Federal Reserve isn’t working on any #blockchain applications of its own at this time, according to Fed #chair Janet Yellen.
-
user
ASX Sets Date for Decision on Blockchain Transition
ASX says it intends to decide on whether it will migrate to a #blockchain-based settlement system by the end of 2017.
-
user
In Washington, Momentum Grows for Blockchain Action
Recent developments around #blockchain in #Washington, DC are setting the stage for even bigger moves in the year ahead.
Reply