#Debitize, a startup helping millennials build #credit without using credit (we’ll explain), reached a significant milestone last week and released a new product this week. The milestone is $ 1 #million “debitized.” Users of the service essentially treat credit cards as if they were debit cards, and pay off balances through Debitize beforeRead More
Bank Innovation
Over the #next decade, mobile, the Internet of Things, machine learning, robotics, and #blockchain #technologies will change a great deal about how the oil and gas industry works.
McKinsey Insights & Publications
#Blockchain startup #Symbiont has demonstrated a self-executing #catastrophe swap smart contract on a platform designed for a wide-range of industries.
Fintechnews.ch ist Networking Partner von der FUW #Fintech #Konferenz “Artificial Revolution” und der 2ten Fintech #Liechtenstein Konferenz.
Wir verlosen darum exclusiv je 3 Tickets #für beide Konferenzen. Sendet einfach eine Email an uns.
Gewinnen Sie 3 Tickets für Fintech FUW Konferenz hier
Gewinnen Sie 3 Tickets für Fintech Liechtenstein Konferenz hier
Die FinTech Konferenz Liechtenstein 2016 richtet sich an Marktteilnehmer des Finanzplatzes sowie Entscheider und Interessierte aus der DACH-Region, mit dem Ziel, den regelmässigen Austausch zu den Themen Innovation und Digitalisierung in der Finanzindustrie zu fördern. Die Konferenz 2016 steht unter dem übergeordneten Themenkomplex:
Special Offer: 20% Discount mit Code &8220;fintechnews20&8220;. Register now
The post Gratistickets für FUW Fintech Konferenz und Fintech Liechtenstein Konferenz appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
#Bank #technology #provider #Sinodata is seeking to collaborate with #blockchain startups.
During a webinar focused on Digital Wealth Management for one of our clients, I thought that I would poke the audience by discussing a #Future #World in which we all create wealth by investing in our Digital Assets. I started by referring to MyCreditScore, as a Digital asset, only becauseRead More
Bank Innovation
What can we do with #blockchain?
What does blockchain provide us?
How to apply blockchain?
Can we afford not to answer these three fundamental questions?
Introduction. There is a widely accepted perception that the potential impact of blockchain for society is huge and a game changer for many industries. Almost all major #banks are involved in some kind of research on blockchain. There is something going on. We apply Socratic questioning; a good question is more valuable than a good answer. Three related good questions are proposed that must be answered well before we can do any new and valuable things with blockchain. Because, without good research questions good R&D is not possible.
What can we do with blockchain? The first question is well answered in more detail by some visionary authors who describe the new things, products and services, and the impact on business and society on many areas. In financial and government services there are the promises of a better production of existing services. In short, “doing the same things in a better way”. There is also a new dimension, “doing totally new things” using disruptive business models. There are plenty of these examples based on social media. Blockchain is closely related to social media, communication and to documents, as will be shown in later blogs. So it is reasonable to expect that blockchain may have an impact in all these areas.
There are more urgent reasons to apply blockchain. Experts agree that the world financial system of transactions is a geopolitical battlefield for state sponsored cyber crime. Blockchain promises a radically new way to realize resilience to cyber crime and a reduction of costs due to a reduction of complexity. A much more resilient and robust world financial transaction system can be and must be realized.
What does blockchain provide us? This question is answered today by a number of good articles on the inner construction and working of blockchain, mainly for #bitcoin(s). This is fine and we can trust our fellow engineers and cryptographers to provide us good solid blockchain platforms. However, this is not our prime interest, we are interested in what blockchain provides us as a black box, without knowing its inner construction and working. Some authors state that it is “trust-less authenticity”, or “trust-less consensus”, or use comparable terms. Since this is new and enables those new services, the trust-less authenticity is the new paradigm. So, the term ‘blockchain’ refers here to ‘trust-less authenticity’. The new paradigm is enabled using good software engineering and cryptography but these are not the new paradigm; they provide us the new paradigm trust-less authenticity. What trust-less authenticity is must be understood and described well enough (very well). Then, and only then, we can make any good use of it from an engineering perspective, for example building robust and fault tolerant world financial systems. So far any good specifications have not been found in the literature. To answer this question well, we need a high quality conceptual specification of blockchain’s trust-less authentication. This is a subject for later blogs.
How to apply blockchain? The third question is about the application of blockchain’s trust-less authenticity – and we must understand this first – as a key component to construct and produce the new services and new financial service providers. No good answers to this engineering question have been found in the literature so far. The answer consists of three major parts and a conclusion.
The first is that we have existing services (products) that we would like to produce in a better way. We also see that a range of totally new services is possible. We must start by describing the functional qualities of our services ‘well enough’. What is the value of our service to our customers, as seen by our customers? We must ask them because it is highly subjective. We need this functional specification because we must check, validate, that our actual production meets these functional specifications. If our actual production does not match the functional requirements, it will not provide the desired value for the customers, and we are in deep trouble with a dissatisfied customer.
The second part is that we must specify the construction of the services in an appropriate way. The term ‘appropriate’ is not vague; it means also a truthful, coherent, concise, consistent and comprehensive specification. Without a good specification of the construction of the services we are not able to find out how toproduce the services in new enterprises. As said already, we must check, validate that if we construct our service in this way, it meets the functional requirements for the customer.
The third part is the observation that services are produced by enterprises. An enterprise must be well designed to produce the services, based on the construction specifications of the service. Example: an automotive production line is very carefully designed and tuned to produce a specific car type. If another type of car must be produced, the production line must be redesigned, adapted, tuned in many places. If the production line must produce radio’s, the whole production line must be redesigned from scratch. These enterprises must be specified also in an appropriate way, otherwise we cannotconstruct these enterprises and let them operate well in production.
These answers show that if we use the special qualities of a new component in our services, blockchain’s trust-less authenticity with all of its benefits, the construction of our services must be totally redesigned from scratch. We produce the same service, same functional specifications, but in a different way. And, if we produce services in a totally new way, we must redesign and rebuild our enterprises also from scratch. The conclusion is that the application of blockchain typically demands a totally new (re)design, from scratch, of the construction of the services and therefor theconstruction of the financial service enterprises. In other words; if you want to apply blockchain well, it is better to redesign the services and rebuild the whole enterprise from scratch.
Is this about #Fintech? Yes and No. Yes, because it is innovative, based on two new paradigms (one is blockchain – trust-less authenticity) and the benefits will probably most visible in financial services. It’s most valuable benefit for society is likely a robust and fault tolerant world financial system. No, this is not some new potentially disruptive financial service. It is how to apply blockchain well, better than state of the art technologies, using better engineering.
Can we afford not to answer these three fundamental questions? The three questions are interconnected and are also umbrella questions for many more detailed questions – see below. Without an appropriate answer the next question cannot be answered. So, without three appropriate answers we cannot deliver the new services. To provide appropriate answers to the three questions we need also better engineering methods for enterprises and their supporting IT systems, which is in the domain of the discipline of enterprise engineering, based on another new paradigm.
Blockchain will #change the World..?! No, not if we continue the old way of doing things. Looking at the state of the art in IT systems development [much literature] in for example financial services, we observe that these IT systems are too expensive, have been developed over many years using trial and error methods, resist agility, are increasingly difficult to maintain and have a limited functional value (business-IT alignment). If we continue to work in this way, we will realize similar bad results.
If, as some visionaries are rightfully saying, we are going to machine to machine financial services in production chains, then we need really much better engineering.
Future blogs. The following future blogs discuss the answers to the three fundamental questions, based on good engineering. Subjects include:
The new discipline of enterprise engineering is based on the (quite) new paradigm of communication and commitments between human actors in social systems, enterprises. It is ‘solid’ engineering, just like electronics, aviation, mechanical engineering, no place for BS or hype. Enterprise Engineering must provide good answers to these questions.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-j-h-van-kervel-0615671″ connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Steven J.H. van Kervel”]
The author, Steven J.H. van Kervel, Ph.D. computer science, is with Formetis Consultants BV in The Netherlands. Formetis develops methodologies, tools and software systems for the engineering of enterprises with supporting IT systems, applying blockchain #technology.
Formetis participates in the CIAO! community of scientists and engineers on the field of enterprise engineering.
Formetis seeks partnerships to bring this technology to the real world.
Contact: [email protected]
#Raiffeisen #lanciert das kostenlose Spendenportal «lokalhelden.ch». Das Portal bietet Vereinen, Institutionen und Privatpersonen in der ganzen Schweiz die Möglichkeit, auf moderne und effiziente Weise Spenden für gemeinnützige Projekte zu sammeln. Dass neben Geld auch Material und Zeit bei „lokalhelden.ch“ gespendet werden kann, ist ein neuer, spannender Ansatz. Erste Erfolgsgeschichten gab es bereits während der Pilotphase.
Im Januar 2016 ging Raiffeisen in einer auf die Region Ostschweiz fokussierten Pilotphase mit lokalhelden.ch online. Seither konnten bereits über 17 Projekte erfolgreich realisiert werden – darunter die Erweiterung der Radballhalle in Mosnang sowie die Finanzierung einer Sommerstartrampe für Skisportler in Obersaxen. Seit Beginn der Pilotphase konnte lokalhelden.ch bereits über 130‘000 Franken für gemeinnützige Zwecke mobilisieren. Nun macht Raiffeisen das Spendenportal für Projekte aus der ganzen Schweiz zugänglich.
„ Die Themen «Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe» begleiten Raiffeisen seit ihrer Gründung. Berei ts 1862 setzte Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen seine Idee in die Tat um und verhalf der Gemeinschaft zu gegenseitiger finanzieller Unterstützung. Heute nimmt Raiffeisen diese Idee auf und überträgt sie mit ihrem Spendenportal «lokalhelden.ch» ins digitale Zeitalter“, sagt Patrik Gisel, Vorsitzender der Geschäftsleitung von Raiffeisen Schweiz.
Raiffeisen engagiert sich aus Tradition auf vielfältige Weise für die Gesellschaft – lokal, in der Region und schweizweit. Das Engagement für die Schweizer Vereinslandschaft will Raiffeisen m it der neuen Spenden- und Projektfinanzierungs-Plattform lokalhelden.ch weiter ausbauen.
Raiffeisen bietet den Projektinitianten auf lokalhelden.ch eine breite Öffentlichkeit und unterstützt bei der Projekteinreichung mit Tipps und Tricks für die erfolgreiche Finanzierung ihrer Vorhaben. Auf dem Portal kann neben Geld auch Material und Zeit gesammelt bzw. gespendet werden. Dies ermöglicht es beispielsweise einem Fussballverein, dank Spenden neue Trikots zu finanzieren, für ein Kulturfestival können freiwillige Helfer mobilisiert oder mit Hilfe von Materialspenden Bauprojekte realisiert werden – etwa mit einer Holzspende für einen neuen Kinderspielplatz.
Lokale Spender und Unterstützer können einfach per Knopfdruck spenden und helfen, wertvolle gemeinnützige Projekte in ihrer direkten Umgebung zu ermöglichen. Das Portal wird dabei für alle Nutzer kostenlos zur Verfügung gestellt – weder für die Initiatoren noch für die Unterstützer fallen Gebühren an. Die Spenden kommen vollumfänglich den Projekten zugute.
Neben Raiffeisen betreiben auch die LUKB, die BLKB und die Postfinance Crowdfunding Plattformen in der Schweiz.
Alessandro Aquino ist ein Lokalheld erster Stunde. Bis vor Kurzem war er der einzige Karatelehrer in der Schweiz, der Menschen mit einer Beeinträchtigung in Karate unterrichtete. Auf lokalhelden.ch hat Alessandro Aquino Geld für eine behindertenspezifische Ausbildung für Karatelehrer gesammelt – mit Erfolg. Die Sportart wird bald in vielen Regionen der Schweiz für Menschen mit einer Behinderung zugänglich sein
The post Raiffeisen lanciert Crowdfunding-Plattform „lokalhelden.ch“ appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Earlier this month, #American Express launched a bot on Facebook Messenger as an additional channel to interact with its customers. When Facebook Messenger launched five (!) years ago this month, it was not immediately clear why or what it might do — messages already existed within Facebook, everyone was texting madlyRead More
Bank Innovation
Myself and a few of my colleagues recently traveled to St. Louis to support the first RGAx-AURA #blockchain #hackathon. From September 8-10 we were hosted by the Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), one of the world’s largest life reinsurance companies, and provided mentorship to teams discovering how blockchain could impact the future of insurance. It was a very rewarding experience and hopefully one of many blockchain hackathons I will be privileged to support in the near future.
On a personal note, I saw first hand the challenges facing developers of blockchain applications. Weather they were using Hyperledger on Bluemix, Ethereum, or a bespoke solution, teams first had to be comfortable with what makes blockchain so valuable. Not everyone recognized the best uses of the #technology and I even found myself steering a team away from an idea that was best suited for ‘centralized’ solutions. Blockchain is a new technology and there is a long runway before this plane takes off, particularly in financial use cases like insurance. I digress.
Reinsurance contracts can be very transaction intensive. Administering a single contract can last several years and present multiple challenges due to slow, missing or incomplete documentation exchange among parties. Detailed financial transactions, letters of credit creation, renewal requirements, collateralization needs and collateral drawdown can add increased layers of complexity. Using blockchain allows an insurer and its reinsurers to share a common, permissioned ledger that streamlines the process through consensus. Smart contracts establish reinsurance terms and conditions, and authorized transactions provide triggers and conditions for coverage and payments, as well as collateral creation and drawdown. The result—fewer disputes, easier reinsurance audits and lower volatility.
To apply the potential of blockchain to insurance, 60 developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from RGA, RGAx, Aura and Global IT, as well as select student groups and partner companies (like Daugherty Business Solutions), the event was a resounding success. The cafeteria and adjoining conference room were quickly transformed into a hacker-space. #IBM was there to provide mentorship and support, and I was able to give a talk on what we are doing and seeing in this space.
On Saturday afternoon the 12 surviving projects submitted and demoed in front of a panel of judges, and a crowd of talented individuals, eager to see what kind of projects emerged from just over 36 hours of hacking!
The Grand Prize winner ($15,000 and the chance to pitch to RGAx Execs) was the AURA–AMERENteam BeXchange, a x2x mobile insurance exchange platform connecting consumers who are in need of coverage with a distributed network of potential investors.
The runner up team was Daugherty team Facultative Underwriting Solutions (aka fReMarket), who created a moderated marketplace for facultative underwriting. They will receive $2,500 from Daugherty Business Solutions.
Honorable Mentions:
Find My Funds Daugherty team: Suzanne Zimmerman, Mark Schilling, Andrew Maxwell and Ted Berger.
Simply Carrots AURA team: Caroline Specter, Brian Compton, Praveen Kota and Shawn Crain.
New Kids On The Blockchain RGA team: Jonathan Bolhofner, Christina Gerst, Charles McKiel III, Curtis Keller, Bobby Buddha.
Best use of IBM BlueMix:
Healthchain Daugherty – RGA team: Lucia Del Pino, Joseph Ondrus, Venus Patel, Alex Gillete. The solution concept of Healthchain revolves around collecting data from wearable devices and storing on a block. Multiple blocks can then be added to the blockchain. The person can then give access to that information to Doctors, Insurance companies, Gym & Fitness companies, Health Monitoring Emergency companies, etc. as needed. This will enable Usage based Insurance, discounts on Insurance premiums, Gym memberships, and even emergency health monitoring services for seniors. This team won an opportunity to meet and have lunch with the IBM Blockchain team in St. Louis. You can find the code for this solution at: https://github.com/SgtRock91/marbles-chaincode.git
Overall, it was a fantastic event to be a part of and I look forward to seeing what comes out of IBM’s next Blockchain hackathon in NYC October 7-8. Further, I will be supporting the Moovel Blockchain hackathon in Austin on September 23, 2016. Hope to see a great turnout at both!
Reply