For Ether Investors, All Eyes Remain on Divisive Fork Debate
The price of #ether remains volatile following the loss of investor funds by one of the #blockchain platform’s signature projects.
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Overbond Eyes Digitizing Primary Bond Origination with New Platform Launch
Emerging #fintech startup #Overbond‘s #platform looks to transform #bond markets.
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Specter of Ethereum Hard Fork Worries Australian Banking Group
As the #ethereum community debates a #hard #fork option to undo the losses sustained by The DAO, ANZ is questioning the credibility of its #blockchain.
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Eric Sarasin steigt als Investor bei Advanon ein
#Eric #Sarasin ist neuer #Investor beim Schweizer #Fintech Startup Advanon. Der
ehemalige Chef der Privatbank J. Safra Sarasin wird seine grosse Erfahrung sowie
Kompetenz in der Finanzbranche bei #Advanon einbringen.Bis Ende 2014 war Eric Sarasin stellvertretender Chef der Privatbank J. Safra Sarasin.
Zuvor hatte er die Genfer Niederlassung der Bank Sarasin von Grund aufgebaut und
in wenigen Jahren auf eine Grösse von 100 Mitarbeiter ausgebaut und etabliert.Seine Expertise mit schnell wachsenden Unternehmen wird Advanon helfen, die eigenen
Wachstums-Ambitionen zu erreichen. Als ehemaliger Präsident der Handelskammer
Deutschland-Schweiz bringt Eric Sarasin zudem ein extensives Netzwerk in der für
Advanon besonders interessanten DACH-Region mit.
“Advanon ist ein erfolgreiches Start-Up mit einem vielversprechenden Geschäftsmodell,”
begründet Eric Sarasin sein Interesse, “ich freue mich, dieses schnell wachsende
FinTech-Unternehmen tatkräftig zu unterstützen.” Er ist überzeugt, dass Advanon
den Factoring Markt in der Schweiz und später auch im gesamten deutschsprachigen
Raum nachhaltig aufrütteln kann.“Die Überzeugung, mit welcher sich Eric Sarasin hinter unser Geschäftsmodell stellt,
ist eine Bestätigung für unsere Wachstumsstrategie,” sagt Advanon CEO Phil Lojacono,
“wir freuen uns auf eine erfolgreiche Zusammenarbeit mit Eric Sarasin.”Zuvor warch schon Daniel Gutenberg bei Advanon eingestiegen.
The post Eric Sarasin steigt als Investor bei Advanon ein appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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Final is a plaster on the gaping wound that is U.S. credit card security
#Credit #card fraud is a big problem, with an increasing number of companies launching products to patch the problems. The most recent example is #Final, which today announced it is shipping its first consumer product: disposable credit card numbers. That’s lovely, but in doing so, it serves predominantly as an example of a company fixing a serious problem from the wrong side of the fence. Read More -
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FinTech Firm Fundbox Taps AdTech Veteran Prashant Fuloria and Three New Hires
San Francisco-based #Fundbox bolsters its leadership with four new appointments.
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Kasisto Introduces KAI, a Smart Bot for Banking
Are bots taking over #banking? Yesterday, a Danish bank introduced a bot for simple queries (and soon, transactions) and earlier this month, San Francisco-based startup Dyme, a member of the Spring 2016 Bank Innovation INV class, released a prototype of a Facebook messenger bot whose functionality mirrors that of Dyme’s SMS-basedRead More
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How Digital Money Management Keeps Banks Relevant
At the end of the day, the bloodiest battleground in #banking is “real-time analytics for relevance in the financial relationship, and the partnerships that go into that relationship that allow that to happen.” This observation by Chris Skinner, founder of The Financial Services Club, is absolutely on point.
Banking is really about leveraging data to provide insights to customers just when they need it, in the way they prefer, through physical or digital channels. This means offering a delightful experience every time customers interact with their bank. But for this to happen, #banks need the right partners.
THE RELEVANCE STRUGGLE IS REAL
Let’s face it: banks are struggling to stay relevant in their customers’ lives.
When your customer does not know her branch director’s name anymore, or when customers avoid going to the bank more than their dentist’s office, it means the bank is losing relevance.
When customers only check their account balance, withdraw cash from the ATM and order a transfer from time to time, the Bank is not being relevant.
When customers are used to positive digital experiences with Apple, Google or Amazon, and don’t find a similar experience when dealing with their Bank, the Bank does not meet new generations’ expectations.
When customers get an instant loan from a new online lending platform, the bank is getting dis-intermediated. When customers are increasingly looking at crowdfunding and crowdlending platforms to make a better use of their money, the bank is out of the game.
As the above examples illustrate, relevance is the name of the 21st century banking game.
HOW TO STAY RELEVANT IN THE DIGITAL ERA
So how can banks stay relevant, or even gain relevance, when customers interact less and less physically, are lured by alternative options and even avoid dealing with the Bank?
Simply by impacting customers with the right solutions at the right time in the right way.
I know – easier said than done!
The best place to start is with the core function of banking: help customers better understand and manage their money. Basic, right?
But wait – which customers are we actually talking about?
The answer is all of them: the ones that are barely scraping by right up to the ones with money to burn. By all means, their bank should be reaching out to each and every one with properly segmented educational material, physical interactions and digital tools. Proactively and timely, at the different stages of their life.
To illustrate the potential contribution of #Digital Money Management (or PFM) to improving the lives of all kinds of customers, let’s separate them by saving capacity* (i.e. amount of disposable cash at the end of each month) and take a closer look. Depending on their needs and priorities, I’ll show how each customer uses the PFM features most relevant to their day-to-day financial life.
(*Separation by saving capacity is done for the sake of the argument, with no intention to oversimplify)
PFM FOR CUSTOMERS WITH LIMITED SAVING CAPACITY
These customers will generally be extremely cautious with their spending, withdrawing a maximum of around $50 from the ATM at a time. You know the type: The odd extra purchase. Minimal savings.
What these customers will love is the ability to visualize their expenses, which also come automatically categorized. They are more likely to set budgets for each category to effectively track weekly spending. Once they understand the meaning of Ok-to-Spend, they will check it often to eliminate those nasty, embarrassing surprises – no more “Card Declined” or “Insufficient Funds”.
Naturally, these customers love discounts and will appreciate receiving highly relevant offers in line with their spending habits. With the right software, their bank will be able to use machine learning algorithms to match merchant offers with customers’ purchasing behaviour at key moments in their buying journey. Before making any purchase, these customers might even check their app to see what-if they make the purchase, and how it will impact their balance and budget for that category.
Armed with these digital tools, the bank is truly helping customers with limited saving capacity to spend smarter and budget better. With this newly found discipline, such customers could even begin to start saving a little!
PFM FOR THE SAVINGS-CAPABLE (CASH-FLOW POSITIVE)
These customers generally focus on building future savings despite holding some debt, perhaps from financing their University degree or buying a car or acquiring a property. Still, they have a higher capacity to spend, and should therefore take care to spend and invest wisely.
Ok-to-Spend is an especially useful indicator for them since it factors in all direct debits, contributions to savings goals and even identifies spending patterns. The other side of the same coin would be Ok-to-Save which will become a monthly reference to build even more savings up.
Automatic categorization will shed some light on their spending and possibly help correct some (bad) spending habits. The good planners will start setting budgets online to better control expenses and creating savings goals to fund a recently announced wedding or summer holidays to Europe next year. Savings-savvy customers will especially appreciate perfectly-timed, personalized alerts and push notifications received from their bank, which is helping them gain full control of their financial situation without being overly intrusive or irrelevant.
Finally, cash-flow positive customers can get a broad overview of their finances and forecast and anticipate expenses looking at their personal financial calendar. This feature improves their receptivity to relevant merchant offers, product recommendations and financial advice that are relevant to their actual financial situation and lifestyle preferences.
PFM FOR AFFLUENT CUSTOMERS WITH HIGH SAVING CAPACITY
In my early-days experience in private banking, I learned that wealthier customers generally keep a very close eye on their money (maybe that’s why they’ve been able to accumulate so much) and can even be the greediest!
However, their higher capacity to save does not mean they don’t (want to) control their spending – a common misconception. Visualizations are welcome, and not only for their investment portfolios.
Actually, having an aggregated view of all their bank and card accounts, automatically categorized, visualized and analyzed, is a kind of nirvana very few high-savers have reached with their bank.
These customers are very used to receiving and even paying for financial advice, having their portfolio rebalanced, and taking risky investment decisions – but what does their spending actually look like? No clue. What if they are losing part of their investment gains in bad spending habits? No idea. Of course, some affluent customers won’t care – but others will.
Furthermore, they and their wife (or husband) will love receiving luxury merchant offers on their smartphone that fit their exquisite lifestyle and social status.
By being proactive, pushing the right notifications at exactly the right time, and providing personalized recommendations, banks can become or and remain relevant in their customers’ lives, which is absolutely crucial in the era of digital transformation.
Banks ahead of the customer experience curve are already (re)engaging with customers on a regular basis. They are already (re)building their relationships in a digital world. They are slowly but surely becoming the financial companion their nature mandates.
What’s even better is the full spectrum of customers would be grateful for such a delightful banking experience, each in their own way – even the ones who had previously lost faith. They would not be looking elsewhere, why would they?
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/xaviermarcillac” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Xavier Marcillac”]
Xavier Marcillac is VP APAC at Strands and this post was originally published in Strands #Fintech Pulse
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What Does the Brexit Mean for the UK Fintech Industry?
Startups should be ready to pivot if the current climate demands it and build even closer ties with clients.
FinTech – Finance Magnates | Financial and business news -
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Tech Primer: What are Smart Contracts?
” #Smart contracts are computer protocols that facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract, or that make a contractual clause unnecessary. Smart contracts usually also have a user interface and often emulate the logic of contractual clauses.” – Wikipedia
Smart contracts seem to be all the rage right now, and there have been quite a few posts about them on Twitter, LinkedIn, and in the blogosphere recently.
So… what are they?
You have more than likely experienced a smart contract within the last 12 hours, either personally or as an unknowing (or knowing) participant: Digital Rights Management as an example, whether for music or movies; Hotel room key usage; Online gambling (I hope not); Mobile data usage and overage charges; Book/ship arrangements for service payments. The list goes on and on.
More commonly, today, you are likely seeing these terms floating next to the words #Bitcoin, Codius, or #Ethereum (who has been in the news of late due to a hack), or #blockchain. None of these are required to have a smart contract, but they are likely culprits for increasing the buzz-wordiness of the concept.
Smart contracts basically boil down to this (simplified) explanation: Two people, or entities, decide on an arrangement that can be both digitally validated and enforced. A trusted electronic system monitors the validation point(s) and when a criteria has been met, the system enforces the arrangement. Here’s an overly-simple example:
- You want to rent a movie on DVD.
- You swipe your credit card at a kiosk.
- Your card is approved and rental funds are moved into the DVD owner’s account.
- Upon receiving the funds, the movie is released from the mechanism and you may take it.
- If you fail to return the movie within a time limit, you are billed the cost of the DVD.
- Attempts to rent another movie while you have another rented are rejected.
- Returning the movie — or a purchase transaction — frees you to rent another DVD.
The smart contract says you are welcome to rent the movie as long as you pay a fee and agree to be charged for a purchase if you fail to return it. The mechanism of enforcement is built into the lock/holding mechanism and the trusted system (you do trust your movie vendor, right?)
The example above is a physical implementation of DRM, the same process could be illustrated for digital locks on Pay Per View movies or downloadable content such as text-books or streaming music. The same IF THEN ELSE rules apply: IF something happens THEN do this, ELSE do this other thing.
- IF it’s the first of the month THEN pay the rent
- IF I am thirsty AND it’s 6pm on Friday THEN beer, ELSE water
- IF VALUE(MyStock) < $5 THEN BUY(MyStock) ELSE SELL(MyStock)
The Contract is Smart as long as the criteria can be electronically validated in some way that both parties trust and the enforcement can be done electronically and automatically.
The key to why you’re seeing more and more talk about Smart Contracts is the interest in several frameworks and systems that are being built. Bitcoin and Ethereum, or Barclay’s use of R3’s Corda platform being prime examples of some of those systems.
That’s it, Smart Contracts in a nutshell.
** Tech Primers are meant to be brief and to the point, they are by no means comprehensive. Want to learn more? A good book, your local technologist, Google, and/or Wikipedia are all great resources! **
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrygilreath” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Jerry Gilreath”] is IT executive at RagingWire Data Centers.
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