Many finanical services professionals think #blockchain can be the solution to their problems. A Texas startup thinks blockchain itself is problematic, and launched a service yesterday to improve upon it. Texas-based #Swirlds announced a blockchain alternative called #Hashgraph yesterday, opening it up for public download and use by developers. ToRead More
Bank Innovation
Russia’s National Settlement Depository discusses why it #believes the biggest #blockchain opportunities have yet to be uncovered.
fintech techcrunch
The #editorial #board for #Bloomberg News has called for a permissive regulatory environment for #blockchain development.
CoinDesk
Amid a broader push to investigate #blockchain by the Dubai government, major local #telecom provider Du is refining its strategy toward the #technology.
CoinDesk
Do you operate a #startup that is tackling the financial services industry? Is your startup looking to disrupt the finance and banking sector? Are you looking to connect with the industry’s key players, decision makers and investors, and grow your venture to the next level?
Well, you may want to consider attending these seven #upcoming #fintech startup #pitch #competitions in #Europe and get the boost you need to grow your business:
June 20, 2016, in Zurich
Startupbootcamp Fintech is an accelerator program operating around the world. Its Startupbootcamp FastTracks are informal events that are used as part of the screening process aimed at selecting the top 10 cutting edge fintech startups that will get the chance to present their ventures and eventually get the opportunity to apply for the three-month accelerator program in London.
Startupbootcamp Fintech is looking for startups all areas of fintech including payments, cryptocurrencies, financial inclusion, asset management, capital markets, peer-to-peer, platforms, security and authentication, insurance, and lending.
The EIT Digital Challenge is aimed at fast-growing European #technology startups that are offering digital tech applied to industry, cities, wellbeing, infrastructure and finance.
The 15 most innovative European startups in these fields will be selected to compete to win up to €50,000 in cash, access to EIT Digital’s pan-European innovation network, as well as the chance to join the EIT Digital Accelerator for a full year, and eventually get support to find international customers and raise Series A financing to scale up.
The submission phase is open until July 15, 2016.
September 06, 2016, in Cologne, Germany
In its sixth year, the Pirate Summit is one of Europe’s biggest invitation-only gatherings of early-stage startups and investors. The Pirate Summit aims at celebrating entrepreneurship by being a platform where founders, investors and entrepreneurs can meet and connect.
This year, the event will take place at Odonien, in Cologne and is expected to bring some 1,200 participants.
The Pirate Summit will also be organizing a startup competition. The selected startups will receive two free-tickets to the Pirate Summit for the founding team members and a guaranteed pitching slot at the semi-finals of the “Walk the Plank” pitch competition at the first day of the Pirate Summit.
October 08, 2016, in Zurich
Swiss Startup Invest and Swiss Start Up Factory will be running the Elevator Pitch competition on October 08, 2016. The best candidates will get the change to pitch their businesses during the Swiss Startup Day event on October 25, 2016.
Registration opens on August 01, 2016, and will run until September 20, 2016.
The BBVA Open Talent Competition is back with its 8th edition aimed at providing support to and collaborating with promising startups tackling financial technology and other projects affecting the industry such as Big Data, cybersecurity, and APIs.
The winners will receive €30.000 each in cash prize, enjoy a two-week program in Mexico City and Madrid, and get the opportunity to get to know and engage with the entrepreneurial ecosystem and BBVA executives with the goal of making their business grow.
Participants need to register their projects before June 27, 2016 to get a chance to be one of the finalists in Europe, Latin America and USA, and the rest of the world.
Under the banner IN3 (Innovation-Investment-International), Global Expansion Summit offers a series of events, workshops and networking opportunities to facilitate the creation of innovation hot spots in new markets around the world, allow for startups, governments and corporates to connect, foster corporate and government innovation and digital transformation, and promote collaboration between innovation hubs across the world.
This year, Global Expanson Summit will run three startup competitions during its annual event on October 17 and 18, 2016, in London:
As a visitor you can register for the the whole event with Code &8220;FINTECHNEWS&8221; and get 20% discount.
October 17, 2016
14:15 – 15:30
Start Me Up Abroad is aimed at early stage startups looking to kickstart their business abroad. This is a dedicated platform for pre-funding startups to pitch to a panel of investors and accelerators from some of the most sought after startup city hubs and then take 5 minutes’ worth of questions from the panel.
October 17, 2016
16:00 – 17:15
The Bakery Live will focus on providing a new way to get innovation done with a low cost and low risk model. A large corporate brand will present a brief/challenge facing their business. The Bakery will select six startups from a large number of applications for the brief. These six startups then have three minutes to pitch their idea to the corporate client. The two finalists will be brought back for a final round and deeper Q&A. The corporate client speaker will choose the winner for a trial with the help of the audience.
Featured image: A businessman on a track ready to run by Stokkete, via Shutterstock.com.
The post 7 Upcoming Fintech Startup Pitch Competitions in Europe appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Crowdfunding is real. Whether it is equity or debt platforms, the trend is very much alive with regional variations and adapting regulations. A real #global market opportunity The simple explanation is “Capital continues searching for investment opportunities, as deposit rates remain low” & &8220;Companies continue searching for funding as &8220;normal&8221; capital market functions have been…Read more #KoreConx: a global re-bundling #Fintech #case
Bank Innovation
[Transcript of Keynote given at FinnovAsia on May 30th 2016]
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Since the 2007 financial crisis, we have witnessed a series of scandals ranging from PPI mis-selling to the LIBOR rigging scandal. The direct consequences of this has been the implementation of a more stringent regulatory regime increasing overall compliances costs. Indeed, since 2007, financial fines have increased 45-fold, incurring additional compliance costs of multiple billions of dollars. Indirectly, the financial instability that is being generated impacts the population with most recent reports estimating that cancer mortality has increased by 500’000 and 50%+ of Americans cannot afford an unexpected expense of US$400.
In my opinion, Regulatory #Technology (#RegTech) represents a dual opportunity. Economically, it resolves compliance cost concerns of CEOs, whilst socially it delivers a direct add-value to regulators to enhance market stability and consumer protection.
In other words, while in advanced economies early #FinTech developments (e.g. P2P lending) appear to be a re-action to the symptoms of the previous financial crisis (e.g. credit shortage), RegTech appears as a more mature approach that may limit the severity of the next crisis.
Similarly to FinTech, the benefits of automatizing reporting and compliance processes are not new, as demonstrated by the introduction of pattern analysis or the work done by the SEC in the US in 2000. Furthermore, most of the post-crisis reforms focus on data transparency (e.g. Central OTC clearing), openness (e.g. PSD2) and standardization (e.g. unique entity identifier) However, whilst not new RegTech as a term has increasingly been used in the last 6 months. This uptick of activity warrants the necessity to start re-conceptualizing RegTech and set a foundation of understanding across the industry, regulators and policy makers.
Establishing a topology of the sector, RegTech covers four key areas:
As it currently stands, the most visible RegTech innovation seems to be in the e-KYC space, similarly to how payments and alternative lending used to define the bulk of FinTech innovation. The pain points encountered by #banks given their current AML/KYC process and relative simplicity of developing a certified third party authentication platform (versus implementing a wide scale use of smart contracts to identify contractual liability of a firm in real time) explains the immediate focus given to this specific sub-sector. However, the digital AML/KYC process represents a superficial (i.e. customer-facing) use of RegTech similarly to how certain digital banking propositions are simply a better UX skin on top of an outdated core banking engine.
In my mind the real long term value (both from an investment and social perspective) is embodied in solutions that redefine the way #regulation is being created so that risk identification and compliance can leverage on data and automation to really be proportionate (e.g. to actual risk) and real time (e.g. as opposed to batch reporting). In that respect, the development of Regulatory Sandboxes represents an initial step for regulators to deploy and learn how to use RegTech as part of their regulatory toolkit.
In that regard, the FCA (in the UK) has, once again, championed the promotion of this objective with the announcement of a “regulatory sandbox” in Nov 2015 (e.g. currently accepting applications and will go live with 10 participants in September 2016). This approach has so far been positively echoed in other jurisdictions with ASIC in Australia and MAS in Singapore holding consultations. The benefits of sandboxes are diverse. For external stake holders (e.g. start-ups), they reduce time to market and compliance costs. For internal stakeholders (e.g. regulators) they add an interaction method with start-ups as well as a transition tool towards a more data-driven supervisory model.
However, these developments are currently very much in experimental phase. The fact that access to the sandbox is limited to a handful of participants and the scope of experimentation constrained by EU laws (e.g. exclusion of credit institutions, insurance or alternative fund managers as well as base line regulatory capital for some activities irrespective of portfolio/market size) shows that only specific FinTech start-ups will benefit. The counter to that being considered, given the current Brexit discussion. Was Brexit to materialize, the FinTech eco-system in the UK (heavily driven my EU regulatory requirements) would lose its appeal (and VC funding in EU is already down 40%+ in Q1), making the rationale of a sandbox a moot point. In other words, a Brexit would leave the sandbox with not enough kids to play inside!
I therefore see the current sandboxes (e.g. virtual, umbrella, regulatory) as the first building block towards a reconceptualized regulatory regime that is truly real-time and proportionate. This means that the parameters of the sandbox also need to be conceived with an end objective in mind and leverage a true opportunity to change the current paradigm of market supervision/regulation and firms’ compliance and reporting processes. An illustration of this shift would be as follows:
This is very much an ongoing conversation and a very rare occasion where the interest of FinTech, FinServ and Regulators fell easily aligned.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbarberis”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Janos Barberis”] is Millennial in FinTech | HKU Law | Founder FinTech HK & SuperCharger | Co-Editor The FinTech Book
As the hype and pessimism around #blockchain #technology converge toward reality over the next several years, one certainty emerging among Wall Street and Main Street traders is that advancements in platform technology will profoundly change how commonly used securities known as derivative contracts will be traded. The distributed ledgers inconceivable just a couple of years ago are on the precipice of ushering in a new era of innovative financial engineering and precision in risk management.
Wall Street firms are beginning to tinker with blockchain and smart contract technology that will allow buyers, sellers and central clearing houses of derivative trades to share information, such as KYC (Know Your Customer), in real time across various distributed ledger platforms unleashing incredible efficiencies.
Last month it was reported that Barclays tested a blockchain platform called Corda, developed by the bank consortium R3. Electronic documents that served as derivative contracts were pre-populated with standardized values, which, one day, will allow the contracts to be hashed out between counterparties, traded on an exchange across multiple #banks and then cleared and settled instantaneously.
Derivative contracts are financial instruments that derive their value from some underlying asset, such as stocks, bonds, commodities or even interest rates. Derivative contracts have become increasingly fundamental in effectively managing financial risk and creating synthetic exposures to asset classes. For example, airlines use future contracts, a form of derivative, to hedge against fluctuating oil prices . Hedge funds use options, another form of #derivatives, to speculate in questionable company stock without baring the cost of purchasing a large number of shares. Derivative contracts typically have shelf lives of 30-day increments.
Industry leaders expect distributed ledger infrastructure to foster new approaches to financial engineering, enabling financiers to customize derivatives consisting of individual cash flows to meet precise needs in terms of timing and credit risk. According to a report produced by Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm, blockchain-enabled derivative contracts could be financed by issuers selling their own instruments that match the cash flows they expect to achieve, “in essence creating swaps without the need for balance sheet intermediation.” Traditional swap agreements are traded over the counter.
Two months in, #Lenny – millennial-focused mobile #lending app – is ready to hit the market with new budgeting and billpay products. Launched mid-March, Lenny’s goal is to help millennials build credit scores while still in school, with loans up to $ 10,000 and 0% interest (if paid on time). So far,Read More
Bank Innovation
#Armin Ebrahimi, CEO, ShoCard discusses digital fingerprints and how #Blockchain is an important part of the underlying #technology to ensure user privacy.
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