You would be hard pressed to read the news and not know that #fintech is seemingly at a crossroads. Indeed, some are already declaring #financial #technology dead as a space for the near-term. Not so fast. Read More
#ClearTax, which helps Indians file their tax returns online with minimum stress, is on a roll this year. The Bengaluru-based company, which graduated Y Combinator two years ago, announced a $ 12 million Series A round today, just one month after closing a $ 2 million seed round following an initial $ 1.3 million raise. Read More
#London – the most competitive #financial centre in the world &8211; has a thriving #Fintech community. It is nearly unbelievable that how many fintech events are set to take place in London this year. According to EventBrite, there are more than 50 fintech events in London from now until the end of #2016. There will be conferences, workshops, summits, seminars, forums and networking events about fintech segmentations such as #blockchain, insurtech, banking, lending, payments, as well as about startups and entrepreneurships. The main purpose of these events is to enhance the dialog between established multi-nationals, innovation firms, disruptive start-ups, government, media and investors.
One of the notable events coming up this June & July is the London Fintech #Week 2016 from July 15-22. Fintech Week is the world’s largest Fintech-focused festival, and this is the 3rd year it is organised. London Fintech Week 2016 comprises a series of conferences, workshops, hackathons, meetups and drinks receptions.
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Fintech Week London 2016 &8211; Agenda
This year Fintech Week will start with a Blockchain Hackarthon Weekend, followed by 4 days of conferences focusing on important Fintech sectors such as Money and Payments, Capital Markets, Insurance Innovation, Security and Data and so on. Every conference day will also feature a small number of exhibitors. The 5th day is dedicated to workshops run by our partners. Every evening there will be an official meetup, networking event, or drinks reception taking place in various locations across the City of London and Canary Wharf.
Apart from running a number of conferences, hackathons, meetups and private events, Fintech Week London 2016 also plays match-maker to enterprise corporations and innovative start-ups. The event also helps design and enhance innovation and transformation programmes. Their team members come from diverse backgrounds so they’ve layered a transformation consulting offering on top of their events and world class network.
Join Fintech Week London 2016 now to get inspired, learn something, meet new clients, partners, developers, investors and #find value for your business. Investors will also benefit from having hundreds of startups all in one place.
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*Another upcoming fintech event in London is FinCoder &8211; a conference tailored especially for Fintech technologist, developers and coders.
Fintech developers are changing the face of the financial #services industry. Discover new opportunities, ways to tackle challenges and the latest trends in financial services #technology. The #next billion pound Fintech firm could be in the room.
Special Offer: Sign up now with code FTSW to get 20% discount for ticket registration!
The post What’s the next big thing in Financial Services Technology? – Find out at London Fintech Week 2016 appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
#Small business #finance is a window of opportunity big enough to drive a truck through. Yet despite years of effort by many smart ventures, there has not yet been a breakthrough to mass scale. Many digital loan processing ventures, such as Ondeck and Kabbage have reached significant scale. Yet we are also seeing high Customer…Read more How #blockchain #technology #could #integrate #financial & #physical #supply #chains and #revolutionize small business finance
Bank Innovation
Malaysia-based #fintech #startup Saving Plus has closed a $ 3 million Series A round and renamed itself as #Jirnexu. Read More
#Swiss #bankers are the most #convinced that #fintech will #impact the entire #financial services #industry, naming #robo-advisory and #blockchain #technology as the most impactful innovations, according to a new #survey by CFA Institute.
Released earlier this month, CFA Institute’s ‘Fintech Survey Report 2016&8217; measures the opinions of the organization&8217;s investment professional members to better understand their sentiment towards the emerging fintech scene.
According to Christian Dreyer, CFA and CEO of CFA Society Switzerland, the survey results highlight “the fascination and respect that financial experts have for financial technologies.”
&8220;Swiss counterparts are particularly convinced by all things related [to financial technologies],&8221; Dreyer said in a media release.
Findings suggest that among the current innovations in the financial services industry, robo-advisors are expected to have the biggest impact in both short and long-term.
Asset management (55%), banking (16%), and securities (12%) are the three sectors that will be the most affected by automated financial advice tools.
70% of participants consider that mass affluent investors will be positively affected by robo-advisors in the form of reduced costs, improved access to advice, and improved product choices. In Switzerland, this figure rises to 80% of respondents.
That said, respondents also named the biggest risks affiliated with the increase in automated financial advices as technical flaws in the algorithms (46%), mis-selling of financial advice (30%) and privacy and data protection concerns (12%).
While robo-advisors are considered to be the technology that will have the greatest impact on the industry both 1 year and 5 years from now, blockchain technology is considered as the second technology with the greatest potential future opportunity (and risk) in the medium- to long-term.
Clearing and settlement, alternative currencies, and commercial banking are the top three areas that are thought to be under greatest impact of blockchain technology.
Crowdfunding and lending marketplaces on the other hand should have short-term impacts on the financial services industry.
38% of respondents believe that existing crowdfunding and/or peer-to-peer lending marketplaces do not have the right balance between ease of access and investor protection. 53% of them are not sure if such balance is possible.
As a leader in both financial services and innovation, Switzerland has the potential to become a frontrunner in fintech. That said, not all are convinced that the country is putting enough effort to fulfill its potential.
In a report released in February, EY argued that Switzerland is lacking governmental support when compared with the likes of London or Singapore.
In March, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) issued new rulings aimed at reducing obstacles for fintech startups and allowing the industry to flourish.
The circular allows financial intermediaries to onboard clients by means of online and video transmission and is targeted at digital businesses in particular.
Read CFA Institute&8217;s &8216;Fintech Survey Report 2016&8217;: https://www.cfainstitute.org/Survey/fintech_survey.PDF
Featured image: Graphs and charts with stacks of coins, by S.Dashkevych, via Shutterstock.com.
The post CFA Swiss Fintech Survey: Swiss Bankers Convinced That Fintech Will Dramatically Impact Financial Industry appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Legislation allowing ordinary American investors to invest in the shares of startups and small businesses was first introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2011. Despite bipartisan support and the approval of President Obama, it is only now becoming a reality. Read More
CoinDesk speaks with a senior researcher from Imperial College #London‘s #cryptocurrency R&D efforts.
fintech techcrunch
We now hold these truths to be self-evident, that #fintech startups (especially of the d2c variety) do not pose an existential threat to finserv incumbents, that finserv incumbents are endowed by their regulators with certain unassailable defensible rights and duties embodied by licenses and are saddled by history with obsolete technologies that hinder their effectiveness in a changing world, thereby creating material barriers to a stable Life, Liberty and the pursuit of #Financial Stability.
We are still exploring whether the following are also truths, that the existential threat to finserv incumbents lies with GAFAA, that fintech startups can help finserv incumbents counter such existential threat.
Some do not believe #technology giants are a real threat, arguing none of the GAFAA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Alibaba and their smaller brethren) are interested in obtaining licenses and directly competing against #banks or insurers. Although I do not know with certainty that Apple or Amazon are thinking of owning and operating a bank, I do know the real question we should ask ourselves is “Can and how would GAFAA or other similar companies cripple financial #services firms?”
It is evident we, individually or as businesses, engage with the world via our smartphones and tablets. We spend time on these devices interacting with a variety of apps (social messaging for example) or platforms (Facebook for example), reading, creating, sharing, consuming, purchasing. The more time we spend on these devices, with these apps and platforms, the less time we engage directly with the manufacturers of the products or services we ultimately consume. This state of affairs may not pose an existential threat with a brand like Nike for example. It is easy to engage emotionally and mentally with simple concepts whether physical or digital, ones where we have a meaningful bond that helps define who we are. It is not so easy for a provider of a checking account, a loan or an insurance policy. We do engage with money in completely different ways.
To me, this means there is a potential catastrophic scenario in the making whereby financial services providers would be relegated to being &8220;dumb&8221; providers of products and services without having any meaningful control or tie to the end user – retail or enterprise even though it is arguably more difficult to visualize for the latter.
Finserv incumbents are now fully engaged, having woken up to the initial threat of fintech startups and realizing they do need to reform the way they do business. Innovation is the name of the game &8211; a dual mandate to be sure where both technology and culture need to be upgraded. For the purposes of this post, I only focus on the technology part of the innovation equation.
The technology part of the innovation drive is multifaceted. Legacy rails, core systems, market infrastructures need to be upgraded. These &8220;basic&8221; upgrades a necessary but not sufficient. New technologies also need to be acquired. I view Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), #Blockchain/Consensus Ledgers, Quantum Computing (QC), Internet of Things (IoT) to be the main enabling technologies the financial services industry needs to acquire in order to close the gap and compete effectively.
One does not acquire technologies in a vacuum and there is a competitive battle in the marketplace for the hottest assets. As this post from CB Insights shows, tech companies are hard at work acquiring the best AI startups. Try as I might, I could not find any finserv incumbents on the list of acquirers, nor could I find finserv service providers.
How does a bank or insurer close to gap in AI if tech giants have first dib at the best assets? I do not know how things are developing in QC or AR but I would not be surprised if the same narrative were to be present. To be fair, the insurance industry is present and active in the IoT field and the banking industry is very active in the blockchain/consensus ledger field which shows a bank or insurance company can take the lead in a strategic technology field. Gaps are indeed being addressed, but not systemically.
To be fair, there are many ways to bridge a technology gap other than through acquiring.
&8211; Finserv incumbents could partner with tech giants, indeed such examples exist. Some tech giants are better at partnering than others. The risk of losing direct ownership of the customer still exists though.
&8211; Finserv incumbents could develop their own technology solutions via internal R&D (such a strategy has not paid hefty dividends in the past, even if one is able to attract top talent)
&8211; Finserv incumbents could develop partnerships and commercial agreements with independent startups. There will be AI, QC or AR startups that will decline selling to tech giants and pursue their own destiny. Let’s assume some of these startups will be up to par with what giant tech companies are concocting within their walls, the question therefore is which type of independent startups are most appropriate to partner with. The AI, QC or AR startups specialized in the financial services, or those that have a horizontal &8220;go to market strategy&8221; approach. Startup xyz that only sells to banks or IBM Watson? Which will be most optimal?
With every #arms #race one needs to play to one&8217;s strengths. A finserv incumbent&8217;s strength is twofold in my opinion: a) deep knowledge and mastery of arcane work flows and processes specific to money/data flows, b) mastery of licensing and AML/KYC peculiarities.
Extending these strengths to enabling technologies (AI, AR, QC, blockchain, IoT) thereby ensuring optimal customization and applicability is therefore key. Choosing the right strategy, best fitted to this goal while at the same time ensuring one does not lose the arms race is paramount.
Regulators should play a role in facilitating their wards technology arms race battle. We know banks now have a difficult time making equity investments, and rightly so if these equity investments are made with a speculative and casino-like financial bent, from a proprietary trading point of view. Could strategic and technology based investments be viewed differently? Especially as the industry wakes up to the fact that financial services incumbents need and have to behave more like technology companies? After all, it is not too far fetched to picture an insurance company acquiring a cybersecurity consultant or service provider to hone its skills at underwriting cybersecurity risk. From the same token, a bank could (or should?) operate via a mix of acquisition/build a data analytics or AI startup. Such a move may actually be central to a strategy of delivering superior products or managing a client&8217;s identity or data.
Building resiliency into a bank or insurer business model will require different approaches, and competing effectively in the technology arms race we are currently witnessing will have to play a part in a portfolio approach.
Finally and clearly, a rising interest rate environment would greatly help finserv incumbents. Fire power in the form of an increase in operating earnings has a tendency to solve many a problem. This leads me to fire a parting question: What if the next 20 years will deliver continued low interest rates environments across the world? In this environment, financial services firms, and their regulators, will have to come up with drastically different approaches, else the technology arms race may be lost permanently.
#Fintech: #Shaking up the #financial #industry
The following is a script from "Fintech" which aired on May 1, 2016. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Shachar Bar-On, producer. One sector of our economy after the next is being disrupted by new apps and websites, like bookstores, travel agents …
Read more on CBS News
Malaysia #banks told to embrace challenges posed by fintech firms
KUALA LUMPUR (May 3): Malaysia's banking industry has been urged to embrace challenges put forward by financial #technology (fintech) companies to stay relevant in the evolving world economy. "With fintech, people don&39;t go to the banks anymore and …
Read more on The Edge Markets MY
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