A new report by BNY Mellon and the UN point to flaws in design and marketing that make financial products less available to women than men; the report finds financial firms are missing out on $7bn in credit card revenue, $14bn in personal loans and $4bn in housing; TearSheet sat down with a former financial services marketer in their latest Confessions series to talk about these issues; the interview covers the misconceptions in marketing to women customers, why women are still viewed as a niche customer when they are the majority and that banks don’t really understand their customers. Source.
Robo advice platforms have commoditized personal investing providing greater automation at lower price points; however AltFi reports that despite increasing innovation in the market, investors are still demanding a human element; specifically, investors are favoring hybrid advice with a survey from Accenture showing two-thirds of high income investors wanting the combined services of robots and humans; mid-scale wealth managers are well positioned to meet this demand and firms such as Charles Schwab and Betterment have already incorporated hybrid services to support customers. Source
While most banks have spent the better part of the last few years figuring out how to improve their technology...
Humaniq is a blockchain startup focused on financial inclusion; the company released an alpha version of their app; initial features include remittance payments and P2P lending as well as support for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether; Humaniq also has their own tokens called HMQ; app includes biometric ID verification for unlocking and verifying transactions; user profiles are based on facial and voice recognition algorithms; according to CEO Alex Fork: "Our initial target audience is people in emerging economies, and many of them don't have email. By using biometric ID we make the signup process more inclusive for people with low literacy while also lowering opportunities for fraud. Each real person will only ever be able to create one account, and no one will ever be able to steal their account. For businesses, a network full of real people is a dream come true, for reasons that are self-evident." Source
The idea behind Humaniq was to bring the underbanked, a number that estimates around 3.5 billion worldwide, into the banking world; in an interview with the Huffington Post, Humaniq CEO Dinis Guarda talks about the solution they are bringing to the market; they are working with emerging economies where people live on $2.50 a day and have access to a smartphone; the Humaniq banking app will allow these individuals to have access to chats, wallets, payments, microloans and peer-to-peer lending services; they are doing an initial test in Ghana, allowing users to chat and make payments with their phones to local merchants; offering the underbanked a solution is something that can help lift communities and ultimately countries out of poverty. Source
Humaniq is developing new banking options for emerging markets in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia in efforts to help eliminate poverty; the firm is a next generation bank based on Ethereum with open APIs for connecting to services from other companies; platform plans to launch with biometric authentication, simple account set up and money transfers; Humaniq Founder Alex Fork talks with CoinTelegraph about the firm's ambitions. Source
Regional banks like Huntington Bank find themselves stuck in the middle of the innovation wave; they are not big enough...
Hyper-automation in business processes and financial services deliver significant value as technologies improve.
Hyper-automation in business processes and financial services deliver significant value as technologies improve.
Hyperledger has added seven new members bringing its total membership to 135; new members include CollectorIQ Inc., Korea Exchange, Shanghai Onechain Information Technology, Shenzhen Forms Syntron Information, The State of Illinois, The Netherlands Organization for applied scientific research (TNO) and 1worldblockchain; the new members will help to support the consortium's goal of developing blockchain solutions and creating an open standard for distributed ledgers. Source