Citigroup has reported the appointment of Yolande Piazza to head of the company's fintech unit after naming Piazza interim head in August; Piazza will permanently replace previous leader Heather Cox who left for a role at USAA; Piazza has extensive experience with Citigroup working at the company for approximately 30 years and previously serving as the fintech unit's chief operating officer; initiatives for the Citigroup fintech unit are primarily focused on mobile. Source
The company's speech recognition technology has reported a 5.5% error rate in speech recognition, breaking the previous speech recognition error rate of 5.9% set by Microsoft in October 2016; the current error rate for speech recognition falls just above the newly reported human error rate of 5.1%; the speech recognition error rate continues to be a focus area as speech recognition technology becomes more broadly utilized in consumer electronics and the internet of things. Source
Revolut will now offer its customers investment at property platform Bricklane; investors can invest in Bricklane tax efficient individual savings accounts for a minimum of 100 British pounds ($122); Bricklane investors receive rental income and capital appreciation from the properties they invest in. Source
Vista Equity Partners has announced the acquisition of DH Corporation and intended merger with Misys; DH Corporation is a Canadian fintech company with a full range of technology solutions for financial institutions; Misys is a UK-based firm also providing similar solutions for financial institutions globally; in January it announced a new P2P lending solution for banks, FusionBanking Crowdlending; Vista will acquire DH Corporation for approximately $4.8 billion, representing a premium of approximately 36%. Source
National Australia Bank's (NAB) venture capital business, NAB Ventures has joined in an investment round raising $24 million for Veem, a foreign exchange startup business; Veem provides business to business cross border payment services with blockchain technology; NAB and NAB Ventures have been actively involved in technology investments also investing in Data Republic, Medipass Solutions and Localz; Australia is also taking a lead role in developing blockchain standards globally; it is active in the development of blockchain standards through the ISO/TC 307 and will host the first international blockchain standards meeting for ISO/TC 307. Source
The B3i blockchain insurance consortium was founded in October 2016 to focus on blockchain-based solutions for the insurance industry; it began with five companies and has now announced the addition of 10 new members; overall members of the consortium believe the technology has the potential to streamline paperwork and reconciliations, accelerate information and money flow, and significantly improve auditability; the consortium was created to develop a common set of standards and procedures around these initiatives; B3i plans to release an initial report on its research by June 2017. Source
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has reported successful use of blockchain in inter-bank payments; the MAS blockchain inter-bank payments project began in November 2016 and was tested in partnership with R3 and a consortium of financial institutions; Deloitte will provide a report on all aspects of the project and its successes; MAS has reported a continuation of blockchain testing, next in fixed income securities trading and settlement at the Singapore Exchange and also in cross border payments using central bank digital currency; the country's active role in blockchain technology testing is also likely to influence the UNCITRAL Working Group IV which meets in April and is leading initiatives around a legal framework for cross border transactions which is likely to be based on blockchain technology. Source
Alex Tapscott took the stage on day two of LendIt USA to begin the day with a discussion on how blockchain can help financial services; blockchain technology has the potential to recreate the infrastructure that the financial services industry was built upon and consumers and banks appear to be onboard with the use of the new technology; however its implementation is far from ready and Tapscott says will not be a reality for at least another three to four years. Source
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) denied the approval of a rule change proposal that would have allowed for the Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF to be traded on the Bats BZX Exchange, also operated by the Winklevoss brothers; approval would have created the US's first publicly traded bitcoin investment fund; the SEC cited two main factors in their disapproval of the investment: 1) the Exchange lacks surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying bitcoin commodity and 2) the markets involved in bitcoin trading are not sufficiently regulated. Source
Google's artificial intelligence unit, DeepMind, is using blockchain technology to build an auditing system for analyzing and storing healthcare data; the system will mainly focus on tracking all of a person's hospital health data and centrally storing it for access and ownership by individuals; DeepMind will also make its system available through open source software allowing for the technology to be utilized for broader solutions including auditing identities, financial records and private corporate data. Source