Bank of America’s Cathy Bessant says the bank’s talent is just as important as the technology they implement; the bank plans to spend more than $600mn on cybersecurity alone and says to TearSheet, “Sometime’s theres a misunderstanding that cyber defense is somehow all technology, and it’s not,” she said. “It’s judgment and how to assess a threat and think about mitigation every single day.”; technology is not only making the bank more efficient but it has also forced the bank to retrain employees for new technology skills, making the bank stronger overall; the bank is making a big push into AI and currently has more than 80 patents related to the new technology. Source.
News Roundup
This page contains an archive of the Global Newsletter summaries and the weekly fintech news roundups.
Every day the Fintech Nexus news team scours the globe for the most important stories of the day to include in our daily newsletter.
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US banks closed more than 2,000 bank branches in 2017, an 18 percent increase form the year earlier; Wells Fargo is one of the leading banks as they closed 194 branches and plan to close more than 800 more by 2020; other banks like Citizens Financial is reducing square footage at branches but not closing as many; Banking Technology lists the top 10 banks by branch closures. Source.
Early last year UK online lender Zopa closed the platform to new investors, they have now re-opened it; investors will be able to invest in both the Core and Plus products, with and without the IFISA; last week Zopa also announced for the first time since 2015 they were raising target investor rates to 4 percent for Core and 4.6 percent for Plus. Source.
After a successful pilot last summer Venmo has started to roll out instant bank transfers; the service will require a Visa or Mastercard debit card and allow for transfers to be done within 30 minutes for $0.25 fee; the free version of bank transfers will remain; PayPal, who owns Venmo, hopes the instant transfers will help with revenues. Source.
- Roostify Announces Integration With LendingTree
- NeoGrowth Credit Raises $47M in Funding
- Loan Program Plans to Offer Students Prepaid Bank Cards
- Enacomm Inks Reseller Agreement with Telvoyant to Modernize Bank and Credit Union Customer Self-Service through Data and Artificial Intelligence
- AutoGravity Exceeds $2 Billion in Finance Amount Requested in 2017
- Bank of America Enters Car Subscription Space With Volvo
- Former Ripple Exec Invests $57.5 Million in Digital Money Platform Uphold
- Block.one and Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Announce Joint Venture for New $325 million EOS.IO Fund
Citi’s mobile app users grew by 21 percent the past year to reach 9 million users; this adoption is a lot slower than peers at Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo who see mobile app users over 20 million; Citi’s growth for the past year is higher and their adoption is beginning to increase; Citi was slower to the game of adopting the new digital features but has since started to catch up by launching Citi FinTech; the new unit has helped the company to launch over 800 digital increases in the past year, a 300 percent increase; the company is planning to keep investing heavily in fintech and is optimistic about their future adoption trends. Source.
According to a paper by the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) blockchain technology should be adopted by China’s secondary loan market; as CoinDesk reports the paper came out of a trip made by the regulator to their counterparts in the UK and France; European banks are putting together a program to test blockchain technology for the issuance of syndicated loans; the CBRC also considers blockchain technology to potentially be helpful for automating compliance. Source.
Citing low usage numbers by customers and retailers the payments company says they will end all bitcoin related payments by April 23rd; "Empirically, there are fewer and fewer use cases for which accepting or paying with Bitcoin makes sense," Stripe product manager Tom Karlo wrote in the announcement reported by Business Insider; the volatility of price and mining fees also played into the decision by Stripe and has been cited by others as an issue that needs be be addressed. Source.
According to the Financial Times 2018 Global Alumni Survey graduates explained they thought finance was taught the best but fintech was near the bottom of the 18 subjects; one of the main reasons for the bad scoring is that fintech is not offered at many schools; Schools are trying to grapple with how to cover the term fintech as it could mean many different things; Schools that do teach courses on fintech see that students want to learn about it and hopeful to see it offered more. Source.
The non-bank lender launched two new initiatives to expand their mello brand; the home improvement venture will launch later this year and will provide loans up to $75,000 at the point of sale.