Robots have begun helping to take over menial tasks at banks and now there is talk that a full back office operation is not far away; "I think we're going to see it move from a few narrow functions to across the enterprise," said Alan McIntyre, the industry managing director for banking at Accenture; making these changes will help banks to cut costs and improve efficiency, at least when times get extremely busy; banks won't yet fully remove the human component but the trend is moving in the direction of more automation when running the back office. 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.
Then every Saturday we bring you our weekly news roundup of the top 10 fintech stories of the week with commentary from Peter Renton.
To join our newsletter community please subscribe here.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are becoming increasingly relied upon by financial services companies and the credit sector; the algorithms powering these solutions have also advanced the use of AI and machine learning; while these advancements have helped new solutions they have also created new risks; these risks are primarily focused in three phases: input, training and programming; risks can also be higher when using nontraditional data; a report from White and Case titled, "Algorithms and Bias: What Lenders Need to Know" provides details on the evolution of algorithms in artificial intelligence and machine learning and explains important factors to consider for credit providers. Source
Open banking is a significant factor for fintech industry growth; it allows fintech companies to access customer data for fintech services; the Consumer Financial Data Rights (CFDR) coalition has been established to focus primarily on this issue; there initiatives include: lobbying regulators for open access to data, promoting fintech's rights to use data and serving as a resource center for open access regulation; Business Insider also suggests considering the UK's open access and regulatory examples and has published a report entitled, "The Fintech Regulation Report." Source
Bitcoin exchanges BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin have implemented a 0.2% trading fee for both buying and selling; according to CoinDesk, volume has decreased after the fees were put in place but prices remain stable thus far; fees were put in place to help curb market manipulation and volatility. Source
In an opinion piece, William Mougayar who wrote, "The Business Blockchain" provides thoughts on initial coin offerings (ICOs); dozens of startups are planning ICOs and funds are also feeding an investment and speculation frenzy according to Mougayar; he notes that ICOs are a good alternative funding model but warns of potential issues outlined in the article. Source
A study by Citigroup shows China as the world's investment leader in fintech; says investment is being led by success from "Chinese dragons" including Ant Financial, Lu.com, JD Finance and Qufenqi; in the first nine months of 2016 fintech venture capital investment increased to 46% of the global total; the full Citi report can be found here. Source
Bank service provider Misys is looking to bring an end to alternative lending by giving banks a solution that is similar to that of marketplace lenders; "There's clearly a demand for banks to take back that piece of the lending market," explained Misys Senior Product Officer Jean-Cedric Jollant in a discussion with PYMNTS; Misys believes this solution would give banks more lending options and they would no longer have to partner with an online lender; Jollant goes on to say that 90% of the online lending market will collapse and only the top names will survive a decade or two. Source
Investment in regtech companies has reported a 38.5% compound annual growth rate over the past five years with a record $678 million invested in 70 companies in 2016; globally London has taken the lead reporting the greatest number of investment deals from 2012 to 2016 at 39; anti-fraud companies have been increasingly receiving greater investment with $334.8 million in 2016 accounting for 49.4% of total regtech investment. Source
Aviva, Hillhouse Capital and Tencent have announced plans for a new digital insurer, Aviva Hong Kong; Aviva and Hillhouse will own 40% with Tencent owning the remaining 20%; the new platform will focus on selling digital life insurance in Hong Kong and will also offer additional investment products. Source
Online loan marketplace LendingTree has released its third quarter list of top customer-rated network lenders; the platform has a network of over 450 lending partners; top lenders from each of the list's four categories included: Veterans United Home Loans, Lending Club, rateGenius and Credibly. Source