The KPMG Pulse of Fintech Q3 report pointed to 274 deals worth over $8bn in investment; the hottest areas of investment include artificial intelligence, insurtech, regtech and blockchain; the three biggest countries come as no surprise with the US, China and the UK dominating their respective regions. Source.
A new report from Numis entitled The State of AI in 2017 explains the potential AI and machine learning for wealth managers; as AltFi reports, “AI enables asset managers to deliver to the mass affluent a degree of personalisation and service quality previously reserved for high net worth clients.”; the technology can also help to improve quality, decrease cost and help to make most of the asset management industry into robo advisors. Source.
In an address to the 19th CPC National Congress Xi called for bigger efforts to increase growth in internet based companies, big data and artificial intelligence; “We will make sure that our payment, wealth management and credit services can improve the welfare of the unbanked and underbanked population,” said Ant Financial CEO Eric Jing who was responding to another section of Xi’s speech which looks for the economy to better serve everyone. Source.
As more banks start utilizing new technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain current employees are beginning to worry about their future; Lyn Hall-Fore, U.S. director of BSA/AML compliance tells American Banker, “We told them, this is to make your job easier and better and give you more capacity to think, but still meet your production quotas”; finding the right balance will be a struggle as banks continue to innovate. Source
Source reports on the operational costs associated with loans and how automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can help reduce those costs; automation can now replace manual processes such as credit checks, data consolidation, onboarding, loan documentation, know your customer and more; robotics and AI are also assisting in risk analysis for SMEs; additionally, machine learning solutions have also been evolving to evaluate thousands of data points from various sources; as these solutions evolve, banks too will need to integrate greater automation to stay competitive. Source
Facial recognition startup Megvii Face++ raised $460mn in their most recent investment round led by China State-Owned Venture Capital Fund and the China-Russia Investment Fund; Ant Financial was also involved in the round and the company did not disclose valuation, though their most recent round valued the company at $1.5bn; Face++ uses facial recognition to identity people and counts Ant Financial and the Chinese government as two of their biggest clients. Source.
Personetics Act will be offered to banks as a way to help their customers pay off their student loans ahead of schedule; the tool will use the Nudge Theory by identifying students who can repay loans quicker and helping them to do so or automatically pay more than the usual payment for them; David Sosna, Personetics’ co-founder and CEO tells Banking Technology, “we’re able to identify windows of opportunity for customers to make these extra payments with no effort on their end.” Source.
Banks speaking at the BankAI conference this week talked at length about what artificial intelligence means in consumer banking; “We have to keep up and we have to stay ahead,” said Diane Morais, president of consumer and commercial banking products at Ally Bank according to American Banker; the banks also talked through current use cases for AI and what the future might look like for banking. Source.
Hong Kong-based TNG FinTech Group Raises a $115mn series A round; the round was led by New Margin Capital, with participation from Nogle Group and Infinity-KBR Group; the funds will be used to expand globally and invest in new technologies including blockchain. Source.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch says they are implementing HighRadius, an enterprise software AI solution to speed up reconciliation of receivables; they specifically are looking to focus on the bank's largest business clients; HighRadius uses AI, machine learning and optical character recognition to match a payment to a receivable; this will help cut down on some of the labor intensive work and more efficiently be able to send payment reminders to clients; BAML is the latest bank using AI to improve processes and cut cost. Source