AltFi sat down with Revolut’s Rishi Stocker who is leading their effort to expand into Japan; Revolut has found the Japanese market to be more challenging than initially hoped; key issues include regulators want a local presence and for the fintech to hire someone with on the ground expertise; they also want to ensure their product targets the right customer in Japan. Source.
China Construction Bank opened a branch in Shanghai only using technology; they have no human staff and instead use facial recognition, artificial intelligence and virtual reality to provide services; this is the first of its kind in China and the bank says it can handle 90 percent of transactions. Source.
The move by Goldman Sachs into retail banking with Marcus has been a big shift for the bank and thus far has paid off; speaking to CNBC Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein talked about their move to consumer lending, their expansion of digital banking with Marcus and the focus on developing in house technology. Source.
Rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act is a welcomed sign by banks like Ally Bank who does not use branches and misses out on benefits awarded to banks with branch networks; focusing on where banks lend would be a better way to assess potential credit instead of where the bank is physically located. Source.
Last week the sixth annual LendIt Fintech USA conference took place in San Francisco. Here are Peter Renton’s thoughts on some of the ideas that were shared by the keynote speakers as well as a summary of the rest of the event. Source.
Orange Bank has already onboarded more than 100,000 customers since launch, only Revolut and Boursorama, Société Générale’s digital banking arm have made more progress in the same timeframe; this continues the wider trend across Europe as digital banking becomes a bigger part of the financial services ecosystem. Source.
American Banker puts together a slideshow on the key trends in digital banking; some of the trends include more customers using digital payments, digital banking adoption is increasing globally, consumers are not happy with PFM options offered by banks and overall banks are still highly trusted for managing money. Source.
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles told an International Monetary Fund forum that he didn’t think ILCs were problematic; applications should be reviewed and granted based on the strength of the application; this is a shift for the Fed as they have said in the past that ILCs were an issue and that Congress should consider cracking down on them. Source.
TearSheet sat down with Megan Caywood, co-founder and chief platform officer at Starling Bank, to talk about the digital bank’s success so far; the interview covers the biggest issues with banking today, the issues Starling Bank is trying to solve, differentiating from other digital banks, customer acquisition and more. Source.
Banks know they need to update legacy technology, but investors are beginning to question at what cost can the banks innovate versus making profits; ensuring they stay competitive when it comes to technology, though keeping costs from skyrocketing is a tightrope more second and third tier banks are trying to navigate every day. Source.