IBM announced a partnership with Stellar.org and KlickEx Group to help small businesses in underdeveloped countries participate in global trade; the partnership will focus on financial transactions across borders and currencies; this will allow businesses in these areas to get access to IBM’s scale and bank partnership network. Source.
China Construction Bank is working with IBM to develop blockchain-enabled “bancassurance” platform for its retail and commercial banking arm in Hong Kong; A ‘bancassurance’ endeavor typically sees sales of insurance products through banks; the blockchain platform, which is expected to launch in Q3 2017, is currently in its testing phase between China Construction Bank (Asia) and its insurance providers and their clients. Source
IBM announced the launch of financial modeling investment app tools with cognitive programming for developers; the development is part of the firm's new IBM Cloud for Financial Services unit; with the announcement, IBM appears to be taking a lead role in supporting investment app development and is also integrating Watson and other cognitive programming. Source
Technology conglomerate IBM has launched a new set of developer tools for the financial services industry; the IBM Cloud for Financial Services platform will be directed by IBM InterConnect and will provide building blocks for financial services apps built on the IBM Cloud; the platform will target 100,000 individual and enterprise developers with APIs, data and content for financial services apps that can quickly scale to service fintechs, banks, wealth management firms and insurance companies; with the launch, IBM also announced a Singapore Fintech Hub, developed with support from the Singapore central bank, that will plug in to IBM's new Cloud for Financial Services platform and accelerate fintech growth in Singapore and Southeast Asia; across the world, IBM will integrate the new offerings of IBM Cloud for Financial Services at IBM's Business Partner Solution Hubs. Source
IBM and Maersk have completed a successful blockchain solution project for the container supply chain industry; plan to expand the solution to 10 million of the 70 million containers shipped annually; solution could provide cost savings for ship carriers of $38 billion per year. Source
The Bank of Montreal, Caixabank, Erste Bank and Commerzbank join the Batavia blockchain project; the project was launched by UBS and IBM last year; Batavia looks to transform the trade finance industry; Marie Wieck, general manager of the blockchain team at IBM, tells the FT, “there is now a shift from technology projects to more of what I’d call ecosystem projects like this one.” Source.
The two firms have built the Yijian Blockchain Technology Application System; the platform seeks to increase transparency of pharmaceutical supply chain networks by tracking the flow of drugs, encrypting trading records and more easily authenticating transactions; overall it is expected to increase payments efficiency and reduce the payments timing for pharmaceutical retailers; the Yijian System is still in a pilot phase and expects to expand in July. Source
At IBM's InterConnect conference this week in Las Vegas the company discussed its plans for cloud, artificial intelligence and blockchain, three areas that it will be increasingly focusing on for the future; the IBM Cloud will be the base of the growth strategy with artificial intelligence and blockchain driving a full range of capabilities. 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
The running joke is that after Dodd-Frank banks have become compliance companies that happen to make loans. It is funny...