Skinner revisits the predictions he made at the beginning of 2017; he discusses the rise of insurtech, regtech, PSD2, blockchain and more in his blog post. Source
With cryptocurrency market caps rising and futures markets being adopted 2017 saw hedge funds pour over $2bn into the space; the figures come from a Morgan Stanley note sent to clients with research included from Autonomous NEXT; the note also shows 84 of 100 crypto related funds started in 2017; this year has helped the market to begin being more widely accepted by traditional institutional investors. Source.
While Amazon is unlikely to buy a bank in 2018, they are still a threat to banks and other fintech companies; the company is already involved in payments, cash, debit cards, small business lending and consumer credit; Tearsheet shares how retail and financial services companies are becoming more intertwined and how this is a trend that will continue into 2018; the way consumers interact across various apps and accounts is also having a significant effect on banks. Source
The new head of the OCC, Joseph Otting, reaffirms the agency’s support of the fintech charter. Source
With open banking set to go live in Europe next month US banks will be keeping a close eye on how the process works; US banks have started to share data with fintechs through different partnerships for different reasons; the time is coming where the industry will have to look at open banking as a regulatory standard and some think the banks should really be the ones to set the parameters; coming up with a potential global set of standards is something that could really benefit all parties involved; “You need to globalize that at consistency so you don’t have different standards for each country in Asia, for example,” said Cynthia Murray, a managing director at Bank of America, to TearSheet. Source.
Business Insider takes a look back at one of the biggest trends in finance from 2017; Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs have become one of the main ways for companies in the blockchain space to raise capital; more than $3.5bn was raised using this method; some of the top raises include $153mn by The Bancor Protocol, $232mn by Tezos and $257mn by Filecoin. Source.
Lend Academy shares some of the biggest news stories of the year; includes Mike Cagney departing SoFi, the Cleveland Fed retracting their report on “p2p lending”, Prosper’s $5 billion deal, Renaud Laplanche’s new venture and more. Source
Open source projects have started at Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase in the past year, there is a thought that this is the start a new wave of open source banking; Accenture found that 99 out of 100 payments executives at banks said they plan to make big open banking investments by 2020; open source projects like Linux has help the tech industry develop into what it is today; banks like CBW Bank, who is run by former Google engineer Suresh Ramamurthi, already have a marketplace where developers can build banking apps using their APIs; open source banking can also help to keep banks more secure as the big tech giants have been helped a lot by using open source applications. Source.
While on the surface Affirm’s business may appear to be focused on lending and payments, the company can also help merchants in marketing; the company has large amounts of data on who is buying products, what they are buying and where they are buying; with this information they plan to offer their merchants more services in the future; Tearsheet shares more on Affirm’s plans. Source
The Trump administration is looking to potentially name the chair of the National Credit Union Administration to lead the CFPB; J. Mark McWatters has been seen as being a bigger credit union advocate over banks; bankers are concerned because his public record has indicated he lobbies more for breaks that favor credit unions over banks; while a decision is yet to be made bankers are hopeful that the administration will consider those from the banking community as well. Source.