The fact that London’s financial services sector is also a hot spot for technology innovation is not news. In 2014, investment in financial technology firms grew by 136%. Earlier this year, George Osborne identified London’s financial technology sector as a particularly bright spot in the recovering economy – not surprising when you consider the transformational effect that information technology continues to have on the industry
The selfie boom was born in 2003 with the world’s first front-facing camera, and millennials are the first generation to grow up with technology focused on one’s self, bringing new expectations to the meaning of personalized, digital services.
Personalization has become more important than ever to consumers, as they shun anonymous mass advertising in favor of individual reviews and one-to-one brand engagement. But what if instead of helping big brands to adapt, you were to lead the change? This is where competitive advantage comes to life.
Clearly there’s an issue with how banks manage cross-border money transfers and payments. The process is inefficient, costly and archaic. That being said, I can understand why it is the way it is—building a truly global platform that enables FedEx-like payment transfers is no easy feat.
The fintech revolution is now firmly established, and disruptive technologies are blooming all across the sector. From securities to payments, everyone in the sector is watching to see how the next innovation will affect their business.
Technology has infiltrated every facet of our lives, fundamentally changing our behaviour patterns and our expectations of what constitutes a good customer experience. The banking sector has not been immune to these changes; the industry has been forced to drastically transform its business processes and services in order to keep up with customers’ expectations. Today, customer satisfaction is judged not by the smile on the face of a cashier, but on the speed with which one can gain mobile access
America has led Europe in payments innovation. Europe has led in payments regulation. The recent rubberstamping of PSD2 in Brussels suggests that’s likely to continue.
A large part of any financial technology businesses is clearly driven by the need for banks to comply with the ever-changing regulatory requirements that affect their business. And this has brought about a frenetic period of activity and growth in this core market. These changes affect the various individual areas within financial organizations Wolters Kluwer Financial Services and others serve, including Finance (e.g. IFRS9), Risk (e.g. Basel III Liquidity, FRTB) and Regulatory Reporting (e.g. CRD IV). They also impact the way in which these processes are governed and controlled centrally
Blockchain has the potential to further disrupt banking in the way that we know it today, transform traditional interbank and even peer-to-peer payments, open up opportunities to replace existing mechanisms for the exchange of financial information, and how customer records are stored and processed.
You’d think an A-list celebrity had shown up when Apple Pay launched in the U.K. in July. Despite some speed bumps related to transit and international acceptance, prepaid providers shouldn’t ignore the mobile wallet.
Fundamental shifts in the way socially connected and digital-savvy consumers connect have altered the customer-engagement and marketing landscape forever. To succeed, retailers and consumer brands must use data-driven engagement strategies.
The time has come for financial institutions to truly reap the benefits mobile connectivity offers, and the place to begin is with customer onboarding.
Despite Apple Pay’s high-profile U.S. launch, recent First Annapolis primary consumer research suggests that only one in five iPhone 6 users has actually made a purchase with Apple Pay. But, that’s not the only stat that matters.
In bygone days the bank manager knew each of his customers by name but could offer them only the narrowest range of products. Today the computer can tailor bespoke financial solutions in a mass market – but has no empathy with which to convey its expertise …
With banking IT failures happening on a seemingly weekly basis, we perhaps should be examining the language they speak more closely. Most of our banks are built on systems and programmed with languages that pre-date the birth of the internet, let alone the birth of mobile banking …
Money laundering is a global phenomenon, evident in many parts of the world. Techniques have ranged from simple bulk cash movements across borders to more sophisticated techniques hidden in trade transactions. As trade between the Middle East and the rest of the world continues to grow, the threat of trade based money laundering becomes more […]
Sometimes the least obvious changes can have a big effect, and very often those changes are in areas that might considered outside the remit of the people best placed to make them. Bank staff remuneration, for instance …
When ANZ decided to make its acquisition of New Zealand’s National Bank into a single brand, it had some wide-ranging rationalisation ahead of it to reduce costs while expanding service coverage. Software from Californian geographic information systems specialist Esri helped.
An interesting trend is developing in the halal sector: regional hubs are developing in places that have some local demand but not the size that would be significant markets on their own. Think of Malaysia (the largest) or Dubai or tiny Brunei. Each sees the halal sector as being strategic to their economic growth, and for Dubai and Brunei at least, as key aspects of their economic diversification. This trend has the potential to support global growth in the Islamic economy as well as SME development but need a lot of (costly) infrastructure put in place to open up the international side to SMEs
While IT departments fret about BYOD and Shadow IT, a new security beast lurks on the horizon–the shadow internet of Things. A swarm of consumer devices are all connecting to the internet and beaconing out data in different forms. Because they don’t look like computers, they aren’t treated like computers, and IT departments are often not managing them to ensure that they are secure.
A bank cannot hope to compete in today’s retail banking market without a ‘digital executive team’ and banks need to reinvent their upper echelons’ if this is currently lacking, as Atom Bank and Apple Pay are merely the start of an avalanche of a new era of digital disrupters, looking to steal the lunch from traditional high street banks.
Pascal Augé, head of global transaction and payment services, Société Générale speaks to Daily News at Sibos about the growing importance of transaction banking for corporate customers
Last year, the ISO 20022 standard celebrated its 10th birthday, and consequently it may seem a bit odd to say that after more than a decade since its inception, the financial community really should start taking assertive action. Since 2004, the ISO 20022 standard has, thankfully, witnessed substantial adoption but it has been what could be termed an “uncontrolled adoption”. So why is action so critical now?
The UK payment services market has been under the spotlight in recent months with the introduction of a new Payment Systems Regulator created with the intention, amongst other things, of opening up the industry to new and emerging payment service providers.
When I joined the company in 2007, Google was just a search engine and Apple had nothing to do with payments. It was a time many prepaid executives have compared to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks—not everything did.
Business expense prepaid cards can fill in the gaps when credit, cash or other business payments aren’t ideal. Tapping this relatively young vertical market will require product features that make life easier for employers and employees.
The creation of domestic mobile payment schemes by retail banks is good news for their customers domestically, but potentially threatens mobile payments at an international level.
As the SEPA deadline has come and gone, what will be built upon its advances towards digitisation and standardisation?
Credit unions play a critical role in local economies of countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, serving as a vital savings and credit conduit to vast numbers of people, especially those in the lower rungs of the income pyramid who are in many cases, priced out of the traditional banking system
Even as they cement their recovery from the financial crisis, adherents to traditional banking models are facing a new storm as they grapple with the digital demands of the Facebook generation and heightened regulatory risks surrounding data. At the same time, they must match the customer service levels offered by the “challenger” banks if they are to avoid haemorrhaging business to their nimble and digital-focused rivals.
Payment opportunities in the EU come with complex requirements, which is why it’s important to understand the ever-changing legislative issues.
Let’s be clear: banks do a very difficult job – they store the value of society expressed as money. We trust them and they can’t get it wrong, but they are nothing but people and IT. Everything they own is on computer and they don’t like to take risks with this. Consequently, IT change for banks has been slow and safe. It has been incremental: bit by bit, byte by byte.
Historically, the large banks have been Lords of the Manor, between them owning every scrap of land as far as the eye can see. However, times are changing: invaders offering services the banks cannot provide as competitively have begun to disrupt the peace and take small pockets of land for themselves. Likening the march of the fintech new entrants to a land-grab by an invading force, the disruptors began with a neglected allotment here and there, then moved to take a meadow and now some are on the verge of swallowing up villages and small towns …
We recently surveyed more than 1,000 Americans about their payment preferences. The key trend that emerged: Traditional and emerging payments tools are being used together, not cannibalizing each other.
Like it or not, the bitcoin craze is here to stay. Over time, bitcoin will be a major disruptor in payments—with broad implications for governments, businesses and consumers. Burying your head in the sand is not an option.
A curious cultural shift is taking place when it comes to problem-solving in the financial services industry, writes Joe Channer The sector is not renowned as a home for co-operation: competition is intense, the stakes high, and individualism rewarded. Yet the industry has recently seen a marked increase in collaborative ventures. The post-crisis environment, with […]
There has been hype around wearable technology for some time now but only now is it reaching market maturity with the introduction and subsequent adoption by consumers of smart watches and wristbands. Just as we saw with smart phones and tablets, consumer technology, in this case wearables, has the potential to have a huge impact on the business world. The implications for the financial services industry are significant
No one involved in the UK financial services industry could have failed to notice the recent increase in level of fines issued by the UK’s City Regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority. Mary Stevens, from risk and regulatory technology company Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, analyses what the fines mean for the industry.
MiFID II comes into effect in January 2017, which might seem a long way off, but you need to start preparations now if your institution is really going to benefit
So after the protracted and ongoing rollout of SEPA, along comes further EU regulation in the guise of the second phase of the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) with further challenges to banks impacting the provision of one of the core banking services – namely payments
