TD Bank Reaches Breach Settlement with Nine States (Oct. 20, 2014)
TD Bank has reached a settlement over a 2012 data breach that compromised customers’ personal information.
Analysis
How to fight cyber crime
The recent nomination of the British Banker’s Association as an intelligence node and source of benchmarks and practices in the UK’s financial infrastructure, via CBEST, has pushed the role of the banking sector in detecting and remediating breaches into the spotlight. So what can banks do to ensure their cyber defences are up to the task?
Why security strategies must adapt to the retail banking revolution
As banks develop new retail styles, they face new security challenges as the changing use of space in-store means surveillance and alarm systems must evolve in tandem.
Innovators’ Spotlight: Cachet Financial Solutions
RDC specialist’s busy year includes an IPO and a fast-growing prepaid platform.
Finance made social
The social contract between the banking system and society is fundamentally broken. We deserve a financial system that we can all be proud of, one that is fairer and more sustainable than the current iteration.
Money laundering: rapid development is creating new risks
The internet has opened the door to purchase almost anything from any part of the world through electronic payments. As globalisation continues to flourish – especially in the banking industry – it’s now possible to transfer money across different countries with ease and speed. While this has increased the opportunity for businesses to extend their reach globally, it also creates an appealing opportunity for criminals.
CFPB Examines Screening Process for Consumer DDAs (Oct. 9, 2014)
The CFPB is gathering information about the methods banks and credit unions use to screen consumers before approving or denying them a checking account.
Starting over: Lloyds Banking Group’s transaction banking ambitions
While a great deal of attention has been given to Lloyds Banking Group’s retail operations as its various elements are split up, less has been given to its activities in transaction banking, where it is “one year into a three-year journey” to transform itself and its customer offerings to create“the best global transaction bank in this region”.
Gearing up for the future of payments
It is essential for banks to ensure they have the right strategies and technology in place now, if they are to retain their position as market-leading payment providers in the future, writes Saket Sharma,chief information officer, treasury services, BNY Mellon.
Blog: Get Ready to Be Acquired
The M&A market for payments companies is booming, as larger companies look to acquire smaller innovators. Even if no deal is on the immediate horizon, early preparation pays off when a sale transaction is at hand.
Blog: The Future Is Financial Health
If we want to consolidate the gains we’ve made and scale the innovations we’ve seeded, we need to think big. We need to redefine financial services from the pursuit of wealth to the pursuit of health.
Viewpoint: With Expanding Use Case, GPR Poised for Growth
GPR cards are quickly moving beyond their traditional role as an alternative to checking accounts for the financially underserved, to serve broader use cases for a changing demographic.
Regulatory overload and the role of the data scientist
In the ongoing discussion about the need to use data to increase business value, it is imperative to substantiate the argument with practical, real-world use cases. Otherwise, the debate becomes just another line of marketing waffle around big data – an area already suffering from too much hype.
Building a transformation vision
This year marks the tenth anniversary of World Payments Report. In this extract from the report, which was launched at Sibos this week, the impact of innovation on payments is examined.
What’s not to like?
The rise of Facebook has been one of the most striking cultural phenomena of the past decade. In January 2007 the site had around 25 million users. But by July 2014, Facebook had reached 2.2 billion users; a number equivalent to one out of every three people on this planet. Meanwhile, Twitter had emerged as the platform of business and news, with 500 million posts ‘tweeted’ daily by its 271 million active users.
Limiting collateral damage
A lack of available collateral to meet demand has become a global problem, with various models being deployed to ensure financial institutions meet the changing regulatory requirements.
Alternative realities
The debut of SAP’s Financial Services Network at Sibos last year led many to see it as a threat to Swift’s plans for corporate connectivity.
A call to pragmatic action
In a recently published white paper on intraday liquidity reporting*, Swift urges financial institutions to initiate programs now to address serious challenges with regard to data availability, centralisation, aggregation and interpretation in meeting Basel Committee guidelines. Greater industry collaboration will also help to accelerate moves towards cost effective and sustainable models and solutions.
Power to the people
The growth of peer to peer lending demonstrates that there is an alternative to the traditional lending model of banks. But can crowd funders ever replace the incumbents and do they enjoy long-run advantages or face being co-opted?
The shifting sands of commerce
Changing trade patterns and attempts to ‘de-dollarise’ international commerce are changing the landscape of trade finance, as new partnerships emerge.
Across the spectrum: ISO 20022 perspectives
The original concept of the ISO 20022 was to create a repository of data used in financial messaging to communicate business information of any type – and to be able to add any types of data that might arise in the future. There has been a lot of focus on the use of the standard in payments and securities messaging roles, this has obscured its current and potential use in other areas.
A guiding light
Building a single regional market is a goal for many groups of nations; however Europe’s development of a single settlement platform is the only effort to come to fruition.
Next out of the block
Forget Bitcoin, cryptographic payments networks will be the real game-changer, according to many people working in the payments world.
The high cost of failure
Data in all its forms and access to it in real time is becoming ever more critical as financial institutions seek to manage myriad risks.
The long arm of the law
Crypto and virtual currencies have garnered plenty of headlines in the past couple of years. Now financial regulators around the world are turning the spotlight on these instruments and attempting to bring them into the legal fold.
Cross border co-operation is key to the safe evolution of financial markets
Global financial markets are experiencing a paradigm shift as governments, regulators and participants recalibrate the processes and structures underpinning global finance. The challenge is to repair and remedy where needed, with dialogue between central banks, regulators and participants, but also to avoid creating fragmented markets or worse, unintentionally reintroducing risk.
Changing the world
Change is a theme at this year’s Sibos. But what type of change? A cross-section of delegates discuss what they think will be the main disruptive forces in their part of the business.
A city that commands attention
One of the most attractive cities in the US, Boston is also steeped in history: get your walking shoes on and explore the many historical and culinary delights of the Sibos 2014 host city.
Access all new areas
While mobile commerce and payments have been slow to take off in Western countries, the developing world has been stealing a march with innovative services and products.
Silver linings
In early September, cloud computing stories finally became interesting as an apparent hacking attack on Apple’s iCloud released hundreds of photos of ‘celebrities’ in the nude. It was a perfect story for the mainstream media, combining celebrities with nudity and a bit of unintelligible (to them at least) technology thrown in for good measure. Among […]
ISO 20022: the beginning of the future?
The ISO 20022 standard is 10 years old this year, but its roots go back to some five years before that, and the story of its development and adoption is likely to go on for many years in the future. The datum point is probably the publication in 1999 of a Green Paper from SWIFT called ‘Building Standards for Tomorrow’. The modest proposal in that document is that “the next generation of standards will be based on a structured and formal framework”.
MPIW Backs Tokenization, Calls for Coordination (Sept 25, 2014)
A key payments industry group is throwing its support behind tokenization—with a few caveats as to the hurdles that remain before broad industry adoption can occur, including coordinating different tokenization models.
GAO: CFPB’s Data Collection Security Procedures Need Improvement (Sept. 25, 2014)
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has determined that the CFPB must take additional measures to mitigate risk of “improper collection, use or release of consumer financial data,” according to a recently released report.
Intraday Liquidity Reporting
Reporting on the management of intraday liquidity risk will start on a monthly basis from 1 January 2015 to coincide with the implementation of the liquidity coverage ratio reporting requirements. Christian Goerlach, global head of FI balance sheet & liquidity, Deutsche Bank, takes a closer look at some of the issues facing global banks.
Open source middleware is everywhere in financial services
Enabling rapid growth and agility with creaking IT systems poses a major challenge to UK financial services companies where the IT infrastructure, as in many other industries, has evolved over time and features a wide variety of solutions.
How to build a better SunGard
As SunGard’s first ever chief technology officer, Steven Silberstein knows a thing or two about financial technology. In a past life, he was global head of prime brokerage at Lehman Brothers. He later became chief information officer at Chi-X Global, before joining SunGard in a newly-created position two years ago.
Blog: ‘Banking’ the Unbanked with Direct Express
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Direct Express Debit MasterCard program now serves nearly one-quarter of the nation’s entire unbanked population, a recent cardholder survey confirms.
Is your analytics solution getting the better of you?
All banks, whatever their size rely on data to make decisions. With that in mind getting that data in a timely manner and in a format that can be digested easily is critical. So why can this be so difficult? We are all used to receiving reports from our systems and even the most rudimentary examples will utilise some form of analytics, however simple. We might be getting the reports and be used to the status quo, but is your analytics platform getting the better of you?
Viewpoint: The One Who Enrolls Is the One Who Controls
The most effective strategy for retailers to thrive in an omnichannel age is to enroll customers for payment in their own mobile shopping apps.
The brave new world of mobile banking
The digital era is changing your bank rapidly. Is your mobile testing & assurance practice ready? P Venkatesh, director of the product division, and Srivatsan TT, vice president of the solutions group, at Maveric Systems discuss the issues
