Fintech News Issue #193 November 22nd, 2018

Bitcoin’s latest plunge gives investors reason to weigh how it compares with some of history’s greatest asset bubbles. After an almost 60-fold increase in three years to nearly $20,000, the world’s biggest digital coin has now tumbled more than 75 percent from its peak.

After the financial crisis 10 years ago, unhappy customers were expected to flee the megabanks for smaller competitors.

Fintech is showing that you can take a look at revenue in different ways. Innovations decrease friction in banking and the industry’s reliance on fees, which comes with that. The Fintech ecosystem acts as a foil to excessive fees—a way to finally develop an alternative path.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been gone to significant lengths in an attempt to understand the crypto asset space. This effort is to be applauded. However, the SEC has failed to come to terms with one fundamental aspect of crypto assets and systems.

FinTech World Forum 2018 (FinTech Conference) is based in London UK Europe as one of leading fintech events for global financial, blockchain, crypto currency, payments and banking technology industry.

December 6th, 11 am ET: Can AI be the solution for hyper-personalized claims experience at scale? Join Chubb and Farmers Insurance in the live webinar “Humanising Insurance Claims with Artificial Intelligence” discussing how AI is transforming claims from a necessary back-office function into a source of competitive advantage.

Future Digital Finance brings together some of the brightest minds at American’s most innovative financial institutions. Our content will give you the actionable strategies you need to meet changing consumer expectations and to create meaningful long term relationships with your customers. Innovation doesn’t happen overnight. Get started on the future of finance today!

To commemorate the past 10 years of ngenuity, we wanted to look back at how the landscape changed from 2008 to today. For such an effort, we tapped Chris Skinner — author, blogger and independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech.

Will digital transformation make you an ex-banker? Predictions of a banking apocalypse by Gartner find more agreement than disagreement regarding direction, among experts. The firm's suggestions for survival, via 'platformication,' sets the stage for a lively debate about what's really possible and what American consumers truly want out of a 'bank.'

Amazon, Google, and others are chewing into banking services in clever new ways. Consumers clearly love all these new choices. How can financial institutions compete? Only by rethinking everything.

Investors have doubts about Chinese banks’ ability to withstand the competition in a market where tech companies have a solid grip, writes Brian Caplen.

A startup says it has tackled a long-standing problem that has kept smart contracts from responding to actual events.

With regulatory environments becoming increasingly complex, banks have a responsibility to deliver a Customer Identification Program (CIP) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD). These processes are seen as a minimum requirement that financial institutions can’t afford to neglect.

Analytics and “Big Data” are two of business’s favorite buzzwords, and for good reason. In recent years, analytics — and technology to perform analytics — have transformed and reshaped many industries.

The scope and speed of evolution in regulation, customer behavior and technology – coupled with the emergence of new competitors – mean that the future of banking will not be a continuation of the past. New technologies will transform banking as we know it, providing both opportunities and challenges for financial institutions.

In a move that’s rare among its peers, the $223 billion-asset BB&T also provided a close look at its tech budget. This year, BB&T expects to spend $1 billion on technology, with the bulk of those costs going toward infrastructure such as data centers, and 20% going toward innovation, such as investments in fintech startups.

Millions of sleep apnea patients rely on CPAP breathing machines to get a good night’s rest. Health insurers use a variety of tactics, including surveillance, to make patients bear the costs. Experts say it’s part of the insurance industry playbook.

As Wall Street raises the stakes around cryptocurrency, large institutional players are circling this new asset class and bringing with them their own set of requirements.