Fintech News Issue #100 January 12th, 2017

Whether it’s social unrest or an economic downturn, it’s easy to blame banks when things go wrong. But banks have developed and survived over the course of thousands of years – the earliest bank prototypes were in Assyria around 2000 BC – because we need them for both our commercial and individual needs.

Haskell Garfinkel, fintech co-lead at PwC, delves into the facts, fads and fiction that will shape the fintech universe in 2017.

I was recently asked who the biggest winner would be to emerge post-PSD2, the banks or the fintech firms. If we ignore for a moment that the biggest winners are clearly you and I, the end consumer of these services, it did reveal an interesting thought process and dynamic at play.

Be sure not to miss out Equip Global’s leading Insurance Claims & Underwriting Management Asia Summit 2017, taking place 14-17 February in Singapore.

InsurTech well and truly made its mark in 2016, stealing some of the thunder (and investment) away from its big brother, fintech, and with tonnes of exciting start-ups and innovations hitting the market. So, what does the next 12 months have in store for us?

2017 is tipped to be a big year for regtech, with many predicting the beginning of fundamental, tech-enabled transformation of the middle and back office.

In what The New York Times is calling The Great AI Awakening and Forbes has dubbed The Year of AI, 2017 is shaping up to be obsessively focused on artificial intelligence, a field that has been around for awhile (remember playing checkers against a computer?) but has finally matured to the point of usefulness.

Banking executives around the world are wrestling with the impact of fintech on their businesses. While they understand that consumers want the same simplicity and ease of use in banking channels that they have in digital retail interactions, bank leaders must also weigh the costs and benefits of these innovative technologies.

I decided to tap into some of the fintech experts I’ve engaged with and see what their thoughts are on legacy systems and fintech as threats to banking. I also wanted to get their opinions on whether legacy systems constitute a cause of disruption for the banking industry. I began with these questions...

McKinsey & Company recently submitted a blockchain Technology report to the US Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance. The firm analyzed how the technology may disrupt a range of industries, emphasizing banking and insurance.

At the centre of financial services risk management and regulatory compliance is the convergence of data from a huge range of information silos, departments, product lines, customers and risk categories...

A delegation from Belgium's financial technology sector came to London with its finance minister this week to set up a "fintech bridge" with the British capital that will enable cooperation on the burgeoning sector.

Despite competitive propositions and momentary advantages that alternative lenders may have over incumbents, it is likely that banks will eventually drive this particular FinTech segment out of business. That moment, however, will come after a brief time of mutually beneficial collaborative work that we will witness in the years ahead.