Fintech News Issue #139 October 26th, 2017

What are the latest happenings in fintech in Asia? The inaugural episode of Breaking Banks Asia gives the lowdown from the region. It's hosted by Simon Spencer, founder of startup advisory firm Edgelabs.

“Companies should not just be agile. They should learn how use trends to anticipate disruptions before they disrupt, problems before they have them and the game-changing opportunities.” – Daniel Burrus, world's leading technology forecaster

While large banks and fintechs are ostensibly working more closely together than ever, in private conversations and even publicly at a few conferences, fintech leaders have expressed increased frustration about working with bank partners.

If you are not paying for something, then you are the product. This concept, which has been floating around for a while, is usually applied to companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google — businesses that are selling you, the users, to advertisers as clickbait.

Barely a day goes by without a fresh announcement about how banks are seeking to use blockchain technology to transform sizeable chunks of their business.

Intersekt is a seven day event aiming to be the Asia-Pacific’s most influential and exciting fintech festival. The event will attract world-class thought leaders and influencers in an industry which is transforming financial services around the world. The festival will culminate with FinTech Australia’s annual two-day summit - Collab/Collide - in partnership with Next Money. Use our exclusive discount code: SPfw10

Fraud costs for large digital lenders can be as much as 2.24%, with the overall value and volume of fraud in this group outpacing smaller lenders. See what’s driving the biggest fraud losses and associated costs for lenders—and how to better protect your bottom line—at the LexisNexis® 2017 True Cost of Fraud webinar.

“Let’s start a business!” – Sounds great, provided your idea is promising and you are good at what you do. But when time has come, please don't get into funding-bed with anyone. You have the power to choose!

Investors have poured more than $1 billion into British FinTech companies since the beginning of 2017. In H1 2017, UK attracted $564 million of VC investment, up 37% on H1 2016. FinTech is worth $9.25 billion to the UK economy and now employs 60,000 people.

Over the past couple years, the Digital Banking Report has done several research reports on the digital transformation of the banking industry. While the largest financial institutions appear to be keeping pace with consumer expectations, the majority of the industry is falling woefully behind. It doesn't need to be this way.

PSD2 can be of strategic value to Open Banking Ecosystems. Part 6 of the blog series explains key impacts and how banks can profit from the directive.

Banks and credit unions are grappling with mobile engagement issues. Deliver the right mobile banking experience, and consumers will love you. But without a rock solid mobile strategy, banks and credit unions are handing their competitors a big gift.

Bitcoin is going to do to banks what email did the Post Office and Amazon did to retail. Understandably those at the center of the financial system are concerned.

The emergence of the financial utility is set to be a game changer; shaking up the way in which businesses conduct cross border payments, making them faster, cheaper and more transparent than ever before.

Data has always been at the heart of the insurance industry. What has changed in our current reality to create massive disruption is the amount of data generated daily and the speed at which machines can process the info and uncover insights.

Since the dawn of the crypto asset space with Bitcoin, the mainstream reaction has been somewhat wary and distrusting of many of the innovations we’re seeing.

FinTech companies and investors are trying to find solutions to this problem so that those on the margins can become “bankable” – and it is women and people of color who are on the forefront of this movement.

As a foundational technology that things can be “built on top” of, the potential applications of the blockchain go way beyond just payments or cryptocurrencies. In fact, the blockchain could revolutionize how we interact with intellectual property, capital markets, insurance, healthcare, government, and many other sectors.