Fintech News Issue #51 January 21st, 2016

Today Breaking Banks is focusing on the FinTech scene in Russia and the Bear is bullish on FinTech. Brett hosts Victor Orlovksi and Lev Khassis of Sberbank, Sergey Metelskiy and Elizaveta Ivanova from Diasoft, and Daniel Gurev, Startupbootcamp Mentor and FinTech innovator from PaySend.

[german only] Der erste Podcast im neuen Jahr kommt vom Next Generation Payment Kongress des Banking Clubs. Mittwoch und Donnerstag kamen dort rund 150 Menschen zusammen um über die Zukunft des Payments und auch Banking zu sprechen. Jochen und ich waren als aktive Zuhörer auch dabei. Im Rahmen dessen haben wir drei Personen kurz interviewt.

This week Brian, Faisal and Mike discuss what we term as the Winter of Discontent. With falling oil prices, Bitcoin being termed as a failed experiment, stock plummeting, oil prices below $30, Yellow cab company in SF filing for bankruptcy, colleagues thinking about abandoning tuition? what does this mean for our economy? Listen and find out.

Why does the subject of ‘customers’ come up so infrequently in discussions with banks? Is it because the customer is happy? Chris Skinner finds out.

Successful insurtech companies tap into the key challenges insurers are facing. Story by Roger Peverelli and Reggy de Feniks.

JP Nicols describes the four types of people best avoided if you want to embrace innovation and move forward unhindered by unhelpful characters.

Join us at Rise London, in East London, on January 27th 2016 for an evening of lively discussion and insights with keynotes from leading companies in this fast-moving sector, as well as rapid-fire pitches from some of the startups looking to disrupt finance further. Go to our Conference page to get a 25% DISCOUNT off the ticket price (https://www.fintechweekly.com/fintech-conferences)

“People don’t trust banks to not screw them over anymore,” a fintech startup founder told me recently, “but they do trust them not to lose their money.” It was a throwaway comment after a long interview about the company’s technology, as I was halfway out the door. The startup in question has a truly disruptive technology that’s become a genuine challenger to the status quo of banking, but as this founder new: this is evolution, not revolution.

For more than half a decade, a seemingly irresistible momentum has been building around the idea that finance and technology are converging at a historical inflection point, a combination of business transformation and competitive disruption that has come to be labeled fintech.

Between last Thursday and Saturday, Bitcoin lost over 13% of its value to settle at below $365 for the first time since early December last year. That’s a long fall from the net gain of 35% last year that made it the “best performing currency of 2015.”

Investment groups race to create a thinking, trading computer. But will AI machines become the Warren Buffetts of the future?

This time last year, FinTech was finally making its way onto the government agenda and into mainstream consciousness. Throughout 2015 it’s since been a regular topic of discussion in Osborne’s Budget Statements, we have a dedicated FinTech Envoy in the UK and the industry is estimated at a value in excess of $12 billion. With that in mind, what can we expect from the space this year?

When people visit a bank branch, they want to know as much as the employee about their own finances. Story by Chris Skinner.

Competition in the banking industry is getting stiffer. The need to innovate is becoming more urgent, as is the need for traditional institutions to plan more effectively. There is tremendous pressure to understand what consumers want. Established players must adapt quickly to defend their market share, remain relevant, stay competitive and grow.

Last week, yet another report was published suggesting banking has reached its digital tipping point. Figures from Javelin Strategy & Research suggest that for the first time ever, US consumers banked on their mobiles more than in branches last year.

The British Government’s Chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, has published his Government Office for Science report on “Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond blockchain”. In his report, Sir Mark focuses on a particular kind of distributed ledger, the bitcoin blockchain, and attempts to explain it to the general reader and then explore some of the potential uses. I’m particularly interested in his ideas about where it might be used in government, so I took the time to read through the report to examine, and learn from, his exploration.