Fintech News Issue #95 December 1st, 2016

Mike Lawson chats to Rhonda Sheets from Support EXP about credit unions and the all-important customer journey.

There is no denying that technological innovation is an evolutionary force in business, politics and even culture; in the industry of finance, it is driving capital, captivating attention and connecting us more efficiently to our institutions, to our communities and to each other.

As the banking industry responds to the "Age of the Individual", big data and advanced analytics will define the winners from the losers. It is more important than ever for banks, credit unions, insurers and wealth managers to deliver on the personalization promise.

Bitcoin is anti-establishment. It is feared by most governments and banks. Yet Bitcoin is also a driver of innovation – which drives productivity and wealth creation which is what citizens want their governments to focus on. Most other governments have reached phase 3 in Gandhi’s famous quote in their attitude to Bitcoin: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Switzerland skipped the “then they fight you” phase – the country sees a win/win scenario.

The European Venture Summit 2016 is taking place in Dusseldorf on the 5-6 of December. EVS 2016 is the leading event for bringing together high-tech entrepreneurs, VCs, and corporate investors active in the European start-up scene.

FinTech Connect Live, Europe’s most exciting, full eco-system fintech event, will be back – bigger, better and busier than before in London on December 6-7th 2016

150+ Exhibitors, 2500+ Attendees, 50%+ Start-Ups, 3 Dedicated Conferences

This is the most content driven fintech congress in the Central Eastern Europe gathering the top industry innovators.

Innovation continues to be a strategic priority in the banking industry, with new business models emerging including partnerships with fintech startups.

The payments industry around the world has been steadily rising as the hottest and most financially attractive segment within FinTech. Mobile payments, in particular, are on the verge of explosive growth and adoption in the coming years.

Just because a repetitive job could be replaced with self-executing code on a blockchain, doesn't mean it should be.

The Bitcoin scaling debate goes on and on. The argument is not over whether Bitcoin should scale up. No, the question is how it should scale up.

Regulating the financial sector to manage risk is the collective job of our various Canadian regulators. However, the Canadian regulatory framework is an uneven, fragmented, divergent and overlapping patchwork when it comes to financial technology.

Fund Administrators are not currently as big a presence with Private Equity and Real Estate funds as they are with Hedge funds. But Private Equity and Real Estate funds should take note, because Fund Administrators are becoming increasingly critical to how they go to market.

I blogged the other day about too many banks and that there’s not a big enough market for forty of them here in Britain. It made me think about what do customers really want? We talk about digital, apps, mobile and more, and yet the average customer … are they bothered?

A Google search for “Internet of Things” term reveals over 280,000,000 results, thanks to the media making the connection between the smart home wearable devices, and the connected automobile, IoT has begun to become part of the popular parlance.

You don’t need to be an actuary to notice the correlation between the growth of ecommerce and the evolution of online merchant-based payment fraud.

Alternative lenders have seen a dramatic reversal of fortunes in the last 12 months, while payments firms have reached maturity and we are seeing increasing consolidation in the market.