Project Rosalind: building API prototypes for retail CBDC ecosystem innovation

The BIS Project Rosalind develops a prototype application programming interface layer for retail CBDC systems and explores ecosystem innovation.

Fintech Trends That Will Change Banking

As banking ecosystem continue to evolve, there are several emerging themes that will play significant roles in the transformation of both new and traditional financial services businesses. These trends should provide the foundation for strategic planning and for the prioritizing of investments in the near term.

Over the past decade, fintech firms have leveraged technology, innovative cultures and access to data and advanced analytics to transform the banking ecosystem. While the success of individual fintech firms varied widely, the solutions have impacted payments, infrastructure, distribution, access to financial services and components of sustainability.

Read the full story on The Financial Brand. Click HERE to access.

What Trends Are Going To Transform Business Banking in 2022 and Beyond?

Financial institutions are especially vulnerable to losing small-to-medium sized businesses to fintech entrants.

SMBs have typically been underserved when it comes to tech innovation or new digital services. More than six in ten businesses in this large segment go outside their primary bank for business services such as payments and receivables.

An innovation revolution is roiling business banking just as it has consumer banking.

When it comes to sleek new tech and shiny new digital products and features, much of the innovation has long been focused on the consumer side of banking. Business banking, meanwhile, remains stuck in neutral, saddled with legacy tech and processes, many of which are still largely paper-based.

But banks that can ramp up their game when it comes to business banking services stand a good chance of getting a leg up on competitors and driving revenue. Individuals that use business banking services are, after all, consumers as well, and increasingly they are demanding the same type of innovation they get in their consumer lives from their business banking relationship.

So, what trends are going to transform business banking in 2022 and beyond that?

Find out by reading the report from The Financial Brand HERE. 

How to keep innovation moving

Managing the risks and rewards of emerging technologies is a tricky balancing act. How is it possible to maximise the upsides of innovation while minimizing the potential downsides? Read more here: https://econ.st/327bXxU

Digital Services that Changed the Face of Banking

The convenience and speed of digital banking services are at a point of no return. Here’s a look at some innovations in fintech and banking that make our money lives easier. 

Banks have always been at the forefront of the digitization revolution. Internet banking became a reality as early as the 1990s. Mobile banking was possible by the early 2000s. The last two decades have seen several digital innovations that have made banking more accessible to customers. Fintech apps and platforms have just added to the convenience of customers.

The COVID pandemic has given a push to the banking ecosystem to rapidly embrace digitization. We take a look at the digital technologies that have transformed the way we bank.

Read the full article HERE.

 

"Banks Don’t Have To Innovate" - Why not?

What good is “innovating’ if you don’t out-innovate the innovators? Contrary to popular belief, banks don't have to innovate--they need to monitor, acquire, and deploy the innovators' innovations.

Read Ron Shevlin's article HERE.

Is AI a race to be won?

"The artificial intelligence race grabs headlines and the narrative seldom varies: On the world stage, it’s U.S. innovation versus China’s speed. In business, senior leadership at all sorts of organizations are romanced by the prospect of winning the AI race. Some believe it’s just a matter of greater investment and a policy change or two.

This begs the question: Is AI a race to be won?"

So writes Arun Shastri in in FORBES. Arun is a leader of ZS’s analytics practice and works with clients across industries. His focus is on AI: experimentation, scaling, adoption and ethics.

Read his full article HERE.

 

Here comes official e-money

Technology has changed everything. Bitcoin has moved from being a gimmick to a supposed “financial asset”. The stock market, once the preserve of the specialist broker has become the stomping ground of the digital day trader, and have become a real force on Wall Street. China’s digital payments giants are being closely pursued by America’s PayPal. With its 392 million users, PayPal has become a force in its own right.

Now, a new development, barely noticed on the murky frontier between technology and finance could become the most revolutionary of them all. The government digital currency.

Imagine if people could deposit directly with the central bank; conventional lenders would be completely sidelined.

Government digital currency or “Govcoins” are a new manifestation of plain old fashioned money, those coins and notes we all know so well.

“Govcoins” not only promise to make finance work better, they have the potential to upend the financial system.

The last decade has seen a revolution in banking and payment systems. Experiments abound.

Read the full story HERE.

 

How covid-19 is boosting innovation - The Economist

Covid-19 has accelerated the adoption of technologies and pushed the world faster into the future. As businesses and organisations look towards the post-pandemic era, what lessons can be learned about innovation?

How much money is wasted by banks on digital?

This is the question that Chris Skinner is asking in his Blog.

He writes that while he sees banks maintaining their systems and approaches, they are not innovating. Given that banks have had Chief Innovation Officers and Chief Digital Officers for years where is the innovation? Where is the digital innovation?

Read his full post on Chris Skinner’s Blog

The IPO is dead! Here comes the SPAC!

Are SPACs a useful innovation, a mania, or both? The SPAC boom in part reflects a rebellion by Silicon Valley types, who have long grumbled about having to go through an IPO.

Silicon Valley has thrived by inventing new ways of doing things, from searching for information to contacting friends. So it may come as no surprise that the Valley is eagerly embracing another sort of disruption: special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), as an alternative to the conventional initial public offering (IPO) for startups.

Here is a selection of articles from The Economist on the SPAC.

• The Spectacular boom on Wall Street
• Why SPACs are Wall Street’s latest craze
• What the SPAC craze means for tech investing
• Amsterdam’s financial center gains an edge over continental rivals

Asia is reinventing banking

From McKinsey’s Future of Asia research program:

"The West has led much of the development of the world’s modern banking industry across all dimensions⁠—from size, to growth, to business models, and innovation. In recent years, however, Asia has tilted the scale, delivering game-changing growth and innovations in banking services. This reflects not only the increasingly central role of diverse Asian economies in global trade and economic growth, but also Asia’s renewed leadership in scaling innovative technologies and new business models. Now, as the pace of growth slows, Asia’s banks face serious challenges and must reinvent themselves to survive."

You can read this paper, in which McKinsey summarizes the current status of Asia’s banking industry and outline one possible plan of action by which banks may reinvent themselves for the digital age HERE.

The engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, the mating of ideas

The engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and remains "ideas having sex with each other"

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It is not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

British author Matt Ridley argues that, through history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, "ideas having sex with each other."

Throughout history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, the mating of ideas. The sophistication of the modern world, says Ridley, lies not in individual intelligence or imagination; it is a collective enterprise. In his book The Rational Optimist, Ridley (whose previous works include Genome and Nature via Nurture) sweeps the entire arc of human history to powerfully argue that "prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else."

It is our species habit of trade, idea-sharing, and specialization that has created the collective brain which set human living standards on a rising trend. This, he says, "holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead - because ideas are having sex with each other as never before."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference and was featured by the TED editors on the home page.

“Ridley systematically builds a case through copious data and countless studies that “the vast majority of people are much better fed, much better sheltered, much better entertained, much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been."” — Scientific American.

Online Training – Globalization, Finance and the Supply Chain

More and more businesses and corporations are now operating on a global scale.

From fintech, international trade, cross border payments and supply chains, business has taken on an increasingly globalized role. As globalization becomes more and more important so to do the risks.


What this all means is covered in our new compendium of courses, “GLOBALIZATION, FINANCE AND THE SUPPLY CHAIN”.

Check it out at HERE 

Earn 19.5 CPE credits.

Get a discount on the course fee by using Coupon Code CITADEL10.