Risk and compliance knowledge in Fintech is a superpower

Whatever you think about regulation, it is a fact of life, it exists for a good reason. Moving money is a serious responsibility, and if it goes wrong, it can literally cost lives. If everything is fintech, then the value is in productizing the tricky bits of finance. 

Want to find out more? Check out the full article HERE on Fintech Brain Food

Why Central Bank Digital Currencies need a solid legal foundation

Why do Central Bank Digital Currencies need a solid legal foundations? As any form of money, digital currency requires a sound legal basis. The legal treatment of Central Bank Digital Currencies depends on its design features. The distinction between account-based and token-based has significant implications.

 Catalina Margulis, a lawyer from the Legal Department of the IMF explains.

Why central banks want to launch digital currencies

Interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may be surging, but central banks don’t want to be left behind by financial innovation. In fact, more than 80% are examining how to launch digital versions of their own currencies. CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche takes a look at why these cautious institutions may soon be launching a revolution in how we think about money.

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.

 

Are banks still needed?

Technological change is turning the world of finance upside down  as the clout of payment platforms and tech firms grows and central banks begin to issue their own digital currencies. But can you imagine a world without banks? Rachana Shanbhogue explores the future of banking with Alice Fulwood, The Economist’s Wall Street correspondent, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Patrick Collison, cofounder and CEO of Stripe, Kahina van Dyke, head of digital and data at Standard Chartered, and Jean-Pierre Landau, former deputy-governor of the Banque de France. 

Listen HERE on Economist Radio Podcasts.

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

It's not the technology - Why banking is broken -Ewan Silver - 11:FS

When people discuss 'banking being broken', they often refer to the technology itself. As Ewan Silver says - that isn't necessarily the case. 

The fundamental flaw within banking at the moment is the way that banking products are treated within the organization. A customer can get a retail bank account, a credit card, and a mortgage from one bank. 

They would expect this to be a seamless process, as it looks like one entity - but from the bank's perspective, these are three different businesses entirely. 

The banks have no single-view of a customer. This was OK for a while. All banks worked in this way, so there wasn't exactly a high bar set for them, 

But now, with challenger banks offering realtime payments and notifications, and GDPR regulations enforcing banks to enforce KYC across entire organisations, the banks NEED a single customer view. 

And they can't seem to get there easily. So what are the potential solutions? Ewan explains it all.

“Must Reads” for 4 February 2021

Today’s “Must reads” in banking, fintech, payments, cybersecurity and risk management include:

• The Importance of Cybersecurity in Fintech
• German laptop retailer fined $12.7M under GDPR for employee surveillance
• How the pandemic will change banking in 2021
• Maintaining Connections to Bank Customers Through the Pandemic and Beyond
• Krebs, Curry and Cyber Security
• SolarWinds hack turning into Pandora's box of cyber-risk
• Blockchain 50 2021

“Must Reads” for 3 February 2021

Today’s “Must reads” in banking, fintech, payments, cybersecurity and risk management include:

• Artificial Intelligence in Asia: Security Will be a Priority
• Here’s where AI will advance in 2021
• Two banks explain how they’re using biometrics
• The irrepressible rise of FinTech
• Is Your Financial Institution Ready for Tough COVID Vaccine Questions?
• Banks Now Closing Customer Accounts for Violating Mask Mandates
• Banking Must Commit to Increased Tech Spending in 2021

How many dead people are there on Facebook?

There are as many as 30 million dead people with Facebook accounts, but the social media giant is simply so massive that these numbers are dwarfed by the total user count. With more than 3 billion active users, 'dead people accounts' are likely only around 1% of the total user base.

Want to find out more? Click HERE

 

World Payments Report for 2020 just published by Capgemini

Capgemimi has just announced the publication of its “World Payments Report 2020”. The report is the leading source for data, trends and insights on global and regional non-cash payments, the key regulatory and industry initiatives, and today’s dynamic payments environment especially in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new edition analyzes how the payments industry can respond to evolving retail and B2B customer expectations and highlights the need for payment firms to rapidly prioritize technology transformation in order to become digital masters and stay competitive.

You can download it directly from Capgemini. Click HERE.

Free Webinar - COVID-19 and the Payments Industry

In just a couple of months, the COVID-19 virus has changed the world. How we work and how we live has changed and probably will never be the same again.

Last May we presented a short Webinar on the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the Payments Industry and we looked at some possible future outcomes in the areas of banking, fintechs, the cashless society, mobile wallets, online shopping, customer behavior and more.

You can now watch this webinar FREE - Register now - just click HERE

Online Mini-Courses

For almost 19 years Citadel Advantage has been producing high quality training courses aimed at the Governance, Risk Management and Compliance space.

We have and continue to offer a wide & comprehensive range of professional courses and training programs in the core areas of governance, compliance, operational risk management, payment & treasury systems, fintech, blockchain and operations/back office management. Our programs are mostly 2-day units with some 1-day units for shorter topics. Some programs are more involved and can run for 3, 4 or even 5-full days.

In recent times and especially since the COVID-19 crisis emerged some 6 months ago, there has been a growing demand for online programs that are much shorter and that get to heart of these issues, providing all the information you need in much shorter sessions of between 60 and 90 minutes.

With this in mind, Citadel Advantage is happy to introduce our Online Mini-Courses - short, to the point sessions that get to the nub of the issue, giving you all the information that you need at your office or home at a fraction of the cost of the typical two-day program. 

MANAGING OPERATIONAL RISK IN A SMALL BUSINESS - Click  HERE

THE A TO Z GUIDE TO MANAGING OPERATIONAL RISK - Click HERE

Will Covid-19 break the Internet?

As more and more countries across the world became subject to increasingly severe restrictions during March, the question popping up more and more frequently was "will the coronavirus break the internet?"



In the main the answer is "no" provided that we are talking about broadband; but what if you are connected over a mobile network?

The answer here is not all that straightforward.  Find out more HERE.

Death of the unicorn - Technology startups are headed for a fall

The unicorn reality check was already underway before America declared a national state of emergency over Covid-19 on March 13th. Venture capitalists reckoned that a third of American unicorns would thrive, a third would disappoint and a third would be taken over or die.

Read more HERE

4 Experiments Where AI Outsmarted Its Creators

From Two Minute Papers, an amazing look at 4 instances where artificial intelligence outsmarted the folk who developed it. Makes one think …... or, do we really have to (think)?



The paper "The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities" is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03453

What happens when we teach a computer how to learn?

Technologist Jeremy Howard shares some surprising new developments in the fast-moving field of deep learning, a technique that can give computers the ability to learn Chinese, or to recognize objects in photos, or to help think through a medical diagnosis. (One deep learning tool, after watching hours of YouTube, taught itself the concept of "cats.") Get caught up on a field that will change the way the computers around you behave ... sooner than you probably think.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBrussels, an independent event.