Like many other Europeans I woke up today to the shocking news of Donald Trump winning the presidential election. As a browsed through every news resource I could come across on my phone hoping that someone had gotten this wrong the media coverage was eerily similarity to what followed the Brexit referendum back in June. What just happened? Why didn’t we see this coming? How did we let this happen?
Core banking is considered for many as the gordian knot in the digitization of banking. As a result, a vast majority of fintech companies are innovating around the core, leaving legacy IT to the banks. However, some entrepreneurs are audacious enough to attempt to renew core banking from scratch. I had the pleasure of meeting Tristan Fletcher of ThoughtMachine in London earlier this fall, and used the occasion to ask him a couple of questions of which problems ThoughtMachine is attempting to solve with VaultOS.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is likely to provide opportunities to deliver smarter solutions for end users and transform the banks processing capabilities. Last week, UBS invited leaders and experts from the financial industry, fintechs, academia and regulators come together to discuss the future of Intelligent Automation and start to build a common understanding of what a successful approach would look like. I had the pleasure of attending this event and we explored the most relevant issues covering where, when and how this will happen.
The landscape for financial services is changing, and the jury is still out on how the endgame is going to play out. One of the concepts shaping this future is open banking. This development emerge out of the payment area where a perfect storm of shifting customer behavior, regulatory changes, the threat from digital ecosystems such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, and the quest for new business models are driving banks toward the open banking paradigm.
The concept of robo-advice – the use of automation, investment algorithms and an online interface to build and manage portfolios of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other instruments for investors – has gained significant attention within the wealth management industry. Is this pure hype or is there a chance robo-advisers will profoundly alter the existing business models by changing the way investors seek exposure and even how portfolio managers manage their funds and discretionary mandates? Will robo-advise do the same for production as mobile did for distribution in wealth management?
The fintech scene in Norway is growing at an accelerating pace, and if we learned anything from Londons success is that a strong fintech ecosystem is a catalyst for growth in the sector. While the fintech sector in Norway is still at an adolescent stage, a lot have happened since its infancy only a couple of years ago.
The greatest fear for banks in the changing landscape of financial services is to lose grasp of the customer relationship and become utility commodity providers, or “dumb pipes”. This fear is strengthen by changes in consumer behavior and expectations, regulatory changes such as PSD2, new business models and new technology. Artificial intelligence is one of the technological paradigms that is set to transform financial services in the years to come.
Nordea announced this morning in a press release that they wil be joining forces with Danske Bank on the mobile payment platform Mobilepay as equal partners. The initiative welcomes all Nordic banks to join in in the collaboration effort.
Artificial intelligence is one of the technological paradigms that is set to transform financial services in the years to come. This includes every aspect of the bank, ranging from customer interaction through chatbots, process automation and risk and credit assessment just to name a few. However, the compliance function is one of the areas where AI will have a profound impact on banking.
We should expect to see technology having a huge impact on every aspect of society in the years to come from everything to artificial intelligence, widespread adoption of blockchain technology, gene editing and human augmentations just to name a few areas. This will shape customer behavior, business models and required skill sets and leadership in a new business environment where speed and agility are the primary competitive advantages.
Ble invitert til HegnarTV for å diskutere fremtidens finansbransje i forbindelse med min nye jobb. Sendingen kan sees her (in Norwegian).
I am pleased to announce that I will be taking on the role as Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at Skandiabanken (SKBN) in January 2017, where I will be responsible for business development, innovation and IT.
It is close to impossible to predict how the future of financial services will look like in ten years. However, some scenarios are starting to stand out as inevitable. One of those is the concept of the bank as an open platform.
When I was growing up, my father often told me that Andy Warhol once said that he wanted to be a machine, and that it would be a lot easier to be a machine. If something broke, you could just replace it. I am not even going to try to answer the many ethical, moral and existential questions raised by transhumanism. The only thing I know is that it is inevitable that advances in robotics, bionics, artificial intelligence and genetics will affect the next phase of human evolution, and we should not underestimate the ethical and social implications.
After an all time high for fintech funding of USD 16 billion in 2015, followed by a strong Q1 of 2016 with global investments of USD 5,7 billion, investments suddenly dropped in Q2 2016. Despite a drop in Q2 investments, KPMG claims that 2016 is on track for another all time high for fintech investments. While some speculate that UK fintech funding could have been affected by Brexit uncertainty, another explanation could be that we are now seeing the undertow before the second wave of fintech.
This summary concludes my blog post series on PSD2, where I have focused on the basic principles of the directive and its implications on financial institutions as well as merchants and the ecommerce market.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This idiom has acted as a rule of thumb for core banking solution for several years. While analysts has claimed repeatedly that legacy IT is slowing incumbents down, the existing and sometime ancient core banking systems still work flawlessly. Although, even if something works an upgrade is due when the world around is moving at an increasingly rapid pace.
Will challenger banks lead to a revolution in digital banking or are they merely digital lipstick? Banking as a platform is an inevitable scenario and clever use of technology will most likely change the face of retail banking where user experience and simplicity is integral. Challenger banks with an app-only presence are not limited to the constraints of traditional online and mobile banking interfaces in the same way direct banks benefited from not having any branches 15 years ago.
One of the most exciting aspects of fintech is the promise of delivering financial services to the unbanked and underbanked population of the world. According to the World Bank, 2 billion people are still unbanked in the world today. Even though this is a high number, it still is a decrease of 20 percent since 2011. Of the unbanked population, 1,5 billion people are unbanked due to their inability to prove their identity through a valid birth certificate, passport, proof of residence through utility bill or some other means to fulfil traditional KYC-procedures.
As I have described in previous posts, PSD2 will force banks to open up their infrastructure to third parties by offering APIs under the XS2A (access to account) rule. The directive has the potential to fundamentally alter the payment landscape as we know it. One of the reasons why PSD2 will have such a large impact is that it will level the playing field and increase competition by integrating the role of new and emerging payment services into the regulation. While incumbents have the most to lose, there are also opportunities ahead for banks.