In the world of technology, achieving a billion-dollar valuation has long been considered the ultimate achievement. But as investors no longer pursue the quest for unicorns with the same level of interest, it may be time to revise valuation strategies as well and look for underlying values rather than inflated expectations.
The landscape for financial services is changing, and the jury is still out as to how the endgame is going to play out. One of the concepts shaping this future is open banking. For this topic I have chosen to invite Chris Skinner from the Financial Services Club, Brett King of Moven, Matthias Kröner of Fidor and Pascal Bouvier, venture partner at Santander to join the discussion. Tune in to this free webinar on Brighttalk December 7th to hear some of the worlds leading experts on digital banking discuss what they are saying, doing, and planning when it comes to open banking.
In order to fully grasp the business potential of open banking, it is useful to have some insights in the technical concepts defining the open banking paradigm. This is meant to be a short introduction to APIs for non-technical people.
APIS are at the heart of open banking. If executed correctly propose to increase innovation, foster collaboration, extend customer reach and lower costs compared to existing legacy systems. A key concept in the open banking paradigm is to use open source technologies to enable third-party developers to build financial applications on top of the banks’ exisiting infrastructure. To succeed with an open banking strategy without rendering oneself obsolete, finding the right business model is imperative.
The banking industry is facing many of the same perils as the telco and media industry has been though in the latter years, and the primary challengers are the same ones that have been feasting at the media and telco’s profit margins for more than a decade. These are the four horsemen of the incumbents apocalypse (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon). While they are vastly different in many ways, they all share the traits of a succesful digital ecosystem.
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.