The war for technology talent: banks and Fintechs go head-to-head
Banks and Fintech companies are locked in a war for the best technologists – and there is only so much IT and technology talent to go around …
FinTech
Buy-side builds confidence as home-brew smart order routers gain ground
Buy-side firms stand to gain from developing their own smart order routers and carrying out their own capital markets research. But the growing independence of the buy-side must still be weighed against sell-side advantages of scale, according to speakers at the Trade Tech conference in Paris on Tuesday.
TEB expands mobile banking to include live chats
Türk Ekonomi Bankası, one of the private sector commercial banks in Turkey, and a strategic partner of BNP Paribas, has launched an enhanced digital banking service featuring the ability to hold live chat sessions with bank staff.
April 2015: Rewiring the Markets
Rewiring the Markets Is regulation making capital markets more efficient? Don’t bet on it … Procurement Policies Learn to love the annual budgeting process Supplier management Balancing cost and manageability in supplier sourcing Learning from experience What to look for as real-time payment systems proliferate unstoppable evolution How changes in payments will make some banks […]
New regulator plans lasting changes to the structure of the UK payments industry
The UK’s new Payment Systems Regulator looks set to shake up the way the industry is structured, with reviews of the ownership of the infrastructure and of the way that indirect access is managed through sponsoring banks.
Pan-European Instant Payment Forum kicks off in Frankfurt
The inaugural meeting of the Open Forum on Pan-European Instant Payments drew 77 representatives from 55 payment service providers, technology providers and other stakeholders to Frankfurt this week to kick off discussions about requirements and collaboration on infrastructure services to support instant payments at a pan- European level.
Nurturing innovation
Recently appointed president of investment and advisory firm Anthemis Amy Nauiokas talks about her plans to reinvent the world of financial services.
CBI/PwC survey sees rising optimism in UK financial services
Optimism among UK financial services firms rose strongly in the three months to March and profitability improved in most sectors, according to the latest quarterly CBI/PwC Financial Services Survey, but despite overall business volumes continuing to increase, the pace of growth was the slowest in a year
Bell ID supports ANZ New Zealand mobile app
Host card emulation specialist Bell ID is enabling the launch of ANZ New Zealand’s upgraded goMoney mobile app, which is set to feature a cloud-based HCE NFC mobile wallet. The project, for the New Zealand division of ANZ Bank, will bring contactless mobile payments to the smartphones of more than 120,000 ANZ customers. The ANZ […]
Banks scramble to keep up with digital race for pace
Despite rapid increases in innovation spending in financial services, many banks are still worried that it is taking too long to roll out new technologies – and that their own fragmented organisation is getting in the way, according to a new report by Accenture.
Buy-side lacks confidence in US and EU regulators as fear of HFT grows
Long-term investors are deeply concerned about their ability to find liquidity, with nearly 90% afraid that predatory high-frequency traders are preying on their flows, according to a new survey by block-trading network Liquidnet.
Santander launches ISA mobile app
Santander has launched the UK’s first standalone ISA mobile app , which was designed and developed with mobile specialist company Monitise.
Türk Ekonomi Bankası to deploy HCE for contactless payments
Türk Ekonomi Bankası is to launch a mobile contactless payment application using Visa Europe’s host card emulation functionality to provide secure contactless payments.
Standard Chartered names Daimler man as CIO
Standard Chartered has named Michael Gorriz as group chief information officer, replacing Jan Verplancke, whose departure was announced earlier this year. Gorriz is currently vice president and CIO at Daimler.
BATS brings Hotspot FX matching engine to London
Hotspot, the institutional foreign exchange market owned and operated by BATS Global Markets, is to expand its European presence with the launch of its first Europe-based FX matching engine later this year. The new matching engine will be located in the London Slough Campus data centres and will target Europe and Asia and specific FX currencies that dominate the European and Asian trading hours.
EY leads latest round of new members for BIAN
The Banking Industry Architecture Network has announced six new members including ACI Worldwide, Atos, EY and Zafin. Its global network now numbers 58 banks, service providers, software vendors and academic partners.
Plato gains backing for new industry-owned equities trading utility
The Plato Partnership is a consortium of asset managers and broker-dealers working to build a non-profit trading utility in Europe. The group has just signed four more asset managers, including AXA Investment Managers, JP Morgan, Union Investment and Fidelity Worldwide.
‘Unstoppable evolution’ in payments poses threat to irrelevant banks
Banks have been warned that new entrants will come and ‘eat their lunch’ if they fail to remain relevant to the modern consumer in the face of an ‘unstoppable revolution’. The point was made repeatedly during sessions at the Payments International conference in London this week.
What is the role of social media in the financial services realm?
Social media has taken the world by storm over the past decade. Facebook, which is generally considered to be the “grandfather” of social media, was only founded 11 years ago, YouTube the next year and Twitter two years later
MiFID II requirements “naïve” and “terrifying” says industry
The financial services industry faces a daunting task as the European Commission’s MiFID II legislation draws close to its final deadline, and grave concerns about inconsistencies in the rules and the pressures of meeting it remain.
Regulations raise new questions about industry standards
Financial market regulations across the globe are increasingly focusing on risk management. This includes ensuring it is clear who firms are trading with and for, and confirming that firms can identify the instruments being traded. As a result, the field of reference data is increasingly held under the regulatory microscope and that lens extends to the standards used to identify financial instruments, writes Chris Pickles.
Digitisation replaces regulation as top concern for retail banks
The need for a digital strategy has leapt to the top of retail banks’ agendas over the past year, replacing regulatory issues, as they look to fend of competition from tech and e-commerce rivals.
Deutsche Börse extends cooperation with Bombay exchange
Deutsche Börse, Eurex and the Bombay Stock Exchange have further extended their strategic cooperation offering connectivity services. Participants of BSE will be able to use Deutsche Börse’s resilient low latency N7 network services to connect to BSE back-ends in India through the Deutsche Börse access points in Hong Kong and Singapore.
LMAX Exchange and Z.com Trade extend liquidity solution
A three-party alliance between alternative FX market LMAX Exchange, retail FX provider Z.com Trade and retail FX trading platform MT4 have built a combined liquidity pool, which aims to provide ‘last look’ liquidity to a wider market.
Securing the future of NFC?
Ever since the deployment of Apple’s NFC solution – ‘Apple Pay’, and the various competitors launches since, there’s been speculation around what the future holds for consumer payments and how security will impact it
SIA to connect Hungarian CSD Keler to T2S
SIA, in partnership with Colt, has been awarded the contract to connect Hungarian central securities depository Keler to T2S, the new single European platform for the settlement of transactions in domestic and cross-border securities.
Citi Mobile Challenge extends deadline
The Citi Mobile Challenge, which seeks to unearth innovation and developer talent in some of the most far flung reaches of globe in a bid to get the best talent to help change the way the world banks, has extended its registration deadline to allow more people to take part.
Financial services firms still cagey about cloud computing
Cloud computing is becoming more prevalent throughout the financial sector but many firms say they are less than halfway to having a firm cloud strategy in place, with controls and security remaining primary concerns.
March 2015: A Balancing Act
A Balancing Act Mobile banking and payments are forcing banks to radically reconsider their systems architectures and processes Cloud in financial services How banks learned to stop worrying and love the cloud Biometrics Voice and fingerprint recognition are no longer esoteric or inaccurate – in fact, they’re becoming the norm Nurturing innovation Amy Nauiokas talks about Anthemis’s vision […]
Mobile money goes global in 2015 reports GSMA
Mobile money is expanding rapidly as global smartphone penetration grows. This year, many providers are looking to expand their range of mobile money services to areas such as credit and savings – but operators must be wary of the remaining challenges, including regulation and market sizes, according to a new report by the GSMA.
Samsung banks on backward compatibility in payments play
Samsung has announced a new mobile payment service called Samsung Pay, that it claims will break the obstacles to mobile wallet adoption by being compatible with older point-of-sale terminals through the use of Magnetic Secure Transmission, which allows terminals using traditional magnetic stripe technology to accept payments.
SIA sees mobile future in 2015
Nearly two-thirds of Italians will be able to make real-time peer to peer payments using a mobile phone by this summer, according to Massimo Arrighetti, chief executive of Italian payment processor SIA. That’s not the end of SIA’s plans however, as the company focuses on an internationalisation agenda that targets 400 million European current account holders.
Lloyds to plough £1 billion into digital banking
Lloyds Bank plans to invest £1 billion in digital banking capability over the next three years, re-investing a third of the savings it hopes to make in its drive to become ‘simpler and more efficient’.
Hybrid skills shortage threatens growth say international bank chiefs
Limited availability of key skills is seen as a threat to growth prospects by 70% of chief executives in the financial services sector. A global survey by PwC shows that the disruptive impact of new technology and new competition in the sector has created new challenges for employers looking to hire in the months ahead. Concerns centre on the shortage of employees with the right combination of skills, with more than three quarters of executives looking for a broader range of skills when hiring than they did in the past.
Can we trust cryptocurrencies?
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a currency system seeking successful adoption must be in want of trust. Trust that a representation of value, such as a paper note, is backed by real value or a genuine obligation to repay; trust that those representations will be accepted by others as such; and trust that the representations of value are not counterfeit.
Deutsche Bank signs 10-year modernisation deal with HP
Deutsche Bank and Hewlett-Packard have announced a 10-year, multi-billion dollar agreement that will see parts of the bank’s global IT systems rationalised and migrated to HP platforms10
Citi Mobile Challenge comes to Europe, Middle East and Africa
Citi has opened the doors to entrants for its Citi Mobile Challenge in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, an annual competition that invites developers from around the world to build innovative financial services based on Citi’s digital platform.
The evolving relationship between banks and IT suppliers
Customers are looking for organisations that care about their needs in a way that is personalised, responsible, transparent and – of course – secure. In recognising this, banks are stepping up to the challenge and just as technology is at the heart of this business, so their relationship with IT suppliers is a key component of this value shift.
Investment network eToro migrates to hybrid cloud
Online social investment network eToro has moved its core IT infrastructure onto a hybrid cloud system. The platform will allow it to maintain sensitive applications in a private cloud while using a public cloud for others.
Capital markets firms must do more to protect IP
Capital markets firms are losing their intellectual property too easily to competitors, business partners and third parties. Most companies could benefit from a tougher approach to IP, including licencing agreements and more use of patents, according to a new report by analyst firm Aite.
