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The UK has long been regarded as one of the most regulated countries in the world when it comes to the financial services sector. Arguably much of this has been driven by membership of the EU, and the numerous money laundering directives we’ve adhered to over recent years. However, the UK will still be one of, if not the most strictly regulated countries even after Brexit – as the City of London needs to continue to be seen as beyond reproach as a financial institution.

In today’s investment environment, sustainability objectives are regarded as highly as other important goals. European Union regulators recently implemented the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, which seeks to ensure that financial firms are honest about how sustainable their products and services are. What are the key steps financial institutions should be taking to ensure that their disclosure reporting aligns with regulatory requirements while anticipating the new demands on their capital providers?

With useful data and information piling up in the financial realm, firms can use all the help they can get to more efficiently compile and employ it. Automation, which manifests itself in many forms, is a must for financial institutions. Natural language processing translates words into useful tools and applications that enable financial companies to be more compliant, profitable and sustainable and is experiencing increasing adoption in the financial industry.

We are witnessing an evolution. Banking is changing in so many ways – the move away from cash, and even cards, the urgent uptake of online banking, and a growing interest in personal investing. The slow and steady pace of the industry has been accelerated more in the last year than in the entire decade prior.

The investment world is never free of a popular new kid on the block; special purpose acquisition companies are attracting significant investor interest as they help companies transition from private to public. Will these shell companies go down in investment history as another short-term craze, or will they become a permanent part of the IPO process? The jury is undecided, but the SPAC is an avenue that investors should consider.

Few of us don’t enjoy a good game, and the more competitive, the better, which is why numerous firms are enlisting the gamification strategy to draw users in. But is the practice always justified, let alone ethical, especially in activities such as trading through which finances can be compromised? The controversial method has pros and cons, but it is sure to be more readily adopted as consumers increasingly embrace it.

The Wells Fargo brand transitioned from top-notch to tarnished over the past decade after one of the United States’ leading banks became a case study in customer abuse. Under new leadership, the bank is diligently striving to meet the requirements placed on it by regulators and is experiencing renewed customer and shareholder trust; its fortunes may be reversing after a damaging period of highly publicised scandals and resulting disciplinary measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has afflicted not only human beings but human economies. It has also revealed serious flaws, especially in supply chains, that predated the pandemic but have been exacerbated by it—especially the global dependence on China as the source of goods and materials. Fortunately, possibilities to adapt for the better exist, and it is likely that one long-term benefit of the virus will be prompting advantageous supply-chain changes.

Silicon Valley, London and Beijing come to mind in response to the phrase tech hub, but around the world, promising and trailblazing tech hubs are springing up in a number of locales, especially in Asia and Africa. This article examines three emerging, highly competitive tech hotspots—Singapore, Bengaluru and Kenya—that are drawing start-ups and talent and giving the leading tech mega-centres a run for the money, including venture-capital investment.

Digitisation has strengthened the trend toward a cashless system, with central banks exploring the feasibility of central bank digital currencies. Spearheaded by The Bahamas with its release of the sand dollar, many central banks are in various stages of releasing their own cryptocurrencies. Although China is the dominant leader in CBDC development, other central banks are catching up. CBDCs share some of the attributes of popular cryptocurrencies but not all.