The scourge of financial crime is increasing. It’s being driven by organised crime rings, fuelled with billions of compromised data records, who are systematically and methodically targeting financial services firms with sophisticated application fraud attacks that use stolen or falsified identities in an effort to obtain new accounts.
The hold traditional banking once exerted over consumer finances has seriously eroded in the Digital Age, with fintech presenting a formidable challenge to banking’s sovereignty. Customers are shrugging off any loyalty they may have had to their main banks and are opting for the providers with the most convenient, efficient, secure and, above all, speedy financial solutions. Can banks survive in the fintech world, and if so, how?
Although the GDPR—designed to augment consumers’ data protection and privacy—is the brainchild of the Council of the European Union and European Parliament, its reach extends far beyond Europe. In the United States, it is no longer a choice but a must for financial firms to adopt stricter consumer-data-protection measures. The costs of not doing so far outweigh the costs of compliance; regulators expect data security, and so do customers.
Apple, the producer of the iconic Mac personal computer and trendy iPhone smartphone, succeeded in reaching a milestone that most corporations only dreamt of: becoming the world’s first company to be valued at $1 trillion. A case study in both perseverance and ingenuity, considering that this was a company flirting with bankruptcy in the late 1990s, few companies can afford not to consider the lessons to be learned in Apple’s meteoritic comeback.
The United States has reached a critical point in determining data privacy standards. With mounting concern among all stakeholders, it is no longer a question of whether more privacy laws will be enacted, but how—and specifically, whether the problem will be resolved at the state or national level.
Competition is intensifying in the banking sector, with fintech start-ups, technology giants and social-media leaders targeting various parts of the financial-services profit pool.
Cobalt, that versatile ferromagnetic metal, has experienced its own evolution; no longer used just to provide blue colour for glass and ceramics, it is today highly valued as a necessary ingredient for making those prized electric-car and smartphone batteries tick. Cobalt has seen its price rise and fall over recent years, but the current trend is in an upward direction as demand outpaces supply.
2017 has been a good year for US stock-market indices, in large measure due to the staggering performances of the Big Five of the technology sector, which are hitting levels not seen since the dotcom boom 20 years ago. Characterized by unmatched success in such areas as platform strength, innovation reinvestment, acquisitions and talent attraction, these technology giants seem guaranteed to keep on winning.
“Plan for radical change, or prepare for obsolescence” was the recent message from former Apple CEO John Sculley in reference to the banking sector’s latest digital innovation: the chatbot. As part of the ongoing fintech revolution, mobile-messaging applications are now being adopted around the world at an astronomical rate.
In the United States, the average car spends 96 percent of its time parked on a parking space or in a garage. The rest of the world isn’t much better. Yet, regardless of all those cars just sitting and doing nothing, it is reported that 1.2 million people are killed in road accidents per year worldwide.