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.
2021 has the potential to be a defining year in the fight against global financial crime. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed widespread vulnerabilities as compliance teams seek to manage remote employees spread across the world; regulators and governments are tightening restrictions; and technology is advancing at breakneck speed in a bid to keep pace with the increasingly sophisticated methods being used by financial criminals.
Much has been written about how retail banking has appropriated digitalisation to improve customer experience and gain market share, but investment banking has also adopted digital processes to step up their performance and market share, largely in response to shifting client demands and snowballing competition from alternate providers. As their monopoly hold on investment banking withers, what do incumbents need to do to stay in the race as the frontrunners?
As a host of industry initiatives, innovative technologies and new digital forms of currency emerge, payments are rapidly evolving—with multiple routes emerging that each look likely to lead to a payment destination that is instant, 24/7/365 and fully transparent. With banks seeking to navigate this changing landscape, how is this payment destination being secured? Not with a one-size-fits-all remedy, but through a combination of developing technologies and solutions.
Crises bring out the best in humans, and that has certainly been evident during the COVID-crisis, especially with banking, which has risen to the challenge more successfully than many expected. Sustaining the momentum post-pandemic will be critical, as economies struggle to recover. To remain robust and profitable, banks will need to pay particular attention to key areas such as transforming costs and reimagining customer relations, aided by talent and innovations.
As calamitous as the pandemic’s effect has been on economies worldwide, in many cases, it has only fueled concerning issues that pre-dated it. COVID-19 will eventually be consigned to our past, but its effects will linger on for decades. What are the four questions we need to ask ourselves now to shape the best plan of action toward economic healing, sustained recovery, innovation, cooperation and prosperity while avoiding potential landmines?
Open Banking originated half a decade ago as a European and UK consumer-protection regulatory initiative but has evolved into a popular technological concept. To give consumers more choice and data control, banks share their financial information, after receiving their consent, to third-party providers via APIs. The technology brings benefits to customers but also risks, so the Open Banking process must be carefully upgraded to find its promised place in banking.
2021 is fraught with questions about banking’s future in the strange, perplexing COVID-19 world, but there are key technological trends for industry participants to explore and exploit. Open banking, embedded finance, time and money, personalization, cybersecurity, digital currencies, payments without intermediaries will be principal factors in reshaping banking in Russia and worldwide. Staying in the game will hinge on a bank’s determination to make digital transformation its key strategical goal.
Brazil’s population is large and diverse, with a varied medley of financial needs to match. Banco Santander Brasil, determined to not simply cope amid the uncertainties created by the pandemic, remains committed to its quest to maximize its efficiency and productivity for customers. Mr. Angel Santodomingo, the bank’s CFO and EVP, recently discussed how the bank’s speed, agility and ingenuity in responding to a changing landscape have sealed its success.
The term fake news is true and becoming truer as technology creates more channels to deceive recipients, including deepfake. A form of artificial intelligence, deepfake can fool even the most discerning viewer, and fraudsters are seizing on it as another opportunity for illicit gain. What can financial businesses do to protect themselves against this new line of attack, and what can we all do to prevent ourselves from being hoodwinked?