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?
“Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know. So, we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it,” noted physicist Stephen Hawking postulated in 2017, shortly before his death.
In October 2015, the alternative-data company Eagle Alpha published its research on GoPro, the popular action camera company, with much of its findings having been determined by using web-scraping techniques. “The data from US electronics websites pointed to potential weakness in GoPro revenue for the third quarter of that year,” Eagle Alpha noted.
It’s fair to say that 2020 has been among the most consequential years ever for the fintech (financial technology) industry. Thanks in no small part to a deadly pandemic that swept across much of the world, consumers, households and businesses alike have all had to depend on the digital world a whole lot more than at any time previously.
The robots are taking our jobs—or are they? This has been one of the most hotly discussed subjects of recent years as the startling developmental leaps being made in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics continue to make automation more sentient, efficient and productive.
Human beings are wary of machines, especially when entrusting them with the most important aspects of their lives, such as finances. But as machine-learning and artificial-intelligence technologies become more sophisticated, learning from human brains, they are proving that when programmed correctly, they offer a wide range of advantages, especially in banking. The more human beings use them, the more successful they become in achieving what they were created to accomplish.
Change is as much a part of life as breath itself, and that’s true in banking. Already in the midst of transforming itself to meet the expectations of its increasingly digitally inclined customer base better, COVID-19 gave it a swift kick that has expedited those adjustments. As society transitions into the “new normal”, what are some of the positive changes in banking that will remain even as the virus wanes?
Belgium’s bank-insurer KBC Group has learned through experience that thinking differently and aiming for the next level is the surest way to meet its goals of enabling customers as they realize their dreams and protecting them as they progress. In our interview, CEO Johan Thijs explains how KBC is leading through one of the most challenging times the financial and insurance industries have experienced, with its focus trained on customers.
“Two are better than one” is increasingly the case in investing, as humans team up with computers to reach the best investment decisions. Quantamental investing combines quantitative and fundamental strategies to make the most of both approaches, and it is finding increasing adoption, especially among traditional fund managers finding themselves at a disadvantage in the Digital Age. If done right, fusing the traditional with the technological does bring stellar returns.