Following on from our recent piece, “Five Industries in Which to Invest in 2019”, we now turn our attention to some of the most promising individual stocks within those industries. Looking forward to 2019, each one of the five sectors certainly appears to have some winners.
With Brexit just around the corner, the European banking sector is under significant pressure to forecast and mitigate potential economic shocks. Given the levels of uncertainty over possible outcomes whilst the details of any potential deal (or no-deal) still to be confirmed, how forewarned can banks actually be without testing hundreds of possible permutations?
Despite the record-breaking highs achieved by US stock markets, 2018 is ending with virtually all those gains wiped out. And it’s not just the United States that has suffered. Germany’s DAX, the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 are all ending the year firmly in the red.
The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning in all corners of the financial sector, particularly in anti-money-laundering (AML) efforts, has excited and inspired onlookers and participants alike. But as with all innovations, there are pitfalls to unquestioning acceptance that can actually worsen the situations these technologies are meant to address. Human intelligence must work cooperatively and in the lead role alongside AI and ML to guarantee the best results.
Mr. Romesh Sobti, CEO of IndusInd Bank joins International Banker to discuss Indian banking reform, the wider challenges facing banks in India and IndusInd’s goal of doubling profit in the next three years.
When the first internet protocol was invented in the 1960s, it was primarily developed for science and industrial purposes, therefore only enabled machines to talk to each other. It had well thought mechanisms that could identify the machines, but it was not designed to enable the secure identification of the person using them.
You could be excused for thinking that financial inclusion is a given. In reality, however, this is far from the truth. As illustrated by a recent report by the World Bank, 1.7 billion adults across the world are ‘unbanked’, meaning they do not possess a bank account or have access to formal finance. This situation is not confined to just one part of the world. Whether you live in a developed country or developing region, the unbanked can be found. For example, just 14 percent of adults in the Middle East hold a bank account.
The platform economy, today’s economic and/or social online matchmaker, is set to transform another industry – financial services. To keep up, banks will need to adapt their business models to an outside-in approach that recognizes the importance of openness and collaboration in developing personalized products and services that enhance the banking experience for customers and enable them to manage their finances holistically.
Using technological innovations to make the process of completing financial transactions seamless and convenient for customers seems like a worthy objective for banks. It’s a good goal, but it doesn’t go far enough. Celent’s recent survey indicates that today’s digitally oriented consumers expect more; they expect to be positively engaged through relationship building, which will result in their banks knowing them well enough to offer invaluable, tailored financial advice.
The good news is that economic growth globally is strong, with a few exceptions, as the world shakes off the effects of the Great Recession. But economists are uneasy about troubling undercurrents, such as protectionist trade policies, that could whip up into a global trade war. Most are hoping that trade relationships can be repaired, acknowledging that the time is now to rebuild rather than burn bridges.