Fintech – News and Analysis

In a recent blog at Articulate Communications I wrote about the number of surveys that public relations firms send out, and how useless many of them are. I just reviewed my Inbox to see what the recent evidence is…the results are below and include six surveys I have received so far today. They include such stunning news as John Hancock on mindfulness and  a bit on risk analysis that survey 499 residents of Tianjin, China on how they view self-driving cars.  Really, what  could I have done without these survey press releases?

I publish occasionally at the Articulate Communications blog  on issues of financial technology, banking and associated public relations and marketing topics. In the past I have written about design thinking, how to avoid bank PR-speak and whether banking and innovation belong in the same sentence.

Here are some recent surveys I have received and ignored, at least until now.

June 14 from the Society for Risk Analysis: Survey Says: Self Driving Cars Should Reduce Traffic Fatalities by At Least 75 Percent to Stay on the Roads…The survey was distributed to a convenience sample of residents in Tianjin, China. Of the 499 respondents…The broadly acceptable risk criterion for SDVs is set as two orders of magnitude lower than current global traffic risk…

June 14 — Not quite sure what this John Hancock release has to do with anything, but here it is:
According to the John Hancock Mindfulness Survey, Americans are missing out on the benefits of mindfulness, as only 12 percent of respondents practice meditation or mindfulness when they are stressed. Of those who do, nearly 70 percent cite meditation and mindfulness as the most effective activity for managing their stress, ranked above listening to music, sleeping or exercising.

June 14 Kount’s 6th Annual Mobile Fraud & Payments Survey Finds Complacency and Regression Among Merchants’ Mobile Fraud Mitigation Strategies…about 35 percent of merchants still do not track mobile fraud… Only half of surveyed merchants believe the mobile channel requires additional or specialized tools, compared to between two-thirds and three-quarters of merchants in each of the past studies…

• Most notably, merchant support for Apple Pay has gone down from 48% to 35%
• Google Pay (previously Android Pay), is down from 38% to 25%
• Support for PayPal increased (from 48% to 64%) while 10% accept AliPay and 10% accept other e-wallets.

June 14 Remitly Study Reveals 9 in 10 Immigrants in the U.S. Believe the American Dream is Still Achievable

Remitly found more than half of first-generation immigrants (60 percent) would still recommend relocating to the U.S. to a friend, family member, or colleague…Sixty-two percent of immigrants trust mobile technology to handle their finances

June 14 A global poll of SMEs and microbusinesses, conducted by global booking software platform SimplyBook.me, has discovered that tech skill shortages and the cost of administration are among the biggest threats to entrepreneurship in Britain after Brexit.

• The biggest surprise to business owners was needed to do ‘too many things at once’, with 43 per cent registering that as their biggest grievance ahead of admin at 39 per cent.
• 57 per cent of respondents chose time constraints (doing everything yourself) as the biggest challenge to growing a business ahead of not being able to hire the right staff (24 per cent).

June 14 A new survey among more than 100 founders of London tech startups, conducted by Studio Graphene in partnership with City RoadCommunications, has revealed the main staffing challenges and concerns that are holding back London tech companies. It found:
• 33% of the founders believe there is a shortage of skilled tech workers in London
• Worryingly, 30% also say their growth has been hampered as a result of them not being able to hire the right employees
• Finding people who fit the startup culture was also cited as a major issue:
◦ 39% of founders of London tech businesses say it is hard to find people who have the right mind-set and work ethic to be employed in a startup

June 12 Temenos
Latin American banks are racing to deliver digital banking to the masses says report released today by Temenos
• Regional change is driven by changing customer behaviour and demands according to 55% of banking survey respondents
• Latin American banks see a bigger impact coming from new entrants than their peers in the rest of the world (48% vs. 36% globally)
• For established banks, new payment players are the biggest threat according to 51% of respondents, followed by neo-banks (23%)
• Survey respondents think that in-house innovation centres (51%), accelerator/ incubator programs (48%), and creating closed bank hubs (48%) are the best way to innovate

June 11 Extend’s Millennials Report Shows Only 11% Of Millennials Have A Business Credit Card From Their Employer
The survey also found that nearly 25% of participants borrow a colleagues’ business credit card to make business purchases

• 44% buy travel, 55% food and car services, 56% business supplies or online services, and 24% pay for invoices (eg, marketing services, online research, conferences, etc.)
• 39% spend more than $500 a month on business expenses that are ultimately paid by their employer
• 30% find it difficult to have access to a mean of payment from their employer
• 25% borrow a business credit card from colleagues to make these business purchases while 67% use their personal credit card and then get reimbursed

May 2018 GlobalData

– 52.3% of global HNW investors reside in North America, but growth is more pronounced in Latin America, where the number of HNW individuals is forecast to grow by 48% between 2017 and 2021.
– Professionals make up 5 million individuals of the global HNW market, 4.8 million being entrepreneurs.
– 28.3% of HNW clients have been acquired through client referrals, making it the most successful channel.
– A longstanding advisor relationship is the most effective means of client retention, followed by portfolio performance and a firm’s brand image.

SAS has created a new global Fraud and Security Intelligence Division to help organizations better detect and combat threats from fraudsters and hackers. The division will further focus and sharpen the SAS efforts to combat fraud and cybersecurity threats. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that the typical organization loses 5 percent of annual revenues to fraud, equating to trillions of dollars in losses worldwide each year.

SAS already has more than 400 employees in 25 countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia focused on this area and it plans to add 100 employees to the division over three years. According to PwC’s 2018 Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey, 49% of companies say they’ve been victims of fraud and economic crime in the last two years – up from 36% the year before.

Stu Bradley will lead the new SAS division as vice president of fraud and security intelligence; the division has 250 people and plans to add another 100. Most recently the SAS vice president of cybersecurity solutions, Bradley has 20 years’ industry experience fighting fraud and abuse, the last nine at SAS.

“Over the last 15 years, SAS has built a reputation as the leader in fraud and security intelligence,” said Bradley. “The rise of the digital economy has been matched by the rapid spread of fraud and cybersecurity risks, making now an ideal time for SAS to redouble and refocus its leadership in this area. We want to meet customers where they are in their analytics journeys, particularly as they adopt technologies like AI, IoT and cloud. With SAS to help them, they will be even better equipped to break down data silos, adjust to shifting regulations, and safeguard against present and future risks.”

One of the great challenges in fighting fraud developing the intelligence and analytics to avoid false positives that can annoy customers and lead to loss of their business. SAS says that banks need a strategy and the right technology to manage risk while providing the service customers expect.

For Landsbankinn, the largest bank in Iceland, finding the balance between providing service for its 120,000 customers and screening transactions for suspicious activity is crucial for its compliance staff.

“Landsbankinn seeks to fulfill the strictest requirements regarding money laundering, criminal financing and other illegal activities,” says Thordur Orlygsson, chief compliance officer for Landsbankinn. “And to meet those demands, we need to have a sophisticated and robust solution.”

The company chose SAS®Anti-Money Laundering to identify patterns in its data. Landsbankinn also uses SAS Visual Analytics to provide data visualization capabilities for analysts across the organization.

While a vast majority of the transactions Landsbankinn processes won’t trigger any alerts, a handful may point to suspicious activity. That’s where the company’s compliance team comes in.

“It’s not possible for us to look manually at all transactions,” Orlygsson says. “We need a system like SAS to help us do pattern analysis to identify suspicious transactions to be referred for investigation.”
Computers are better than people at analyzing fraud. In e-commerce trails in the U.S., where customers don’t present a card — the transactions are known as CNP for Card Not Present — software like Forter and Radial have proven to accept many more good transactions than well-trained fraud prevention teams.

SAS said its new fraud and security intelligence division will drive greater innovation by bringing together software developers and technology professionals from across the fraud, compliance and security domains.

“SAS customers will benefit from hybrid analytic approaches with embedded machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and social network analytics,” the company said in its announcement.