Finextra Research: Latest fintech news, analysis, interviews, features and opinion by industry experts

White Paper

APIs, Automation, and AI

An Arsenal to Defend Against Card Transaction Fraud Fraudsters are no longer individuals who are looking to infiltrate gaps or weaknesses in how our businesses are set up. They are expert technologists and strategists that steal customer data, take over accounts and break into tough security measures. Between 2023 and 2027, merchants are expected to lose a total of $343 billion to online payment fraud, driving home the point that the time is now for technology to be leveraged to reduce card transaction fraud, which is growing in numbers and complexity. APIs, automation, and AI are all integral to an effective fraud mitigation strategy in 2024. This Finextra whitepaper, produced in association with Mastercard, discusses how these technologies – if used in the right way – can support financial institutions evolve to emerging threats with increased speed and accuracy.

12 August 2024 84 downloads

Impact Study

Fraud and AML Case Management: How to Operate at the Speed of Risk

The digital revolution has fuelled a surge in transactions, while economic turmoil, geopolitical tensions and shifting regulations have emboldened sophisticated financial criminals. As a result, fraud is costing financial institutions more than ever before. Traditional siloed systems and manual process have left financial institutions vulnerable by drowning investigators and analysts in data, while starving them of actionable insights to stay ahead of risk. This Finextra impact study, produced in association with NICE Actimize, explore how institutions can bolster their fraud management and anti-money laundering (AML) prevention systems to stay ahead of risk, reduce operational costs and investigations time, and meet changing business and regulatory requirements. We cover: How to resolve siloed case management How to fix fractured data How to create a faster, more intelligent workflow And more.

16 May 2024 382 downloads

Future of Report

The Future of UK Fintech - 2015-2035

An IFGS Special Edition UK Fintech Week 2024 With UK Fintech Week's flagship event - Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) - returning for its 10th anniversary, Finextra and Innovate Finance have partnered to publish this report, which acts as your go-to-guide to everything you need to know about financial services and technology in the UK. ‘The Future of UK Fintech: 2015 – 2035: An IFGS Special Edition’ includes commentary from the brightest and best across the fintech ecosystem, discussing and debating the crucial issues facing the sector now and in years to come. This includes key insights from industry experts from Cogo, EY, Konsentus, Marqeta, Standard Chartered Ventures, and Zopa Bank. Scoping out the next decade to come, this report explores the agenda topics below and more: The Next Decade of FS and Innovation: What Lies Ahead Fintech Beyond FS Borders: How Fintech is Impacting other Industries and Sectors UK and the World: Keeping our Crown while Learning from Others Transformative Technologies: Opportunities and Risks Users of Tomorrow: The Next Generation of Consumers The Shifting Ecosystem: Who Will Lead?

15 April 2024 645 downloads

Impact Study

APP Fraud Liability: A Guide for Banks

Fraud is running rampant. The UK Government's 2023 'Fraud Strategy' report highlighted that fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime, yet receives less than 1% of police resources. More needs to be done to ensure that the consumer is protected. This is why, as per the Financial Services and Markets Bill, all PSPs will now be required to reimburse fraud victims from October 2024. In light of these upcoming changes, banks need to reassess how they manage liability associated with APP fraud and develop new methodologies in order to investigate and mitigate fraud more effectively. This Finextra impact study, produced in collaboration with Form3, gives banks a guide to tackling the new APP fraud liability landscape. It highlights: Risk scoring payments Implementing the right intelligence Considering false positives Ensuring explainability And more.

06 March 2024 559 downloads

Impact Study

8 Steps to Efficient Transaction Fraud Monitoring

In the wake of the widespread shift to digital banking and ecommerce, fraud teams have seen a sharp increase in card transaction fraud. Since 2014, card transaction fraud has increased by an average of 8.9% per year and exceeded $32 billion in losses in 2021 alone. In an increasingly complex threat environment, card transaction fraud has devastating consequences for banks and merchants alike. Technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) pave the way for innovative fraud solutions. Yet, in order to effectively deploy these tools, banks need to address their underlying risk strategies, technical infrastructure and the quality of their available data. This Finextra impact study, produced in association with Brighterion, a Mastercard company, explores the eight steps for banks to reach transaction fraud monitoring excellence. Download today to learn more.

08 February 2024 531 downloads

Impact Study

AI and Cloud: The Proving Ground for Regulatory Resilience in 2024

The current macroeconomic landscape is marked by exceptional volatility and uncertainty, posing challenges to traditional models in the financial services sector. Despite this new challenging market context, some financial institutions continue to hit pause on using AI and cloud technology, falling behind the curve. Leveraging new technologies can no longer be a zero-sum game. This impact study explores: How can AI and cloud be leveraged to improve back-end processes, rather than just front-end experiences; How migrating to the cloud can fuel new use cases; The regulatory impact of PSD3, DORA and more; The benefits of data sovereignty and data governance; And more. Download this Finextra impact study, produced in association with Microsoft Azure, to learn more.

22 December 2023 649 downloads

Event Report

Sustainable Finance Live - Sustainable Cities: Enabling positive change through innovation and collaboration

Sustainable Finance Live Conference and Hackathon - Visual Record On 10 October, Finextra Research and ResponsibleRisk held the annual Sustainable Finance Live Hybrid Conference and Hackathon, in partnership with NavaOne, at Events@ no6 in London. This year's conference focused on how to finance sustainable cities, what we can do to identify solutions and work towards resolutions through panel sessions, workshops, and the hackathon. Download our visual event record to discover the key themes from the day's panels, keynotes and hackathon. We cover: The bank's role in financing sustainable cities The role of Al in decarbonising the built environment Private sector risk appetite and the race toward net zero Connecting capital with the right sustainability solutions Visions and results from the Hackathon And much more. Download the Sustainable Finance Live visual record to learn more. Click here to watch the recordings of the SustainableFinance.Live 2023 plenary sessions in London. Click here to watch the related SustainableFinance.Live on-demand webinar - Placing cities at the centre of the climate change discussion.

05 December 2023 101 downloads

White Paper

UK Open Banking API Performance 2022-2023

The UK continues to be at the forefront of the global Open Banking revolution thanks to the proactive attitude of regulators. As the most advanced Open Banking market in the world, the UK provides an example of best practices in the implementation of API-based Open Banking that other jurisdictions can use as a model. In this report, we study the performance of the Open Banking APIs exposed by the large CMA9 UK banks, traditional High Street banks, credit card providers and building societies, and new entrant banks (neobanks). Some of our key findings include: There continue to be significant API performance differences between banks; There is a significant difference in total latency between the fastest and slowest banks; Cloud choice makes a huge difference in performance; And more. Download our analysis of Open Banking API services today to learn more.

07 November 2023 640 downloads

White Paper

How can the future state of information technology combat fraud and money laundering?

Modernisation programmes, digital service proliferation, client demand and advancing technology are all shaping the evolution and the future of financial services. Real time is the order of the day, and while real time payments come more and more to the fore globally, payment providers need to get up to speed in being able to offer them to their clients and end users, but also to ensure they are deployed and implemented in a fully robust, resilient and secure environment. With real time payments comes real time fraud and the opportunities for value on both sides of the fence is eye-wateringly vast. Firms cannot afford to have payments held up by authorisation checks, fraud and AML controls and yet at the same time the sheer amount of information that should be processed with any given payment in order to scan, approve and hence protect against fraudulent or nefarious activity is great. Institutions are allocating more and more to defend against financial crime and this is at the same time good news and bad news for them. Being smart about such allocations means minimising the resource and disruption presented by legacy systems and instead working around them. Download this Finextra whitepaper, produced in association with Hazelcast, to learn more.

02 November 2023 390 downloads

Future of Report

The Future of Digital Banking in North America 2024

2023 was characterised by increasing amounts of uncertainty and a lack of clarity across the financial world. The collapse of banks, including Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republican Bank, in March 2023, added strain to already unsettled financial markets. While market volatility has remained relatively stable, soaring inflation and climbing interest rates slowed economic growth and this is expected to continue into 2024. While forecasts regarding the length and severity of a possible recession are speculative, experts are even more divided about stock market predictions for 2024. Optimism is strong in many investors who expect that 2024 is the year rates will stop rising and predict bullish turns that will see markets soar to new heights. Yet with many other factors affecting North American markets, the only certainty we can expect as we look towards 2024 is more uncertainty. This Finextra report on the outlook of North American banking trends, is produced in association with Money20/20 and includes key insights and commentary from industry experts at EY and Mastercard.

23 October 2023 732 downloads

Future of Report

The Future of ESGTech 2024

With every passing year, we are seeing our chances to tackle climate change diminish, but we are not without the opportunity to make a change. The summer of 2023 was the world’s hottest on record according to NASA, with Europe being stuck by the largest wildfires ever recorded, Storm Daniel decimating Libya, and record-breaking downfalls in Hong Kong. The financial sector has a big role to play in changing the trajectory of the world. The opportunities presented by ESGtech (Environmental, Social, and Governance Technology) play a large part in that. This report aims to analyse a variety of the ESGtech options and present a future the impacts they could have on our future. Focusing on sustainability will be pivotal for the financial sector moving into 2024. This Finextra report, produced as part of SustainableFinance.Live, features expert views from Dimitra, HeavyFinance, McKinsey & Company, MVGX, Rimm Sustainability, and Zumo, and explores how financial organisations use ESGtech to make substantial change.

10 October 2023 423 downloads

White Paper

Build, Buy or Bust – Hybrid leapfrogging Legacy

The age-old Build Vs. Buy conundrum has never been brought into sharper focus than it is now. In light of unprecedented unpredictability and economic volatility in recent times, in light of converging pressure brought about as a result of myriad payments systems, real time rails, cross-border implications in a global village, standards development and heightened public awareness and expectation, financial institutions are leaping forwards by falling back on partners to bring systems in line with modern business expectations. Undoubtedly, the advent and availability of open source technology has intensified and strengthened both sides of the Build Vs. Buy argument. For one thing, it has enabled banks and financial organisations to tailor and sculpt new processes and systems around their exact needs, with the availability of non-proprietary technology. For another, it has brought about a plethora of third party ‘enablers’, as well as having inspired fintech services firms by way of creating plug-and-play or pay-as-you-go offerings. And alongside all of this, the development of cloud technology and its permeation throughout the financial services industry has oiled the wheels for the journey, facilitating the bespoke and dynamic capability that open source cloud offers, and compounding the technological know-how and prowess of both banks and fintech providers the world over. There are other influencing factors, such as the API economy, the concepts of open finance, open data; external global, market and economic drivers and events that shape the demand for improved and instant banking services in the first place, putting pressure on operations to the point that banks need to fast-track pretty much every modernisation or product development project they have going, inevitably having to outsource some of this burden. Download this Finextra report, produced in association with Cloudera, to learn more.

22 September 2023 265 downloads

Impact Study

Power your banking value chain with AI/ML at scale

In a world of rapidly advancing technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are essential to a bank's growth strategy. McKinsey cautions that banks that do not prioritise AI adoption are at risk of being overtaken by competition and abandoned by customers who are looking for highly personalised experiences. The consulting firm cites four key trends that are leading banks to incorporate AI/ML into their core strategy and operations: Demanding customer expectations driven by digital banking improvements Competition from leading banks’ use of AI/ML solutions The disintermediation of traditional financial services by digital ecosystems Encroachment of big tech players into or adjacent to traditional financial markets and business models. Forward-looking financial institutions are eager to integrate AI/ML into their operations and leverage rapidly evolving AI/ML tools to more quickly and efficiently deliver hyper-personalized products and services to customers, improve operational efficiency, increase revenue, and drive innovation. International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that the banking and retail industries are set to deliver the most significant investments in AI/ML over the period of 2022-2026, and are projected to account for roughly 25% of all AI spending worldwide. As in any significant transformation journey, banks face a number of considerations and challenges along the way. First, they’re increasingly required to carefully balance the benefits of innovation brought forward by AI/ML solutions, alongside new regulation designed to ensure fair treatment of customers. Additional challenges in banks’ AI/ML journey include skills gaps and the ability to effectively scale AI/ML capabilities beyond pilots and singular use cases. According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, AI applications are increasingly evident across a breadth of financial market activities. However, such use cases are approached in silos leaving an opportunity for firms to embed AI/ML across the end-to-end value chain. Download this Finextra Impact Study, produced in association with Amazon Web Services (AWS), to learn more.

04 September 2023 428 downloads

Event Report

Keeping Pace with Customer Experience Demands during Cloud Migration

A Financial Cloud Series Report It has been widely established that the cloud is the next big step for financial institutions to become more agile, flexible, and scalable. The financial industry has become a storm as more and more companies flock to the cloud for data, real-time efficiency, and broader accessibility. According to Google, by 2027 over 50% of enterprises will have shifted to the cloud to boost their businesses and create more accessible and efficient platforms for their services. Cloud is seeing massive growth from all industries, and prominently from the fintech and banking sectors as industry leaders rush to get ahead of their competitors. However the move to the cloud is no easy task, as financial institutions require funds, time, energy, and talent to support the transition. As enterprises embark on their modernisation and digital transformation journeys, they are looking to new technologies to aid as they transition such as AI-driven technology. 72% of cloud experts see digital transformation as more than a simple task of “lifting and shifting” of company data to the cloud. The complexity of restructuring a company’s infrastructure with the help of a third-party in a new space is daunting, and requires a significant amount of prior planning and decision-making. To discuss how financial institutions are adapting to consumer demand and security concerns in the cloud transition, experts came together for a Finextra webinar, hosted in association with Temenos, ‘Keeping pace with customer experience demands during cloud migration’. The panel explored how banks are approaching digitisation on the cloud and using new technologies to scale up and expand.

11 August 2023 156 downloads

Future of Report

The Future of Fintech in Africa 2023

Across fintech - digital banking, digital payments, personal finance, lending, and investment - data is central to the function of all these technologies and the most important source for the analysis of financial products and services, bridging the gap between data security and customer satisfaction. Many organisations, countries and regions have forged ahead in leveraging data, cloud, blockchain and AI to their advantage – one such continent is Africa. Two years after the global financial crisis, Kenyan payments, money transfer and micro-financing service M-Pesa became the most successful mobile phone based financial service in the developing world. This was also just three years after its launch by network operators Vodafone and Safaricom. Further to this, transaction flows sent by banks have grown by an average of 10% year-on-year during this 10-year period. Alongside this, mobile money payments have exploded, with the monthly value of transactions increasing 25 times over between 2010 and 2018. The digital payments market has matured faster in Africa than it has in Europe: the number of electronic payments in France grew from 33 million in 2009 to 61.5 million in 2018, but in Nigeria, the number of electronic payment transactions grew from 66 million in 2008 to over two billion in 2018, according to Statista. Further to this, the number of digital payments users is slated to amount to a staggering 611 million users by 2027. However, Africa’s largest market will be digital investment with a total transaction value of $994 million in 2023 and the digital assets market is expected to show a revenue growth of 36% in 2024. It is evident that Africa is on the rise and leveraging technologies such as AI, blockchain, cloud, and data will only allow the continent’s fintech firms to excel across the digital banking, digital payments, personal finance, lending, and investment sectors. This Finextra report, produced in association with Kora, compiles expert insights from a range of firms, including: Binance, Cloud Africa, Data Scientists Network, JUMO, Mojaloop Foundation, TymeBank, and Yoco, and provides predictions for the future of fintech in Africa.

20 July 2023 571 downloads