Converge

This week, we sat down with Raja Chakravorti , Head of Universal Access at Plaid , to broadly discuss the state of the fintech industry in 2024 and the evolving consumer attitudes that are shaping it. Why has fintech become so ubiquitous and where is it headed in 2024? How has the definition of fintech evolved over time, and what roles will we increasingly see AI play across financial services? Le...

March will be an interesting month in financial markets, driven by three major themes: inflation, paring back of interest rate cut expectations, and the lack of volatility despite underlying risks. Upcoming events in March, including central bank rate decisions, will be significant and could induce price action. Will we see a continuation of the disinflationary trend, a potential end to the US exc...

Payments in Africa are "1% built," presenting a massive opportunity to unlock growth for businesses and improve lives - not just on the continent itself but also around the globe where migrants proliferate and prosper. Join Benjamin Fernandes , CEO of Nala , a cross-border payments and remittances fintech focusing on building Africa's modern payment infrastructure, to discuss the cha...

Register for Convera Live! https://convera.com/events/convera-live/ Last week's economic data deluge, including the latest inflation reports that called into question the timing of rate cuts, triggered some significant volatility across financial markets, creating a modest case of whiplash. Could this become more frequent as central banks begin policy easing this year? Meanwhile, the carry tra...

Fraud feels like one of the inevitabilities of our financial system - if we had a system that was 100% fraud free, it would be so restrictive and buttoned down that it would be almost impossible to use.  And because we still rely on many antiquated systems to confirm the identity of customers, fraud continues to be a major problem.   Passwords persist as the dominant auth method despite their frag...

This past week, in a rare mainstream media appearance, US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell joined 60 Minutes and within that time sent expectations for a US March rate cut plunging. Regardless, major global financial markets are broadly looking for around the same moves over the next 18 months – about 200 basis points of cuts. Yet not all conditions are moving in parallel, and while wages are e...

Fintech has always been an exciting space for venture capital investors, but it’s no secret that today's environment remains a challenging one for the venture capital industry. During the previous era of low interest rates, investors were competing to back startups at increasingly high valuations, but now future ROI remains uncertain for many. Many funds are sitting on record amounts of capita...

January has been all about the broad pushback of policy makers and the economic data against the trend of lower bond yields that started in November. Central bankers have won the first round against investors that had hoped to see the first rate cuts from the Fed, ECB and BoE already in March. However, the month-to-date advance of bond yields and the US dollar have not been able to dent the attrac...

In the past, finance teams didn’t always benefit from innovation in software like sales and marketing teams did. Now, a group of fintechs are bringing new technologies to market for CFOs and their teams - leveraging the disruptive power of AI. As we see more and more tools solve for the less glamorous work that finance teams do, e.g. reconciling staff expenses, does this signal a trend towards an...

It's been a year already! Join Convera Macro Analyst Boris Kovacevic for the first episode of the year as we re-cap 2023 and deep-dive into potential market and macro risks for the year ahead, covering geopolitics, inflation, central banking, Germany, China and global FX outlooks. Disclaimer: Converge is Convera’s new podcast that discusses a range of financial services topics. We want to remi...

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and the concept of Environmental, Social & Governance investing (or ESG) is at the heart of corporate efforts to reduce it. But why do many businesses find ESG implementation to be such a challenge, and how can they not only get started with it but also embed sustainable ESG practices long term to ensure these important trends aren...

This week, in a window of ~60 hours, policy will be set for 60% of the global economy. Gear up for the last important week of the year when the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England set policy on Wednesday and Thursday. Convera global macro strategist, Boris Kovacevic , breaks down the possibilities ahead, with an eye on what the macro data is telling us. We cover: How many ba...

In October, the CFPB proposed a rule that would accelerate a shift toward open banking, giving consumers more control over their data and bolstering competition for banks and fintechs to up their game. Plaid , the open banking pioneer that seamlessly connects fintechs and services with banks, has been a key player in this evolution. And now that income and employment data is much more integrated i...

We're kicking off our new bi-weekly market and macroeconomic update series with a bang. Hear from Global Macro Analyst Boris Kovacevic on why November is shaping up to be the best month for risk assets this year as investors have priced in expectations for a major central bank pivot. In our latest global macro podcast, we distill the recent market moves and set out our thesis for why we are an...

Can financial fairness and inclusivity go hand in hand with profitability? Many often say inclusivity is hard, inclusivity isn't profitable, but in reality, it's one of the strongest core pillars around which to build a business and drive growth. Automation and AI are casting a more inclusive, wider net through technology in financial services, unlocking opportunities in lending, banking a...

B2B financial services are at an inflection point; business infrastructure is moving to the cloud, but financial services are lagging: they are fragmented, run on legacy tech, and lack scale and resiliency. At the nexus of driving this necessary change are integrated ecosystems of fintechs and financial cloud services providers offering businesses and financial institutions a ‘one-stop shop’ in em...

A panel of exceptional female leaders discuss what is being done on the ground in some of the most systemically important institutions and emerging fintechs (Swift, Convera, Ripple and Citi) to shape and implement next gen cross-border payments infrastructures. How are instant and real time payments operating now, and how will they in the future? How are targets set by the G20 for adoption of new...

Who will capture the most value in the cross-border payments ecosystem in the coming years? With new emphasis on instant payments and emerging rails, who stands to win the war for market share, and what models/protocols will be at the nexus of the new era? How do non-banks view this change and the opportunity ahead vs. the big banks and incumbent payment providers? Is “Coopetition” the new reality...

Get your full copy of the report, here: Are you ready for 2024? | Convera Join Head of Market Insights Steve Dooley as he shares a taste of the 2024 edition of Convera's annual flagship report to help businesses navigate what promises to be yet another uncertain and volatile year ahead, both geopolitically and macroeconomically. Get the full report at the link above to learn more on: How cross...

Also known as "the central bank of banks," the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has been guiding and influencing the world's largest financial institutions for decades. Their new innovation hub has taken a central role in exploring new technologies, #CBDCs among them, that bring "benefits that can lead to faster, cheaper and more transparent payments across borders.&quot...

Sardine, "a behavior-infused platform that offers fraud prevention, compliance (KYC/AML), and payments solutions for various industries," is tackling fraud in progressive ways using their intuitive API that can detect nuances of fraudulent activity with advanced AI. And with the momentum fueling real-time payment growth, faster payments can equal faster fraud , requiring new tools to det...

This special episode was co-produced with Tigerhall - a leading social learning platform. Commercial and retail clients have higher-than-ever expectations of banking as a service. How can financial institutions and banks stay ahead of the customer experience curve? How do we harness the latest applications in AI, including generative AI, to better serve customers? What best practices passed the st...

Incumbent financial institutions pose both an opportunity and a barrier to the fintech boom. They've got the resources to acquire, emulate and dominate. But more legacy financial institutions are turning to fintechs and digital-first financial services providers as partners in the race to provide a better customer experience. Dig into the hungry-for-innovation FinServ environment with Sardine&...

Most major economies, including 19 of the G20 nations, are in the end-stage processes of developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). These digital currencies introduce DeFi technology and concepts into the world of central banking with many potential use cases across borders and domestically. CBDCs have opened up all kinds of opportunities for increased efficiencies, cost-savings, programm...

Part 2 of our 3-part series. Although it's early days for DeFi, tokenization of real-world assets shows promise for bringing much-needed liquidity to existing and newly emerging asset classes. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) open even more opportunities and solutions for enterprises and companies within the realm of tokenization, but the regulatory circle needs to be 'squared.' H...