The Buzz

As crypto continues to gain traction with banks and financial institutions, experts are cautioning against moving away from its traditional use cases. Banks as diverse as $1.6 trillion Goldman Sachs and $122 billion Signature Bank have dipped their toes into the cryptocurrency pool, with Goldman Sachs originating its first Bitcoin-backed loan in April and Signature Bank holding $29 billion in cryp...

Before inking deals with the nation’s biggest banks and financial institutions, fintech Akoya was focused on secure open finance.   The Boston-based fintech, which originated as an application programming interface (API) division under Fidelity Investments, is now owned by several banks, including the $3.24 trillion Bank of America, $2.3 trillion Citi and $1.95 trillion Wells Fargo. The fintech ta...

When a doctor’s office switched to virtual office visits during the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses were given iPads and sent into private rooms to connect with patients over Zoom, then waited for the doctor to make his rounds to each iPad.  While this example of an effort at digitization appears quaint, it exemplifies the perils of digitizing manual processes, says Jeff Keltner, senior vice president o...

Quantum computing has implications for high-value challenges in finance, according to an industry expert.  Quantum computing can be used to measure credit decay, increase training speed for machine learning algorithms, including accelerating Monte Carlo calculations, and to optimize portfolios, explains Sam Mugel, who holds a Ph. D. in quantum computing, in this episode of Bank Automation News ’ p...

PenFed owes its multibillion-dollar growth in total and origination assets to a sweeping automation overhaul.   The McLean, Va.-based credit union has automated much of its front- and back-end business processes, including origination platforms, decisioning and modelling capabilities, and credit-processing functions. And these technology overhauls were not just for show.   Automation helped the cr...

In this episode of "The Buzz" podcast, Bank Automation News hears from Seke Ballard, founder and CEO of Beta Financial Services , a Chicago-based holding company that has applied for a bank charter with FDIC and the state of Illinois. The resulting branchless digital bank, BetaBank , will offer basic products and services such as checking and savings accounts with a focus on automating its commerc...

Sixty-three percent of respondents to a recent survey think resetting their password is a huge inconvenience and 14% would rather be stuck in rush-hour traffic than reset their password.   And ironically, at one institution, fraudsters were able to pass knowledge-based question barriers 92% of the time, while actual customers correctly answered the questions only about 48% of the time, according t...

The level of security and service that cloud infrastructures provide makes it an inevitable technology for banks and financial institutions.   Questions around operational control and security capacity dominated the cloud conversation prior to the pandemic, but the ensuing upheaval caused many banks to reexamine their processes, Narendra Mistry, chief product officer, international digital banking...

Heang Chan, co-founder and CEO of low-code solutions provider Prelim, knows firsthand how manual and cumbersome customer-facing processes can be. It’s one reason he left banking seven years ago to work in fintechs.   “I spent a considerable amount of time as a banker and realized that there were a lot of, I would say, places where we can improve the customer experience,” Chan tells Bank Automation...

Skyrocketing scams and card-not-present (CNP) fraud losses can be blamed on bad actors leveraging automation, experts say. Consumer scams reported by bank executives have risen by double-digit percentages since the start of the pandemic, while CNP fraud losses look poised to reach $9.2 billion in 2023, a 15% year-over-year increase, according to research firm Aite-Novarica. While the scale of thes...

Migrating legacy apps to the cloud is as complex as ‘a heart transplant’   Banks undoubtedly face challenges when transitioning to the cloud, including monolithic applications, a lack of resources, and legacy processes and workflows.  Many also lack a clearly defined strategy shaped by business objectives, says Chinmoy Banerjee, corporate vice president and global head of banking at consulting fir...

Tech and regulatory hurdles stand in the way of a fully interoperable payments environment in the U.S.   Consumers increasingly expect an interoperable — seamless and friction-free — payments ecosystem, with several banks and fintechs leading the charge through embedded data sharing and real-time payments (RTP). However, the growth in payments digitization has left many financial institutions and...

Sixty-two percent of banks say the complexity and risks associated with handling personal data for artificial intelligence (AI) often outweigh the benefits to customer experience.  That’s according to The Economist Intelligence Unit survey sponsored by core provider Temenos. While data can be a challenge, there are three steps organizations can take to better manage that data, Sue Laws, executive...

Computer vision is a form of artificial intelligence that can help manage data, explains Tackle AI co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Sergio Suarez Jr., in this episode of “The Buzz” Podcast.  Currently, the financial services industry’s use case for the technology is in mortgages, where banks are utilizing it to assess risk. Computer vision can sort through pages of documentation to pull out...

TD Bank’s U.S. strategy for commercial payments leans on back-office process automation.   While the $450 billion U.S. arm of the Toronto-based bank has been digitizing its payments capabilities for several years, the pandemic accelerated the process for TD customers who may have been reticent to invest in automation.  The bank’s commercial customers realized that existing “paper-pushing,” manual...

Banks must shift their talent strategy from retention to productivity as the financial services industry struggles to keep up with demand for technology-focused employees.   Training and retaining tech talent will be key for banks in 2022, with 54% of respondents of one survey listing staffing and retention as pressing needs, according to customer engagement firm Engageware. Banks should look to i...

In this Weekly Wrap episode of “The Buzz” podcast, the Bank Automation News team discusses the recent Bank Automation Summit 2022 with recorded conversations from the panel “Modernizing Commercial Lending Through Automation.”  Listen to find out how technology experts are deploying automation for commercial lending success in the wake of disruption and digitization. This episode features:  Atul Ve...

To poorly automate a process, use technology as the starting point rather than the ideation process, Pepe Porrata, chief operating officer at $731.7 million bank Varo Bank, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of "The Buzz.”  This is because banks can “automate poorly designed experiences that are built to manage unnecessary complexity,” Porrata said. “So you got to really shift the way peop...

A growing number of community banks are considering adding cryptocurrency services, and it could give them an edge in the battle for digital customers.  Thirty percent of community banks expect to add crypto to their offerings over during the next 18 months, according to a report by financial consultancy Wipfli. Crypto gives community banks an edge in the battle for digital customers, but implemen...

University Credit Union saved nearly $2 million in expenses and revenue gains in the first 12 months after launching its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistant Royce in August 2020.  The savings easily amounted to more than the cost of the technology and allocations made to support the bot, says David Tuyo, president and CEO of the $1.1 billion Los Angeles-based credit union, in th...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In this Weekly Wrap episode of “The Buzz” podcast, the Bank Automation News team pivots to an excerpt from the Bank Automation Summit 2022 held in Charlotte, N.C., March 1-2.  Learn how blockchain is being deployed at TIAA and other banks to both automate and solve unique business problems. This episode features Russell Schwartz, senior director of payments product management at...

While big banks mobilize billions in tech development, community banks are continuing their own technology journeys through fintech investment.  Fintechs provide community banks with unique opportunities to digitize the customer experience, Boyce Adams, senior vice president at payments fintech AvidXchange, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.   “Your community or regi...

Citizens Commercial Banking surveyed 260 corporate decision makers and found that 85% are looking to banks to provide real-time payment solutions — ranking it higher than other banking priorities such as lowest-cost financing.  It’s a seismic shift resulting from the pandemic, Matthew Richardson, head of product solutions at Citizens Commercial Banking, tells Bank Automation News in this episode o...

The Biden administration plans to increase anti-corruption efforts in financial services with new anti-money laundering (AML) regulations in corporate banking and cryptocurrency.   The threat of government action against banks and cybercriminals is significant, Daniel Hazel, head of customer lifecycle management  at intelligent automation fintech WorkFusion, tells Bank Automation News in this epis...

In this Weekly Wrap episode of “The Buzz” podcast, the Bank Automation News editors drill down on what Russia’s threats to retaliate against U.S. sanctions could mean for the banking industry.   BAN spoke with experts who agree: Financial services companies, particularly regional banks, in the U.S. should be on heightened alert as cyberattacks are likely as the war on Ukraine escalates. To prepare...