The Buzz

With some $350 billion in U.S. tax refunds given each year, three fintechs have teamed up for Tax Refund Unlock, a new service that offers consumers ongoing, incremental access to the money they would normally receive as a single payment after filing their annual tax returns.    The partnership includes Salt Lake City-based Atomic, a provider of application programming interface (API) payroll inte...

As interest and investment in cryptocurrency spikes this year, banks and financial institutions (FIs) must decide whether and how to become involved, or potentially lose revenue and customers if they opt out.    This is the message from Lawrence Pruss, senior vice president at Memphis, Tenn.-based Strategic Resource Management (SRM) in this week's episode of "The Buzz" podcast. SRM is a consulting...

Embracing blockchain, RegTech and payments among recommendations. In this week’s episode of “The Buzz” podcast, Anand Subbaraman, Finastra’s senior vice president and general manager of cloud, core and digital banking discusses with Bank Automation News three strategies he believes banks need to embrace: a broader product portfolio, new technologies such as blockchain, and regulatory challenges as...

Weekly Wrap discussion on how Temenos is accelerating innovation    Core and digital banking provider boosts developer access, highlights use cases   In this week's "Weekly Wrap" podcast, the Bank Automation News team discusses some of the latest from core and digital banking solutions provider Temenos gleaned from its SCALE developer conference, where the company showcased how it is fostering inn...

This week, the Bank Automation News team discusses what banks are doing to make it possible for customers to invest in cryptocurrency and how financial institutions can leverage blockchain beyond crypto.  The BAN team also drills down on the growing popularity of buy now, pay later solutions in Mexico, where BNPL is being marketed as a tool to help the underserved rather than a credit card replace...

The automation company WorkFusion, which offers a packaged solution to financial institutions and counts the $1.7 trillion Deutsche Bank and the $4.1 billion Carter Bank & Trust among its customers, will focus on shifting its own premise solution to the cloud.  In this week’s episode of The Buzz, WorkFusion’s new CEO, Adam Famularo, discusses how the company is building out a software-as-a-ser...

Artificial intelligence can pick up on patterns humans would ignore — patterns that can indicate crime in cross border payments, for instance.  In this week’s episode of the Buzz, Yaron Hazan, vice president of regulatory affairs for cybercrime and big data analytics vendor ThetaRay, breaks down for Bank Automation News how the tool’s machine learning and AI discovered an unusual pattern in cross-...

The latest trend in digital banking customer experience is adding on-screen voice, which allows customers to switch from chat or other self-serve experiences to speaking with a person within a mobile app or digital banking site.  In this week’s episode of “The Buzz” podcast, Dan Michaeli, CEO and co-founder of customer service platform Glia, tells Bank Automation News that on-screen voice allows c...

Facebook for years may have topped cybersecurity firm Vade’s “Phishers’ Favorites,” a report of the most impersonated brands in phishing attacks, but the $2 trillion Credit Agricole bank recently edged out the social media giant with 17,755 unique phishing URLs.  Facebook’s topple from the No. 1 spot was a surprise, Adrien Gendre, chief product officer at the AI-based cybersecurity firm, tells Ban...

Payments remain an essentially manual process despite the move toward automation, Steve Kramer, vice president of product at billing and payments platform PayNearMe, explains in this week’s episode of “The Buzz.”     In this podcast, Kramer sits down with Bank Automation News to discuss how banks can automate payments to reduce customer friction, including options for digitizing cash and digital w...

Banks of all levels, from large global firms to credit unions and challenger banks, are expressing interest in modernizing their core, Temenos Americas President Jacqueline White tells Bank Automation News in this week’s episode of “The Buzz” podcast.   The reason varies, but core technology is aging, and with it the employees who can code in the older systems, White said. That’s pushing some fina...

Banks use robotic process automation (RPA) to merge back-end systems after acquisitions and are starting to automate more self-help for customers.  That’s in addition to the more common use case of automating the creation of customer accounts, says Jesse McHargue, senior solutions engineer with RPA company Nintex, in this week’s episode of “The Buzz.”  “I would also say that we are starting to see...

Bank Automation News sits down with the vendor’s new CIO, Sumit Johar, as well as Ken Mertzel, global head of financial services, to discuss how financial institutions can expand citizen development and the automation opportunities banks may be missing. 

In this episode of “The Buzz,” Bank Automation News speaks to Alok Prasad, CEO of startup CashRepublic, about using automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to help communities of color take advantage of banking services. CashRepublic serves the unbanked currently with two Florida locations where customers can cash checks, make wire transfers and other services. It plans to launch an app later...

In this episode of “The Buzz,” Bank Automation News speaks with cybersecurity research analyst Micah Musser of Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies, and a co-author of the recent report, “ Machine Learning and Cyber Security: Hype and Reality ” about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in creating sophisticated attacks.   AI and ML cou...

Definitions, clarifications and other non-obligation material make up 65% of the information in regulations. That leaves a mere 35% that involves an actual obligation, according to reg-tech firm Ascent. That means banks and other regulated industries — and more specifically, their lawyers — spend hours combing through information in search of actionable items, according to Andrew Steioff, senior m...

Ransomware attacks are on the rise across all industries, with financial institutions being a favored target given the customer information and access to cash. But there are steps every bank can take to ward off this type of cyber risk — as well as phishing and DDoS threats — says Barbara Kissner, chief information security officer at Tassat, a global provider of financial technologies and product...

In a strategic partnership to support technical innovation in the banking and financial services sectors, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering recently announced an agreement to collaborate on artificial intelligence, risk management, quantitative research and cybersecurity at the FDIC and U.S. banks. In this episode of “The Buzz” podca...

Armed Forces Bank serves a young, highly decentralized, tech-savvy customer base, and must be available 24/7. Automation and digitalization underly the $1.2 billion bank’s ability to deliver on that mission.  For this podcast, Bank Automation News sat down with Chief Operating Officer Tom Kientz and the Director of Military Consumer Lending Jodi Vickery to better understand the role automation pla...

Banks often struggle with how to automate operations or functions deemed essential or strategically different, says Hemal Nagarsheth, associate partner at global management consultancy Kearney, in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. The Covid-19 pandemic uncovered operational inefficiencies at many financial institutions and in turn compelled the organizations to embrace automation initiatives mor...

This week, the Bank Automation News team discusses how identity decisioning platform provider Alloy is using artificial intelligence to attract Generation Z customers. Gen Z, born after 1997, can present a challenge to banks because they generally lack traditional credit and banking services.  The BAN team also drilled down on the security risks posed by APIs, which are commonly used to connect ba...

Banks are increasing their use of artificial intelligence-enabled automation, focusing on how to identify and verify customers for onboarding, and AI-powered solutions appear critical to gaining Generation Z customers, says Charley Ma, general manager of fintech at identity decisioning platform provider Alloy, in today’s episode of “The Buzz.” Gen Z refers to young people born after 1997.    Banks...

Bank of America's artificial intelligence powered virtual assistant has graduated from handling customer inquiries to helping financial advisors at Merrill Lynch. While Goldman Sachs eyes a transaction banking expansion into Japan, JPMorgan is hoping digital rails help it play the disruptor role in markets like the U.K. and Brazil.

Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and minority depository institutions (MDIs) serve as major sources of consumer and commercial loans for low-income individuals and minority groups; however, a lack of automation continues to plague some of these financial institutions and hinder the delivery of loans.   CDFIs deliver at least 60% of their total lending, services and other activi...

This week, the Bank Automation News team discusses the July 9 announcement from the White House regarding stepped-up regulatory efforts to promote competition and enforce antitrust action primarily in the Big Tech and health care sectors. The executive order also calls for banks to allow customers to take their own financial transaction data with them to competitor banks. In this week's podcast, B...