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

Nationwide to close down branches and disconnect call centres over weekends

Having already announced plans to shutter fifty branches and reduce opening hours, Nationwide Building Society is taking further steps to reduce physical contact and unburden overworked staff members by shutting down all branches and call centre operations over weekends.

06 April 2020

News/covid-19

Rush to digitisation will see fintech sector flourish post-Covid-19

As the fintech sector struggles through the Covid-19 economic fallout, a report from VC Finch Capital offers some light at the end of the tunnel, suggesting that the crisis could ultimately end up benefiting the industry by accelerating the rush to digitisation.

02 April 2020

News/startups

Standard Chartered challenges startups to deliver an automated call centre service

Standard Chartered has put out a call to tender to fintech startups for a machine learning prototype capable of reducing the handling time for both inbound and outbound traffic through its call centres

30 March 2020

Company update/covid-19

CBA launches coronavirus comms campaign after eight-fold growth in call centre volume

In what is a concerning and confusing time for many Australians, Commonwealth Bank is launching a mass coronavirus communication campaign from today, across all mainstream and social media channels, to help customers access the support and information they need.

26 March 2020

News/covid-19

Irish banks struggling under weight of Covid-19 call centre volumes

Irish banks are re-allocating staff across the business to deal with a massive increase in calls from customers seeking financial support and mortgage payment breaks as a direct result of Covid-19.

25 March 2020

News/retail

JPMorgan Chase offers sweetener to front-line staff during pandemic

JPMorgan Chase is to give front-line employees staffing its call centres and branches a $1000 bonus for keeping the business running during the Coronavirus pandemic.

23 March 2020

News/regulation

Covid-19: MiFID II call recording rules relaxed

With Covid-19 forcing huge numbers of people to work from home, European authorities are relaxing MiFID II rules on the recording of telephone conversations.

20 March 2020

News/retail

Covid-19: Canadian banks close some branches, cut hours at others

Canada's six biggest banks are closing some branches and reducing operating hours at others in an effort to promote social distancing and control the spread of Covid-19.

19 March 2020

News/security

HSBC sings the praises of Voice ID

HSBC claims that the introduction of voice biometrics at its call centres has prevented almost £400 million of customers’ money from falling into the hands of telephone fraudsters in 2019.

16 March 2020

News/Call centres

Blockchain-based ID system for credit union members made commercially available

Following successful pilots, blockchain outfit CULedger is making its digital identity service MemberPass (formerly called MyCUID) commercially available.

24 February 2020

News/ai

Citi Commercial Cards adds virtual agent to call centres

Citi Commercial Cards has teamed up with conversational AI firm Interactions to roll out an intelligent virtual agent (IVA) feature to its US call centres.

07 February 2020

News/Call centres

Credit unions pilot blockchain-based digital ID system

Several US credit unions have begun piloting the MyCUID digital identity service from blockchain outfit CULedger.

13 December 2019

Company update/security

RCBC Bankard rolls out Verint biometric tech at call centre

Verint Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: VRNT), The Customer Engagement Company™, in partnership with Inspiro Relia, Inc. (Inspiro), have optimised the quality of RCBC Bankard’s call centre operations with the implementation of Verint’s innovative voice biometrics solution*, part of its Identity Authentication and Fraud Detection (IAFD) offering.

21 November 2019

News/ai

Amex Ventures invests in AI virtual call centre agent startup

American Express Ventures has invested in Voca.ai, an Israeli startup building AI virtual agents for call centres.

24 October 2019

News/Call centres

Revolut to open ops centre in Portugal

Challenger Revolut is planning to open a customer service centre in Portugal that will employ 400 people.

02 September 2019

News/Call centres

Credit Suisse to reduce reliance on branch network, invest millions in digital

Credit Suisse is reducing its reliance on branches in its home market and instead pumping several hundred million francs into digital services.

27 August 2019

News/Call centres

Build your own robot with speech tech from Tinkoff

Russia's Tinkoff Bank is to sell the proprietary speech recognition software behind its chatbot Oleg to corporate customers.

01 August 2019

News/startups

Lightico raises $14.5m to take on DocuSign

Lightico, a startup that helps firms - including banks - collect things like forms, signatures, documents and payments from customers digitally, has raised $14.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Mangrove Capital Partners.

10 July 2019

News/ai

Emirates NBD taps AWS for AI-enabled bank

Emirates NBD is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) machine learning and data analytics technology to help build a "bank of the future".

30 May 2019

News/Call centres

DBS retrains call centre staff for digital future

Singapore's DBS has retrained more than 500 call centre employees for the digital age, creating new roles in areas such as social media, voice biometrics and live chat.

08 May 2019