Scott Hamilton - Community Author: Finextra Research

How much is too much – or too little - regulation? Banks and their depositors may soon find out

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

How much is too much – or too little - regulation? Banks and their depositors may soon find out

In a new report published on 27 February, NPR shared a warning that the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)’s proposed dismantling at the behest of the Trump administration could be particularly perilous for the US banking system and its customers. NPR noted the rapid job-cutting actions and attacks from the White House and its allies ...

04 March 2025 /regulation

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

What’s happening to the US CFPB?

What’s in store for America’s consumer financial services watchdog agency – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)? Nobody really knows. But many open banking and data protection and control advocates are saying: “please don’t lose sight of the benefits of personal financial data rights,” amid the heated debate over its sponsoring agency’...

17 February 2025 /regulation

How did committing online fraud, then bragging about it, become okay?

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

How did committing online fraud, then bragging about it, become okay?

There are many that would welcome the opportunity to weigh in on one particularly ‘trending’ question getting lots of attention right now: Why did it become appropriate to steal and brag about it? Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, have expressed more willingness than any other generation to commit online fraud. Opinions among those studying...

12 February 2025 /crime

Where’s the first stop for financial trust? Our guts!

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

Where’s the first stop for financial trust? Our guts!

As we outlined in a previous Finextra story, financial services ‘schemers’ and ‘scammers’ can come in many different shades. Indeed, victims of online fraud and illegal schemes lose money every day to not just criminals and nefarious enterprises, but also to supposedly ‘above-board,’ legitimate products and their purveyors. To help avoid non-crim...

06 February 2025 /security

How to avoid online scams and hype: Is reading the ‘fine print’ enough anymore?

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

How to avoid online scams and hype: Is reading the ‘fine print’ enough anymore?

Why do people keep losing money from schemes, scams, and ‘too good to be true’ offers in what is probably one of - if not the most - heavily regulated sectors of the economy? 2024 saw a continuing increase in fraudulent scams and a parade of disappointing (or damaging) online product offerings, including in the financial services marketplace. As...

23 January 2025 /security

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

Should the FDIC be eliminated?

Do Americans really want to eliminate the agency that has protected their bank deposits (to a point) from sudden, unexpected losses due to their financial institution’s failure – and done so since the Great Depression? We’re about to find out, if stories circulating recently through Wall Street and Washington, DC are true. According to many major ...

23 December 2024 /retail

What is agentic AI, and why should banks or customers care?

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

What is agentic AI, and why should banks or customers care?

You’ll soon be hearing a lot about agentic AI, if you haven’t already. The World Economic Forum defines and explains agentic AI and its impact in a recent article on the topic, noting how this discipline/approach/tool “will transform” the financial services industry. “Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) goes beyond generative AI (GenAI) by enabli...

16 December 2024 /ai

How retail giants like Starbucks and Staples are handling cash

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

How retail giants like Starbucks and Staples are handling cash

Despite the steady growth of debit or credit card transactions to a high percentage of their daily totals, retailers still must manage cash deliveries and collections for the remainder, other than the small number of items paid for via cheque or purchase order. That’s what a recent panel of three treasury leaders from leading retailers talked abou...

12 December 2024 /retail

CFPB’s Section 1033: Will US open banking reach its potential?

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

CFPB’s Section 1033: Will US open banking reach its potential?

Just over a month since the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its 'final ruling' on the expansion of the Dodd-Frank Act, the financial services world has now weighed in with a variety of detailed viewpoints on the landmark personal data rights and open banking regulation. Will the new requirements for banking and fintech providers s...

04 December 2024 /regulation

Cyber-attack case studies: Data, costs, and solutions

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

Cyber-attack case studies: Data, costs, and solutions

Invite 165 or so treasury managers and other financial leaders and practitioners in a room, tell them you’re going to put them through a cyber-attack simulation, and advise that their actions will directly influence the exercise’s ultimate outcomes. Will they agree to do it? Of course they will! Especially since, according to an IBM study cited...

25 November 2024 /security

Where is AI winning, and heading next in financial services?

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

Where is AI winning, and heading next in financial services?

The Evident AI Symposium in New York City saw insightful, and occasionally incisive, roundtable discussions on the current state of the AI industry across a number of related topics, with a specific focus on the financial services field. Opening remarks from Teresa Heitsenrether, chief data and analytics officer for JP Morgan Chase provided an o...

22 November 2024 /ai

How sustainable finance powers community projects

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

How sustainable finance powers community projects

Two sessions at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) annual conference in Nashville - among several others covering various subsets of the discipline - offered practical and promising insights into the continuing growth of sustainable finance in the corporate and consumer arenas. One involved the Canadian/global bank CIBC and two of i...

21 November 2024 /sustainable

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