Latest long reads: Finextra Research

Augment, migrate, replace: Routes to cloud-led core modernisation

Madhvi Sonia Head of Content at Finextra

Augment, migrate, replace: Routes to cloud-led core modernisation

Now that the banking industry is on a journey to digital metamorphosis, it requires a fresh approach to operations. Threatened by innovative newcomers, financial institutions continue to accelerate their path to streamline technology, employ new digital strategies and decrease the time it takes to bring products to market. By the same token, consu...

13 August 2021 /cloud

The IPCC climate change report: How is the fintech community responding?

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

The IPCC climate change report: How is the fintech community responding?

A ‘code red for humanity’ has been declared, in the form of the first major review of climate change since 2013, and the sixth report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – published on Monday. In response, the fintech community has called for further collaboration, and widespread investment in natural capital and clean t...

10 August 2021 /sustainable

Taming the crypto frontier and the global regulatory clamp down on Binance

Arvin Abraham Partner at Goodwin Procter

Taming the crypto frontier and the global regulatory clamp down on Binance

Within the crypto community, Binance is ubiquitous. It is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange with twenty-four hour trading volumes (at time of writing) of approximately $19.3 billion, dwarfing its competitors. By comparison, its US based rival Coinbase had trading volumes of approximately $2.7 billion during this period. Although undeniab...

09 August 2021 /crypto

Ransomware attacks: Should ransom payments to hackers be banned in the UK under legislation?

Elizabeth Meade Senior Associate at Cooke, Young & Keidan LLP

Ransomware attacks: Should ransom payments to hackers be banned in the UK under legislation?

Should the UK make payments in response to ransomware illegal? It is an idea that is currently being considered by some US states, and Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, recently told the FT that legislation outlawing payments should be looked at. On the one hand, it would seem an obvious soluti...

06 August 2021 /security

Regulating the digital economy: the new European regulation for large digital platforms

Lucia Pacheco Digital Regulation Manager at BBVA

Regulating the digital economy: the new European regulation for large digital platforms

On December 15 2020, the European Commission published one of the key pieces of its digital strategy: the proposed text for the Digital Markets Act (DMA). As the digital economy evolves, a small number of companies has become the largest and most influential players. They have created large digital ecosystems that connect multiple platform business...

04 August 2021 /regulation

Providing better solutions for increasingly picky sustainable investors

Marco Mottadelli Head of Global Brokerage at Fineco Bank

Providing better solutions for increasingly picky sustainable investors

Sustainable investment is having a moment. There are now thousands of funds and indices especially promising to deliver returns along with also meeting a commitment to environmental, sustainability and government metrics. Whereas these options were once a rather niche section of the market, they have grown so rapidly in the past half decade that o...

02 August 2021 /sustainable

Why Pay.UK sees ISO 20022 as the ‘internet of payments’

Paige McNamee

Why Pay.UK sees ISO 20022 as the ‘internet of payments’

Following the publication of technical materials for organisations implementing ISO 20022, Finextra Research spoke with Pay.UK’s director of standards, James Whittle, to contextualise the need for this new financial messaging standard, and how it fits into the wider New Payments Architecture (NPA) picture. Pay.UK, the recognised operator and stand...

30 July 2021 /regulation

Why Biden’s Executive Order is a green light for US open banking

Paige McNamee

Why Biden’s Executive Order is a green light for US open banking

On July 9 2021, President Biden didn’t just throw a bone to US open banking, he underwrote the mortgage, laid the welcome mat, and set the table to officially welcome open banking to the neighbourhood. Yes, open banking is nothing new to the US. With numerous American unicorns storming out of the gates there is little doubt around the demand for o...

28 July 2021 /regulation

How to prepare for investing in more ‘normal’ times

Marco Mottadelli Head of Global Brokerage at Fineco Bank

How to prepare for investing in more ‘normal’ times

Extreme periods of disruption are seldom quiet. When the stock market moves several percent points in the course of a day, headlines scream while opinion writers speculate on the cause. Such was the case in the latest round of serious market volatility in the latter part of the first quarter 2020. As the pandemic swept around the world, indices fr...

27 July 2021 /markets

The importance of distributing market data in the cloud

Madhvi Sonia Head of Content at Finextra

The importance of distributing market data in the cloud

Capital markets firms have long understood how cloud can help establish competitive advantage, increase agility, reduce time to market for new products, and address the growing total cost of ownership for IT infrastructure. However, the financial services industry has reached a point where real-time trading and risk management has become more crit...

22 July 2021 /cloud

Money Lego: Banking-as-a-Service partnerships and the contractual challenges for banks

Paige McNamee

Money Lego: Banking-as-a-Service partnerships and the contractual challenges for banks

Given the relative youth of Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), there remain fundamental questions around how banks should approach these arrangements in comparison to what may now be considered traditional fintech/banking partnerships. Speaking on a recent teleconference, legal representatives from Mayer Brown LLP worked through a handful of factors that...

20 July 2021 /regulation

How AI is powering the future of financial services

Kevin Levitt Global Business Development, Financial Services at NVIDIA

How AI is powering the future of financial services

Financial institutions are using AI-powered solutions to unlock revenue growth opportunities, minimise operating expenses, and automate manually intensive processes. Many in the financial services industry believe strongly in the potential of AI. A recent survey by NVIDIA of financial services professionals showed 83% of respondents agreeing that ...

16 July 2021 /payments

Long reads