Fintech funding round-up: 8 December 2016
Fintech funding stories can be fun if they are brief. Featuring MoneyLion, SETL and Finicity.
Artificial Intelligence/AI
Fintech funding round-up: 24 November 2016
Let’s put the fun in funding by keeping it mercifully brief. Money seekers are PayKey, Euklid and Flender.
Wells Fargo turns to SigFig for robo-advisory tech
SigFig, a San Francisco-based fintech start-up, is partnering with Wells Fargo to provide the bank’s clients with its robo-advisory tech and wealth management tools. A pilot version will be rolled out in H1 2017.
Lakshmi, India’s first banking robot, unveiled by City Union Bank
City Union Bank (CUB) has become the first bank in India to introduce a robot to deal with customer queries. Called Lakshmi, the robot is based on the IBM Watson artificial intelligence (AI) engine.
Artificial intelligence is fact, not fantasy!
Parth Desai, CEO and founder of Pelican, discusses why artificial intelligence (AI) is already fact not a fantasy, but cautions that we need to be realistic about what can really be achieved on the journey to true AI adoption in transaction banking and payments.
Banking Technology November 2016 issue out now
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
Asia’s first Shariah-compliant robo-advisor to launch
Algebra, Asia’s “first Shariah-compliant robo-advisor”, will be launched this December by Malaysia-based Farringdon Group Private Wealth Managers. It will be open to investors from across the globe, with a minimum investment of $200 per month. Funds will follow basic Islamic principles. For example, no stocks may derive income from gambling, alcohol, tobacco, pork products, adult […]
Bank of America to launch AI chatbot
Bank of America has unveiled its new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to help customers make decisions on their finances. Called Erica, a nod to the name America, it will be available inside the bank’s mobile app in 2017. Customers can do the usual AI stuff – chat via text or voice – and it’s all […]
Fintech funding round-up: 19 October 2016
Want to save some time but be in the know of the latest funding initiatives in the fintech space? Then read on.
Alicia key to Tieto’s AI leadership team
Tieto says it is the first Nordic company to appoint artificial intelligence (AI) to the leadership team of a new data-driven businesses unit. The AI, called Alicia T, will help the management team to become “truly data-driven”; assist with unspecified “innovative ways”; and possess the capacity to cast votes. Ari Järvelä, head of data-driven businesses […]
Fintech funding round-up: 13 October 2016
Fintech funding without the tub-thumping. A realistic and brief round-up of key events. ComplyAdvantage, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help firms manage compliance, has revealed an $8.2 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital. The funding will allow the regtech firm to do the usual stuff – growth and […]
SEB deploys IPsoft’s virtual agent, Amelia, for customer facing ops
SEB will be the first bank to use IPsoft’s cognitive technology for customer-facing operations in the Swedish language. The artificial intelligence (AI) solution, known as Amelia, will be integrated into the front-office set-up at SEB by the end of this year.
Can banking “catch” the Pokémon bug?
Pokémon Go has taken the globe by storm, capturing the hearts and minds of adults and children alike in their endeavours to “catch ‘em all” in the latest version of the popular computer game, which builds cutting edge augmented reality (AR) technology into its original gameplay. What can banks learn from it?
Sibos 2016 & innovation: crossing the next frontier
There has been a huge amount of hype at this year’s Sibos about financial technology and its role in financial services. Devie Mohan* looks at the technologies that will help financial institutions cross the next frontier of innovation. The world of financial technology has seen a clear and significant shift in the past year – […]
Artificial intelligence: mind games
Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t new but the rise of mobile and cloud computing, combined with big data and cheap computing power, is driving a resurgence. Convergent technologies mean AI is finding new uses in financial services.
The future of money: humans need to keep the robots in check
Udayan Goyal’s vision for the future of money revolves around seamless, instant micropayments being made continuously between autonomous apps and services all triggered by thoughts and actions of humans as they go about their daily lives.
Artificial intelligence set to transform regulatory compliance
Most people have heard of the headline-making achievements in artificial intelligence (AI); systems winning quiz shows and beating world champions in chess. These are the poster children of the discipline but there is a quieter revolution taking in shape in other areas, including regulatory compliance in financial services. Writing for Banking Technology, Mike MacDonagh, London-based […]
Top fintech stories this week – 16 September 2016
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
UBS goes for AI face off
UBS is testing out artificial intelligence (AI) to see if it can assist clients in how best to invest their money – just by looking at their facial expressions. UBS chief investment officer Mark Haefele says the Swiss bank is running several pilot programmes – with one tool able to interpret clients’ facial expressions while […]
Facebook Messenger v1.2 enables native payments in chatbots
Facebook has announced its Messenger bots can now accept payments natively, without redirecting users to external sites. The announcement was made by David Marcus, head of Facebook Messenger, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, as he unveiled the launch of the Messenger platform v1.2.
UnifyID launches “holistic implicit authentication” platform, the first of its kind
UnifyID, a California-based fintech start-up, has brought to market its flagship identity and authentication platform. The proposition is “holistic implicit authentication”, i.e. it leverages the individual’s uniqueness to identify and authenticate the person by combining a number of biometric authentication features, analysing the patterns and utilising the machine learning technology.
Start-up Clinc unveils Finie, AI personal assistant for mobile banking apps
Fintech start-up Clinc says it has created “the world’s first” open source platform for building artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning-based personal assistants. Clinc calls it “the financial genie” or “Finie”. It is pitched to banks, financial institutions and personal finance managers. The solution was developed by a group of professors at the University of Michigan, […]
USAA launches online virtual assistant
USAA, a provider of banking and insurance services to the US military personnel and their families, has launched a virtual assistant for its website. The solution is based on the Nina artificial intelligence (AI) technology, supplied by Nuance Communications. It will provide immediate online support and answers to USAA’s member’s “most critical needs”, says Nuance, […]
Amazon and Facebook power Mizuho innovation
Mizuho Bank has carried out testing for new banking services through the Facebook bot and Amazon Echo. The tests took place in Silicon Valley, California, in partnership with two other Japanese firms – Information Services International – Dentsu and Nomura Research Institute. The companies are looking to use CUI (conversational user interfaces) to develop platforms […]
Singapore start-ups soar with OCBC support
OCBC Bank’s fintech accelerator programme, the Open Vault, will pilot tests with three start-ups – Fincast, BondIT and CogniCor. The tests involve wealth management and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, and will last for three months. Samuel Tsien, OCBC Bank’s group CEO, says: “Deploying these solutions […]
Optimal execution and the human-machine interface
In recent years we have seen a strong trend for institutional trading desks to leverage their data to improve trade execution results and become more recognised as active participants in portfolio performance. Two important applications of predictive analytics have arisen, both aiming to improve the manner in which trading algorithms are used and controlled. It […]
Westpac backs AI for digital banking
Australian bank Westpac is to trial the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its digital banking systems, as it looks to automate customers’ queries. With the rise of digital banking, Westpac’s general manager of consumer digital, Travis Tyler, says it is looking at using “bots” to respond to customers’ simple questions. One example includes the […]
Challenger banks battle cry with AI
Challenger banks have turned their attention to artificial intelligence (AI) as they seek to provide a more personalised approach to banking. German digital bank Number26 has launched Pulse26, a new app that uses AI to provide updates based on the customer’s personal banking history. Number26 says the more a customer uses their account, the “more […]
Will AI make active managers prove their worth?
Research released late last year suggested that almost two thirds (62%) of a survey of 90 German institutional investors predict greater usage of artificial intelligence (AI) for short-term decision-making, and 17% for medium-term investment decisions. Universal Investments, the asset manager behind the research, said that “the industry’s future thus certainly appears to be closely linked […]
The march of the bots for customer service: should bank CIOs slam shut or swing open the door?
Fifteen years ago, banks were still embracing telephone banking and online payment systems were still in their infancy. At the time, the impact these systems had on the IT manager were minimal. The IT manager’s role might have been to ensure that call centres managed to peak efficiency, or to ensure that the right IT […]
Clever banking with artificial intelligence
As banks, financial services providers and brands predict and plan for the way consumers will manage their money in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is high on the business development strategy for 2016 and beyond. Gideon Hyde, co-founder of Market Gravity, explains how and why artificial intelligence (AI) could hold the key to standing out […]
Barclays Africa to trial first bank chatbot in Africa
Barclays Africa is piloting a chatbot within the coming few weeks, making it the “first bank” to do so in Africa. The chatbots will use artificial intelligence (AI) to simulate “intelligent conversation” through written or spoken text. Yasaman Hadjibashi, chief data officer at Barclays Africa, says the chatbot is a way to be “more relevant” […]
Robotic automation software vendor OpenSpan acquired by Pegasystems
US-based developer of CRM and BPM software, Pegasystems, has acquired OpenSpan. The acquisition, says Pegasystems, “brings robotics, analytics and case management together to enable more productive employees and better customer experience”. OpenSpan, based in the US state of Georgia, specialises in robotics process automation and workforce analytics software. The company says it is currently running […]
Robots to rule as Mizuho Bank modernises with IBM Research platform
Mizuho Bank plans to use a new robotics platform developed by IBM Research-Tokyo for the bank’s customer service-oriented robots. IBM says its researchers are developing new technologies that will “benefit” Mizuho’s Robotics platform by tapping into Watson’s (IBM’s cognitive technology) language and other capabilities to provide a “smoother human/robot interaction and to enable collaboration between […]
