Group items tagged

As Financial Services organizations think through their FinTech and Cloud Strategy, while there’s clear momentum across industries, and in Financial Services itself, there are still security and efficiency challenges that need to be addressed.

Cloud wastage remains a pain point that can be addressed by going serverless and a solid approach to security needs to be central to the strategy. According to McAfee, 1,004 distinct cloud services being used by the average financial services firm, a 32.1% YOY growth – based on a survey of 3.7M finance employees over 14,000 cloud services. What’s more, according to MarketsandMarkets, the predicted size of the Finance Cloud Market is expected to reach $29.47B by 2021, which represents a 24.4% CAGR.

To encourage innovation, many industries such as healthcare and life science have started using the latest technologies for optimizing their business processes, cost cutting, and so on. Since there are lots of opportunities among various industries, the Fintech industries will get cost-effective processes and fewer regulations in the traditional financial sectors.

The country has seen skyrocketing mobile penetration rates, with subscriptions surpassing the total population amount by 12%, and FinTech innovations have followed. For example, the telecommunications giant Safaricom, which contributes 5% of the county’s GDP, led the push in 2007 with its M-Pesa money transfer service, which functions much like a limited mobile bank but without the need for an Internet connection. M-Pesa combines Safaricom’s mobile infrastructure with an agent model; Safaricom stores their balance and customers can go to one of 110,000 agents throughout the country to conduct transactions in person. The whole system runs on technology similar to text messaging, and has expanded to seven countries.

The Payment Systems and Services Act of 2019 (Act 987) provides the regulatory framework.  The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2008 (Act 749), Data Protection Act of 2012 (Act 843), and Electronic Transactions Act of 2008 (Act 772) provide additional regulation.

“Egypt needs fintech, specifically after the success story of Fawry, since our financial markets are not properly regulated at the level of payments and e-commerce – all of it is more informal, so any solutions would boom,” Sharara says.

MoneyFellows, an Egyptian startup incubated in London, marries technology with traditional money circles to help people save and borrow through their social networks. Like many other startups, MoneyFellows has to work with commercial banks because the Egyptian government has strict regulations about institutions that can look after customers’ deposits.

Abacus is an online multi-asset class brokerage agent in Kenya. It is one of the few Fintech companies in Kenya that help local and international investors to access unit trusts, mutual funds, bonds, and stocks online. Through Abacus, Kenyans can save and invest in areas that give them the best returns for their money, without necessarily having access to a bank account.Abacus also builds mobile and web software platforms that help investors to access financial markets in Africa. The solutions it offers make it possible for people to research and invest online, anytime, anywhere. Because of the type of business it conducts, Abacus is licensed as a data vendor by Kenya’s Nairobi Securities Exchange.

The financial services industry today is characterized by change. Investor interest and capital is pouring into fintech companies – digital banks, insurtechs, wealthtechs, proptechs and every option in between are shifting how financial services are created, offered and evaluated. New changes, new challengesThis shift has spurred many traditional financial institutions to take action. Yet, changes aren’t always straightforward. Financial institutions know they need to embrace innovation, and they also have to find better ways to understand and respond to their customers.At the same time, the shift has put a spotlight on a new area of opportunity for big tech companies like Alibaba, Apple, Google, Tencent and others. These companies have incredible reach, deep roots into their customers’ lives, and robust customer data. Big techs are also constantly looking for ways to provide their customers with more value, to enhance customer loyalty by providing a more integrated ecosystem. Most already offer payments solutions, so extending their offerings to include financial products makes sense. However, there are no strong indicators that the big tech companies want to become banks. The regulatory burden is so far considered too high for their appetite1. Forging strategic alliancesBig tech and financial institutions are already investing in fintechs to help advance their strategic goals. For example, Tencent led a $35 million investment in open banking focused TrueLayer in the UK this year2.What they are realizing that partnerships don’t have to be limited to start-ups – working together with established institutions can create value. Over the past 6 months, there have been a number of strategic business relationships announced, such as Google’s partnership with Citibank and Stanford Federal Credit Union, to offer smart checking accounts3 and Apple’s announcement of a partnership with Goldman Sachs to offer the Apple Card credit card4. These will likely only be the beginning. 

Financial Services firms may be unaware that their disruption responses are often hindered by internal bias or superficial analysis. That is, Fintechs may not be completely redefining an industry, product, or experience, but rather innovating in certain areas of high-perceived customer value: CX innovation – ease of use and/or reducing friction or increasing speed of the purchase process Product innovation – editing product features or modifications or reducing cost Market innovation – creating entirely new experiences or approaches for solving customer issues

During the Global SME Finance Forum 2018, Jumo's Martin Vogdt, Chief Product Officer, demoed the company's services at the TechPitch on November 6.  Jumo is an alternative lender in Africa and Asia providing nano loans to consumers and MSMEs through mobile money rails. The Forum's TechPitch provided an opportunity for 13 innovative fintechs to demo their product to global and emerging market investment firms, financial institutions and other Forum participants. This exclusive opportunity is one of the key features of the conference and is open to a limited number of financial technology innovators working in the SME space.

Jumo is an alternative lender in Africa and Asia providing nano loans to consumers and MSMEs through mobile money rails.

Operating in Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Pakistan, the fintech plans to expand its offering and service to Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. 

We’re optimistic about the possibilities in these markets and continue to see huge growth opportunities in Africa, with the potential to replicate our successes in other markets over the longer term.”

Across the globe, smallholder farmers lose between $50 billion and $100 billion annually, often from natural disasters, but reportedly only 1% is insured from these accidents. As an example, in Feburary 2019, the company made several payouts to farmers in Kenya as poor rainfall caused large amount of crop failure.

Jason Schapiro, WorldCover Lead Engineer, said “Our algorithms are specifically calibrated to rainfall events by region and crop type, automatically triggering instant payouts to insured farmers through mobile money services like M-Pesa.”

One of the greatest challenges we face working in rural areas of Africa is the lack of infrastructure and access to technology.

Thndr is aiming to build a Robinhood for the Middle East, helping users invest in stock, bonds and funds commission-free via the company’s free app. Robinhood has taken the US exchanges by storm, but the trend hasn’t hit investors in the Middle East; Thndr is aiming to replicate their success with investors there.

The online equity investment platform has reached a tipping point, with more than 150-thousand active users. Purple Group has reported a strong rise in first-half earnings as its EasyEquities online investment and trading platform reached tipping point. The fintech group owns 70% of EasyEquities and Sanlam Investments holds the remaining 30%.

The next six months will, no doubt, prove to be unpredictable. In many ways perhaps some of the toughest months experienced in the investment world in decades lie ahead with the world economy in unchartered waters," Purple Group said. "But that suits us just fine. Firm in the knowledge that we simply must, every minute of every day, be there for our partners and clients on their financial journey."

EasyEquities grew revenue by 140% to R28.6 million in the six months to end-February as the number of funded retail investment accounts more than doubled to 199,491. The platform generated a R76,000 profit for the period from a R12.4 million loss previously. Platform assets quadrupled to R15.8 billion.

Founded in January 2015, WorldCover is a US-based insurance technology company that uses a peer-to-peer model to provide farmers in developing worlds with crop insurance against natural disasters and provides investors with diversified returns from the non-traditional financial markets.

Safaricom PLC and Ant Financial Services – the world’s largest fintech services provider – have announced a partnership that will allow Kenyans shopping on AliExpress to pay for their purchases using M-PESA.

Safaricom PLC and Ant Financial Services – the world’s largest fintech services provider – have announced a partnership that will allow Kenyans shopping on AliExpress to pay for their purchases using M-PESA.

Kenyans shopping on Aliexpress.com will be presented with M-PESA as one of the payment options when checking out their shopping cart on the website. Once customers select M-PESA, they will then key in their mobile phone numbers and will subsequently receive a prompt on their phones to type their M-PESA PIN to complete the payment.

The banks and financial institutions are happy to use the advantages of secure storage, interoperability, scalability, and 24/7 uptime without heavy investments. This also means that scaling your business to higher user demand is much easier due to the fact that it only takes upgrading the data package that the company is contracted to use. No need to hire, train, and re-train any employees.

With Apple introducing the biometrics technologies like Fingerprint identification and now facial recognition on its latest X series phones, biometrics is not only a day-to-day part of consumers’ lifestyles but also opening a whole new doors to biometrics industries and consumers’ financial operating methods.Companies like FIDO Alliance pulling out all the stops to make the biometrics systems standardized and more secured introduces the world to the new era of FinTech with easier, secured and adaptable approach of Biometrics Finances.

The tiresome process of entering long and complicated passwords and initials at every transaction along with the risk of compromising the security of the consumers’ accounts played a major role in accepting the Facial Recognition, Fingerprint scanner, IRIS Sensor and Voice recognition as a method of authentication at a Banking sector. 

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step! After twelve years of the startup journey, Cairo-headquartered fintech company Fawry has reached a unicorn status (that is, now worth over a billion dollar!), the first ever by any fintech startup in Egypt and the first ever by any African tech startup going through an IPO (Initial Public Offering) on African soil. Jumia, the Africa-focused ecommerce startup did this in 2019, but that was on the New York Stock Exchange. Interswitch, the Nigerian payment company, also did it last year, but it needed extra funding from VISA to make that happen. 

The goal of blockchain is to digitally record information to be distributed but not tampered with. It is an open, decentralized ledger that records transactions and entries that are confirmed by peer-to-peer networks and encrypted. The data is stored into a “block,” or a fixed event that has been approved and locked into place. Each block is then added to the “chain” of events, leading to the methodology’s moniker. Each record is easily verifiable and incorruptible. The network cannot be influenced by a single party nor taken down because it exists in multiple distributed places.