David Durand, Advisor, Innovation and Advocacy
September 9th, 2020
FCAC | March 2021
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) is a federal financial sector regulator, which oversees federally regulated financial entities’ compliance with consumer protection measures, promotes financial education, and raises consumers’ awareness of their financial rights and responsibilities. In addition, FCAC is responsible for monitoring and evaluating trends and emerging issues that may have an impact on consumers of financial products and services, as well as providing timely and objective information and tools to help consumers navigate financial products and services.
The Advisory Committee on Open Banking (the Committee) shared consultation materials with interested stakeholders, including the FCAC, in fall of 2020. FCAC welcomes the opportunity to participate in the development of a uniquely Canadian open banking solution that prioritizes the right of the consumer to control their financial data and puts in place safeguards to ensure they are protected from financial and non-financial harm. This submission has been submitted to the Committee for their consideration in the context of their consultations.
FCAC is broadly supportive of a hybrid model for open banking that carves out specific roles for government and industry and sets out the building blocks outlined in the Committee’s consultation materials. FCAC supports the Committee’s advocacy of a framework centred on several core consumer outcomes:
We strongly recommend adding a sixth core consumer outcome: Consumers benefit from consistent consumer protection and market conduct standards. Based on experiences in other jurisdictions, consumer confidence is necessary for the success of open banking. A core outcome related to market conduct and consumer protection should be explicitly stated to provide assurance to consumers and as a signal to the industry.
This would include the following base level requirements: clear, simple, and not misleading language; no coercion or tied-selling; express consent; and a robust complaints-handling system which prioritizes a fast and seamless process for the consumer.
It is inherent in the Committee’s consultation materials that consumers will have meaningful protection; FCAC recommends that the sixth core consumer outcome be added to reinforce this foundational principle. This central focus on consumer issues is critical to enable adoption of open banking and also needs to be ongoing – consumer protection must be embedded in every stage of accreditation, implementation, and in the governance and maintenance of any open banking system. Consumers should continue to receive at least the same level of protection that they currently enjoy, including in terms of liability protection. For example, today consumers are not held liable for unauthorized transactions on their debit and credit cards, provided that they have taken reasonable care to protect their information. FCAC believes that similar protections should apply in the open banking framework.
FCAC recognizes that the time to act is now and acknowledges the positive role that open banking can play in the future Canadian economy. We agree that the risks of the status quo (i.e., screen scraping) will lead to adverse outcomes for consumers.
FCAC has already warned consumers of these risks through a consumer alert and will continue educating consumers on open banking as implementation moves forward. To that end, FCAC plans to publish additional consumer education web content on open banking and fintechs in early 2021.
FCAC’s consumer protection mandate is exercised in two principal ways: 1) we oversee regulated entities’ compliance with consumer protection provisions, and 2) we educate consumers to improve their knowledge, skills, and confidence in making financial decisions. As a result, FCAC is well-positioned to contribute to the design and implementation of an open banking framework. The following are the main recommendations and issues that FCAC believes would merit further consideration by the Committee.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Finanser | Chris Skinner
Chris Skinner:
Traditional banks tend to push products through channels to get greater share of wallet and cross sell. Whereas, digital banks start with the customer journey and need, and then build the user experience to be part of a relationship interaction digitally, rather than trying to actually sell them anything.
James Robert Lay:
Greetings and hello. I am James Robert Lay and welcome to the 67th episode of the Banking on Digital Growth podcast. Today’s episode is part of the Exponential Insight series, and I’m excited to welcome Chris Skinner to the show. Chris is an author, speaker, and troublemaker, according to his LinkedIn profile. I like that. And Chris has written 14 books, most recently Doing Digital: Lessons from Leaders. He also writes a daily blog and consults about the future of banking. Hello, Chris, and welcome to the show.
Chris Skinner:
Hi, James. Thanks for inviting me. Great to be here.
James Robert Lay:
Yeah. And I think you mentioned before you do a lot of thinking about the future and when we think about the future, particularly through the lens of financial services, it can be hard to let go of the past. This idea of being built on the cloud natively, it’s operational, it’s mindset. And you share in your book Doing Digital, that banks must create a burning platform to ignite change for transformation, to spark change of transformation. Can you expand on this thinking about creating a burning platform? Is this really about first principles thinking, starting over instead of duct taping something that’s really falling apart, or just trying to hold things together for the old world?
Chris Skinner:
Well, there’s over 30 lessons in the book that I sort of outlined from the interviews I made over six months with these five big banks. But you start with obviously working out what to do and how to do it and getting a vision around how to digitally transform. And then you have to disturb people and make the organization uncomfortable. This is what Jamie’s doing with this “I’m scared shitless about FinTech.” He’s been doing it for a number of years in fact. I think his first time was about 2014, “Silicon Valley’s coming to eat our lunch.” And there’s been regular mantra from Jamie around effecting change and disturbing people. That’s quite funny, because when you look and track what he’s been saying about Bitcoin, for example, it’s turned around from, “Bitcoin is just a Ponzi scheme for criminals” to, “It’s worth $146,000 by the end of this year and we should invest in it.”
So it’s interesting how things change. And I think the critical thing is it’s great to have a burning platform and say, “We’re all going to die unless we change,” which actually is another thing I heard from two of the banks. You know, if we don’t transform, we die. But you have to then say, “What are we transforming to?” And I use the quote often of Charles Darwin, which is “It’s not the fittest, the fastest, the most intelligent or the strongest who survive. It’s the ones who are most adaptable to change.”
But the thing is, and my challenge to most banks, is are you adapting to change in the right way?
If you’re delegating digital transformation to a CFO or CTO, CIO, CDO, giving them a budget and a project to implement in a line of business that’s fragmented, you’re really not going to survive. Because you have to digitally transform as a company with a leadership team who are passionate about making the whole company change.
And you really have to adapt, not necessarily in a way that’s rigid. In a way that says, “Well, we have to have a vision of the way forward, so this is where we need to try and get.” It’s not a fixed destination. It’s a continuum of change to make this organization fit the 21st century based on the internet and born on the internet. And that’s the huge challenge for any bank leadership team, because most banks are led by bankers who don’t understand technological requirements.
James Robert Lay:
We’re burning the ships. We’re either going to survive or we’re going to die, and we have to keep moving forward.” But what’s holding bank leadership teams back the most, or maybe a better question is about specifically vision, is what’s blinding them to begin with in the first place?
Chris Skinner:
Well, I think, and again, going back to Jamie Dimon’s comments. He points at Square, Pay Pal, but also Ant Group and Amazon and says, “You know, these guys are going to be taking all of our business.” And that’s the disturbance, but then you have to then say, “So how are we going to change? And what do we have to change into?” And it’s a metamorphosis. It’s not a reengineering. It’s a complete reinvention, renewal. And I think what blinds them and holds them back is the challenge of doing that is humongous. It’s really not easy.
There’s a couple of great books that I’ve used through my years of talking about this. One is How Do You Make the Elephant Dance? by Lou Gerstner, talking about turning around IBM in the 1990s. But more recently Satya Nadella’s book about Microsoft. When you look at Microsoft and the turn around there, you go,
“That’s amazing that you can take a company that’s stubborn, saturated, sinking, and suddenly make it nimble and quick and turn around.”
How did they do that? It’s really about recognizing the cultural needs. Digital transformation has nothing to do with technology. It’s about people. It’s about making people understand that they have a voice, and they have an ability to enable change. They’re not just being told what to do, but they can tell us what to do.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!![]() ![]() ![]() |
Finextra | Feb 22, 2021
Ten years since launching, Stripe’s infrastructure powers hundreds of billions of euros of payments for businesses in over 140 countries and territories around the world.
The company, which last raised a $600 million series G in mid-2020, is currently contemplating an IPO that would give it a valuation of $105 billion.
Says Carney: “The very nature of commerce has changed over the past decade. Stripe has been at the forefront of enabling this new digital economy, providing innovative and resilient global payment solutions to businesses large and small. In the process, Stripe has been breaking down barriers to global trade and accelerating economic output.”
Stripe says it expects to benefit from Carney’s leardship role in sustainable finance as it rolls out a global climate effort, enabling millions of businesses to bring more funding to emerging carbon removal technologies.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!![]() ![]() ![]() |
Gemini | Feb 18 2021
We are thrilled to announce the launch of Cryptopedia, a free resource that provides open-access, high-quality crypto education to the world.
Our mission at Gemini is to empower the individual through crypto and we believe that journey begins with understanding. We know that the lack of comprehensive education around crypto is one of the main barriers to entry and adoption for consumers — which is where Cryptopedia can help.
Cryptopedia caters to all levels of knowledge and interest — from the crypto-curious to the crypto-native. You can get started with the fundamentals of Bitcoin, take a deep dive into the hottest projects in DeFi, explore how trading and investing concepts apply to cryptocurrency, or learn about cybersecurity best practices to keep your crypto safe.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!![]() ![]() ![]() |
Scott Galloway | Feb 26, 2021
“The task is...not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” ― Erwin Schrödinger
Just as life is not about what happens to you, but about how you respond to what happens to you, insight is not a function of data, but of how you perceive the data. Plotting data in different ways is illuminating, even fun, and it can lead one to discover stories. And while “stories” often connotes fiction, stories can also be true, and can even create truth.
The best way to predict the future is to make it. And, just as history is the stories we (i.e., the victors) tell ourselves, stories can shape the future by giving people a path, an inspiration, or a goal. One inspiration for those stories is data … and different ways of looking at the data.
Just read the last paragraph and it’s clear I’m insecure re my intellect, or have an edible hangover. The answer is yes.
Anyway, I love 2x2 matrices, and how their quadrants inspire stories. Identifying two factors that define four groups can provide insight into industry dynamics and illuminate pressures and opportunities. Often, the points on a matrix are a function of quantitative analysis; however, the real value is in the sorting, not the calibration.
In that spirit, I’ve been thinking a lot about how tech is battling for our attention. Screens have infested our lives and we’ve become re-attached to an Orwellian umbilical cord. From fitness to dating to news to travel to investing to cooking, every slice of our day is a battleground among tech players for our monetize-able attention. Two factors drive strategy in this battle: the value of the attention that firms command, and the means to monetize that attention. Hence, our A2 matrix.
So what are the stories we see when we organize the data along these axes? And can these stories pull the future forward? Let’s start with the upper right “luxury” quadrant.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!![]() ![]() ![]() |
Stats Canada | Huju Liu | Feb 24, 2021
While Canada has embraced digital technologies rapidly and broadly over the past two decades, there is no doubt that the adoption of digital technologies has been amplified and accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. A massive number of people have transitioned to remote work. Consumers have had to turn to online platforms to purchase merchandise. Business have had to use online platforms to sell their products and services and serve their customers facing mobility constraints. Wide digital adoption has leaped forward several years in a matter of weeks during the COVID-19 crisis (Baig et al. 2020), and these changes are likely here to stay even after the pandemic (UNCTAD 2020; Bloom 2020).
The digitally intensive sector experienced higher growth in labour productivity over the past two decades than the non-digitally intensive sector (Chart 1)
From 2002 to 2019, labour productivity grew 22.1% cumulatively in the digitally intensive sector, compared to 6.3% in the non-digitally intensive sector. During the first decade up to 2009, labour productivity grew modestly in the digitally intensive sector, by about 6%, while it basically remained flat in the non-digitally intensive sector. While labour productivity had a larger decline due to the 2008 crisis in the digitally intensive sector, the rebound afterward was also stronger in the same sector. Since 2009, labour productivity growth accelerated in the digitally intensive sector, with an annual growth rate of 1.4% compared to 0.7% in the non-digitally intensive sector.
The digitally intensive sector has also been more resilient during the COVID-19 crisis than the non-digitally intensive sector (Chart 2). While the COVID-19 pandemic has had negative impacts on both sectors, the impact on the non-digitally intensive sector has been more severe than that on the digitally intensive sector.
For the months of March to May 2020, employment declined on a year-over-year basis by 12.9%, 30.2% and 25.6%, respectively, in the non-digitally intensive sector, compared to 1.1%, 11.3% and 9.7%, respectively, for the digitally intensive sector.
Similar patterns have been found for the gross domestic product (GDP) growth. GDP declined on a year-over-year basis by 18.1% and 13.8% in April and May, respectively, in the non-digitally intensive sector, compared to 11.8% and 10.3% in the digitally intensive sector.
Both sectors have rebounded since June 2020. By September, employment in the digitally intensive sector returned to its 2019 level while the GDP was only slightly lower. However, the employment in the non-digitally intensive sector was still 7.8% below its level of the same month in 2019 and GDP was 5.3% lower.
Over the past two decades, digitalization in Canada appears to have benefited Canadian industries. While the evidence may not suggest a causal relationship, it does suggest digitalization is associated with a higher labour productivity growth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the industries that have adopted digitalization more intensively experienced a much smaller negative impact and were more resilient, which likely is a result of the flexibility and adaptability brought by digitalization (e.g., digital infrastructure or platforms already in place, higher telework capacity [Deng, Morissette and Messacar 2020]).
The COVID-19 crisis is likely to have a long-lasting effect on the way we work and do business, and digitalization is likely to become even more important during the recovery and for future growth. It is important to ensure a wider and more even adoption and diffusion of digital technologies among businesses by improving managerial quality, workers’ ICT skills and the quality of worker-to-job matches (Andrews et al. 2018).
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Verge | | Feb 23, 2021
Square has just made another colossal investment in bitcoin, more than tripling its last investment in the cryptocurrency with a $170 million purchase of tokens. The digital payments company, which is run by vocal bitcoin advocate and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, disclosed the investment in its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.
The company purchased about 3,318 bitcoins at an average price of $51,236, which signals remarkable confidence in bitcoin as it reaches record heights and invites renewed skepticism about its stability.
“Aligned with the company’s purpose, Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of economic empowerment, providing a way for individuals to participate in a global monetary system and secure their own financial future,” reads the company’s press release announcing the purchase. “The investment is part of Square’s ongoing commitment to bitcoin, and the company plans to assess its aggregate investment in bitcoin relative to its other investments on an ongoing basis.”
Square first announced a major bitcoin investment in October of last year when it purchased $50 million worth of tokens when a single bitcoin cost a little over $10,000.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!![]() ![]() ![]() |