David Durand, Advisor, Innovation and Advocacy
September 9th, 2020
David Durand, LL.L., B.Sc. chem., – Founder and Managing Partner of Durand Lawyers – Lawyer (Québec)[...]
Tech’s raid on the banks
The Economist | May 2, 2019
OVER THE past two decades people across the world have seen digital services transform the economy and their lives. Taxis, films, novels, noodles, doctors and dog-walkers can all be summoned with a tap of a screen. Giant firms in retailing, carmaking and the media have been humbled by new competitors. Yet one industry has withstood the tumult: banking. In rich countries it is perfectly normal to queue in branches, correspond with your bank by post and deposit cheques stamped with the logo of firms founded in the 19th century.
See: Why Open Banking Represents a Seismic Shift for Fintech
Yet, as our special report this week explains, technology is at last shaking up banking. In Asia payment apps are a way of life for over 1bn users. In the West mobile banking is reaching critical mass—49% of Americans bank on their phones—and tech giants are muscling in. Apple unveiled a credit card with Goldman Sachs on March 25th. Facebook is proposing a payments service to let users buy tickets and settle bills (see article).
The implications are profound because banks are not ordinary firms. It is one thing for Blockbuster Video to be wiped out by a technological shift, but quite another if the victim is Bank of America. It is not just that banks have over $100trn of assets globally. Using the difficult trick of “maturity transformation” (turning deposits that you can demand back at any time into long-term loans) they enable savers to defer consumption and investment and borrowers to bring them forward. Banks are so vital that the economy reels when they stumble, as the crisis of 2008-09 showed.
Bankers and politicians may thus be tempted to resist technological change. But that would be wrong because its benefits—a leaner, more user-friendly and more open financial system—easily outweigh the risks.
Banking is late to the smartphone age because entrepreneurs have been put off by regulations. And, since the financial crisis, Western banks have been preoccupied with repairing their balance-sheets and old-fashioned cost-cutting. Late is better than never, however. Several new business models are emerging. In Asia payment apps are bundled with e-commerce, chat and ride-hailing services offered by firms such as Alibaba and Tencent in China and Grab in South-East Asia. These networks link to banks but are vying to control the customer relationship. In America and Europe big banks are still more or less in control and are rushing to offer digital products—JPMorgan Chase can open a deposit account in five minutes. But threats loom. Mobile-only “neobanks” that do not bear the cost of branches are nibbling at customer bases. Payments firms like PayPal work with Western banks but are expected to capture a greater share of profits. Lucrative niches like foreign exchange and asset management are being harried by new entrants.
See: Open banking data tapped to speed up laundering checks
The pace of change will accelerate. Younger people no longer stay with the same bank as their parents—15% of British 18- to 23-year-olds use a neobank. Tech firms that people trust, such as Apple and Amazon, are natural candidates to grow big financial arms. The biggest four American banks are spending a total of over $25bn a year on perfecting better customer applications and learning to mine data more cleverly. Venture-capital firms invested $37bn in upstart financial firms last year.
The benefits of technological change are likely to be vast. Costs should tumble as branches are shut, creaking mainframe systems retired and bureaucracy culled. If the world’s listed banks chopped expenses by a third, the saving would be worth $80 a year for every person on Earth. In 2000 the Netherlands had more bank branches per head than America; it now has just a third as many. Rotten service will improve—it is easier to get money to a friend using a chat app than it is to ask your bank to transfer cash. The system will get better at its vital job of allocating capital. Richer data will allow banks to take risks that currently baffle underwriters. Fraud should be easier to spot. Lower costs and the democratising effect of social media will give more people better access to finance. And more firms with good ideas should be able to get loans faster, boosting growth.
Yet change also poses risks. Because the financial system is embedded in the economy, innovation tends to create turbulence. The credit card’s arrival in 1950 revolutionised shopping but also sparked America’s consumer-debt culture. Securitisation lubricated capital markets in the 1980s but fuelled the subprime crisis. In addition, it is unclear who will win today’s battle. One dystopian scenario is that power becomes more concentrated, as a few big banks learn to exploit data as ruthlessly as social-media firms do. Imagine a crossbreed of Facebook and Wells Fargo that predicts and manipulates how customers behave and is able to use proprietary economic data to squeeze rivals.
See: Fintech firms want to shake up banking, and that worries the Fed
Another dystopia involves fragmentation and destabilisation. Banks could lose depositors to untested neobanks, creating a mismatch between their assets and liabilities that could lead to a credit crunch. If bank customers transact via tech or payment platforms, banks could end up with huge balance-sheets but without a direct connection to their clients. If they thus became unprofitable, they could be broken up, with the job of financing mortgages and absorbing short-term savings left entirely to capital markets, which are volatile.
Continue to the full article --> here
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Fintech Confidential | Michael King and Richard Nesbitt | Jan 21, 2021 In our recently published book The Technological Revolution in Financial Services: How Banks, Fintechs, and Customers Win Together, a group of expert contributors from North America and Europe share their insights on how the financial services industry will evolve in the coming decade. The context is the ongoing transformation in the financial services industry, which is being driven by three structural forces: heightened regulation that followed the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), innovation fueled by new technologies and entrepreneurial fintech startups, and demographic trends with the rise of millennials and the retirement of baby boomers. These forces are changing the competitive landscape of financial services, lowering barriers to entry and increasing competition from both inside and outside the industry. Our book outlines what we see as the successful strategies for financial technology (fintech) companies and incumbents, namely banks, insurance companies, and asset managers. While there is much to learn from our contributors, this article shares our main conclusion and a few key takeaways. We argue that the winning strategy for the coming decade will be for banks, insurance companies and asset managers to partner with fintech startups to ...
Read More
NCFA | Jan 21, 2021 The OSC has recently announced a Charter for a new Office of Economic Growth & Innovation (Innovation Office): release and innovation office charter. The NCFA welcomes the announcement but remains skeptical. Is this really a "new model" or merely window dressing 1. An Innovation Office alone will not make the OSC more "innovative". Innovation requires a lot more than a mere reference to these words. The Charter points towards "fostering a culture that encourages experimentation, embraces failures as necessary learning steps and allows for a quick pivot to the next idea" and playing a role in the "OSC’s ongoing modernization, which includes adopting a more flexible regulatory approach, making investments in technology and simplifying our rules and processes". Do the OSC leaders (and the Ontario Government) understand how difficult this essential culture change will be? What does "modernize how we formulate policy and new regulations" mean? Does it involve, for example, more disciplined decision making, better analysis and use of data (including collecting or enabling much better capital markets data generally in Canada), extensive staff training, learning to better manage risk? We need more information so that industry participants can have greater comfort about what ...
Read More
Guest Post | Jan 20, 2021 If you’re new to the world of investing in cryptocurrencies, you might have heard of stablecoins. These are physically-backed assets that differ quite a bit from Bitcoin and other coins. If you’ve heard of them, you’re understandably curious as to what they’re about. This guide can help you with that. How are Stablecoins Different from Bitcoin? As mentioned, stablecoins are tied to a physical asset. Bitcoin is not. It has its own value backed by the electricity that goes into mining it. Stablecoins like Tether or TrueUSD are tied to the value of the US dollar. These are sold on most traditional exchanges. Otherwise, there are also precious metal-backed stablecoins. Coins like these are more often sold on dedicated platforms like Gold Exchange. Now, you can probably infer that because stablecoins are tied to the value of physical assets, their value is inherently less volatile than Bitcoin. As you may know, Bitcoin can (and has) risen or fallen thousands of dollars at any given moment. That volatility might be a boon for some experienced investors, but newer ones might want to avoid them. This is where stablecoins come into play. Stablecoins like SilverCoin allow ...
Read More
Bain and Company | By Mike Kühnel, Thomas Olsen, John Fildes and Karl Gridl | Dec 16, 2020 Despite decades of technological advances, global capital markets remain characterized by fragmented and siloed networks, with limited interoperability between them. Reconciliation between systems requires extra, sometimes manual, steps. Many processes across the financial ecosystem thus continue to be prone to error and high costs. This applies to public markets but even more acutely to private markets. See: 3 Ways Digital Assets Will Reshape The World As a consequence, a consensus across the global financial ecosystem has emerged: Digitized financial assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms will substantially improve transparency of information, automation, distribution and, ultimately, liquidity. Adoption of digital assets—assets and regulated financial securities that are represented digitally and administered on digital platforms—will expand beyond the first niche application of cryptocurrencies, with DLT removing many sources of inefficiency. Exchanges, banks, technology companies and other financial market firms will need to make decisions soon about how to participate, as it takes time to build an economically attractive business model and the required capabilities and partnerships. Postponing this decision comes with the risk of losing strategic position as early movers gain share and ...
Read More
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Read More
KABN | Cara Buckspan | Jan 19, 2021 Access to up to 2,000 US Colleges and Universities with reach of up to 1.5 Million Students TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 19, 2021 / KABN Systems NA Holdings Corp. (CSE:KABN)(OTC PINK:TRWRF)(FRA:4T51) (the "Company", "KABN North America" or "KABN NA"), a North American Fintech solutions company specializing in empowering individuals to manage, control and generate value from their biometrically-verified Self Sovereign Identity ("SSI") through its Liquid Avatar platform, announces today that it has entered into an agreement to partner with US based, The Campus Agency to create innovative engagement programs for Liquid Avatar to reach the US college and university student, alumni and family market. KABN NA and The Campus Agency will be working together to engage micro-influencers, develop and launch innovative engagement and Augmented Reality programs to introduce the college and university market to the Liquid Avatar and KABN value programs. The partnership goals are to increase brand awareness, maximize engagement, educate users on the value proposition of Self Sovereign Identity, and generate user benefits and revenue for the partnership program. See: Law reform to move identity verification online Digital IDs Help Open Banking Reach Its Fullest Potential With reach ...
Read More
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Read More
Financial Times | OpEd by Brian Brooks | Jan 12, 2021 Lenders run by algorithms and blockchain technology will require 21st century regulation The writer is the US acting comptroller of the currency In 1961, Popular Science magazine envisioned self-driving cars. The reality arrived sooner than anyone anticipated, and before safety regulators could adapt. Most automotive laws — on speed limits, giving signals, drink-driving — had been designed to protect against dangerous drivers, not dangerous cars. Autonomous vehicles brought new risks that legacy rules never considered. As one headline on the Wired website put it: “Who’s Regulating Self-Driving Cars? Often, No One”. Banking is headed down the same road. And it’s being driven by the technology behind decentralised finance, or DeFi. But just as the original rules of the road protected us from other drivers, so our current bank regulations exist mainly to prevent human failings. See: Intro to yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi At the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, we require every bank to have officers responsible for its safety — such as a chief risk officer and a chief audit executive. We limit how much banks can lend to their directors ...
Read More
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Read More
IMF Blog | Catalina Margulis and Arthur Rossi | Jan 14, 2021 Countries are moving fast toward creating digital currencies. Or, so we hear from various surveys showing an increasing number of central banks making substantial progress towards having an official digital currency. But, in fact, close to 80 percent of the world’s central banks are either not allowed to issue a digital currency under their existing laws, or the legal framework is not clear. To help countries make this assessment, we reviewed the central bank laws of 174 IMF members in a new IMF staff paper, and found out that only about 40 are legally allowed to issue digital currencies. Not just a legal technicality Any money issuance is a form of debt for the central bank, so it must have a solid basis to avoid legal, financial and reputational risks for the institutions. Ultimately, it is about ensuring that a significant and potentially contentious innovation is in line with a central bank’s mandate. Otherwise, the door is opened to potential political and legal challenges. See: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Central Bank Digital Coins (CBDCs) Now, readers may be asking themselves: if issuing money is ...
Read More
Fintech Confidential | Michael King and Richard Nesbitt | Jan 21, 2021 In our recently published book The Technological Revolution in Financial Services: How Banks, Fintechs, and Customers Win Together, a group of expert contributors from North America and Europe share their insights on how the financial services industry will evolve in the coming decade. The context is the ongoing transformation in the financial services industry, which is being driven by three structural forces: heightened regulation that followed the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), innovation fueled by new technologies and entrepreneurial fintech startups, and demographic trends with the rise of millennials and the retirement of baby boomers. These forces are changing the competitive landscape of financial services, lowering barriers to entry and increasing competition from both inside and outside the industry. Our book outlines what we see as the successful strategies for financial technology (fintech) companies and incumbents, namely banks, insurance companies, and asset managers. While there is much to learn from our contributors, this article shares our main conclusion and a few key takeaways. We argue that the winning strategy for the coming decade will be for banks, insurance companies and asset managers to partner with fintech startups to ...
Read More
Read More
NCFA | Jan 21, 2021 The OSC has recently announced a Charter for a new Office of Economic Growth & Innovation (Innovation Office): release and innovation office charter. The NCFA welcomes the announcement but remains skeptical. Is this really a "new model" or merely window dressing 1. An Innovation Office alone will not make the OSC more "innovative". Innovation requires a lot more than a mere reference to these words. The Charter points towards "fostering a culture that encourages experimentation, embraces failures as necessary learning steps and allows for a quick pivot to the next idea" and playing a role in the "OSC’s ongoing modernization, which includes adopting a more flexible regulatory approach, making investments in technology and simplifying our rules and processes". Do the OSC leaders (and the Ontario Government) understand how difficult this essential culture change will be? What does "modernize how we formulate policy and new regulations" mean? Does it involve, for example, more disciplined decision making, better analysis and use of data (including collecting or enabling much better capital markets data generally in Canada), extensive staff training, learning to better manage risk? We need more information so that industry participants can have greater comfort about what ...
Read More
Read More
Guest Post | Jan 20, 2021 If you’re new to the world of investing in cryptocurrencies, you might have heard of stablecoins. These are physically-backed assets that differ quite a bit from Bitcoin and other coins. If you’ve heard of them, you’re understandably curious as to what they’re about. This guide can help you with that. How are Stablecoins Different from Bitcoin? As mentioned, stablecoins are tied to a physical asset. Bitcoin is not. It has its own value backed by the electricity that goes into mining it. Stablecoins like Tether or TrueUSD are tied to the value of the US dollar. These are sold on most traditional exchanges. Otherwise, there are also precious metal-backed stablecoins. Coins like these are more often sold on dedicated platforms like Gold Exchange. Now, you can probably infer that because stablecoins are tied to the value of physical assets, their value is inherently less volatile than Bitcoin. As you may know, Bitcoin can (and has) risen or fallen thousands of dollars at any given moment. That volatility might be a boon for some experienced investors, but newer ones might want to avoid them. This is where stablecoins come into play. Stablecoins like SilverCoin allow ...
Read More
Read More
Bain and Company | By Mike Kühnel, Thomas Olsen, John Fildes and Karl Gridl | Dec 16, 2020 Despite decades of technological advances, global capital markets remain characterized by fragmented and siloed networks, with limited interoperability between them. Reconciliation between systems requires extra, sometimes manual, steps. Many processes across the financial ecosystem thus continue to be prone to error and high costs. This applies to public markets but even more acutely to private markets. See: 3 Ways Digital Assets Will Reshape The World As a consequence, a consensus across the global financial ecosystem has emerged: Digitized financial assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms will substantially improve transparency of information, automation, distribution and, ultimately, liquidity. Adoption of digital assets—assets and regulated financial securities that are represented digitally and administered on digital platforms—will expand beyond the first niche application of cryptocurrencies, with DLT removing many sources of inefficiency. Exchanges, banks, technology companies and other financial market firms will need to make decisions soon about how to participate, as it takes time to build an economically attractive business model and the required capabilities and partnerships. Postponing this decision comes with the risk of losing strategic position as early movers gain share and ...
Read More
Read More
Crowdfund Insider | Steven Knipfelberg | Jan 19, 2021 Why are smart contracts significant? Traditionally, parties have relied on intermediaries, such as escrow agents, banks, or governments, to ensure the performance of a contract (or that a party didn’t simply run off with your cash). Smart contracts eliminate the role of intermediaries because they are both self-executing and self-enforcing. The entire transaction is dictated by computer code alone. By cutting out the “middleman,” transaction fees are dramatically reduced, while transaction speed is dramatically increased. Parties can now make a wide variety of agreements without fear that the agreement will be dishonored. See: The UK Provides Legal Certainty For Smart Contracts And Cryptoassets In Its Landmark Legal Statement Blockchain-based smart contracts are quickly becoming a common method of transacting. Since 2018, private parties have increasingly used smart contracts to tokenize assets and execute the terms of commercial loans and securities lending transactions, such as “repo” swaps of U.S. Treasury bonds. In the near future, smart contracts may be used in an even greater variety of transactions involving international trade finance, derivatives markets, mortgages, and auto leasing. With their ability to instantaneously execute and settle transactions, smart contracts have the potential to ...
Read More
Read More
KABN | Cara Buckspan | Jan 19, 2021 Access to up to 2,000 US Colleges and Universities with reach of up to 1.5 Million Students TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 19, 2021 / KABN Systems NA Holdings Corp. (CSE:KABN)(OTC PINK:TRWRF)(FRA:4T51) (the "Company", "KABN North America" or "KABN NA"), a North American Fintech solutions company specializing in empowering individuals to manage, control and generate value from their biometrically-verified Self Sovereign Identity ("SSI") through its Liquid Avatar platform, announces today that it has entered into an agreement to partner with US based, The Campus Agency to create innovative engagement programs for Liquid Avatar to reach the US college and university student, alumni and family market. KABN NA and The Campus Agency will be working together to engage micro-influencers, develop and launch innovative engagement and Augmented Reality programs to introduce the college and university market to the Liquid Avatar and KABN value programs. The partnership goals are to increase brand awareness, maximize engagement, educate users on the value proposition of Self Sovereign Identity, and generate user benefits and revenue for the partnership program. See: Law reform to move identity verification online Digital IDs Help Open Banking Reach Its Fullest Potential With reach ...
Read More
Read More
FinCEN | Release | Jan 14, 2021 WASHINGTON—The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced today it is reopening the comment period for its recent proposed rulemaking regarding certain transactions involving convertible virtual currency (CVC) or digital assets with legal tender status (LTDA). Under the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), banks and money services businesses (MSBs) would be required to submit reports, keep records, and verify the identity of customers in relation to transactions above certain thresholds involving CVC/LTDA wallets not hosted by a financial institution (also known as “unhosted wallets”) or CVC/LTDA wallets hosted by a financial institution in certain jurisdictions identified by FinCEN. See: Hester Peirce Says SEC Enforcement is Not the Way to Provide Crypto Clarity Today’s Notice identifies additional statutory authority for the proposed rule under the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, provides additional information regarding the reporting form, and reopens the comment period for the proposal. Specifically, FinCEN is providing an additional 15 days for comments on the proposed reporting requirements regarding information on CVC or LTDA transactions greater than $10,000, or aggregating to greater than $10,000, that involve unhosted wallets or wallets hosted in jurisdictions identified by FinCEN. FinCEN is providing an additional 45 days ...
Read More
Read More
Financial Times | OpEd by Brian Brooks | Jan 12, 2021 Lenders run by algorithms and blockchain technology will require 21st century regulation The writer is the US acting comptroller of the currency In 1961, Popular Science magazine envisioned self-driving cars. The reality arrived sooner than anyone anticipated, and before safety regulators could adapt. Most automotive laws — on speed limits, giving signals, drink-driving — had been designed to protect against dangerous drivers, not dangerous cars. Autonomous vehicles brought new risks that legacy rules never considered. As one headline on the Wired website put it: “Who’s Regulating Self-Driving Cars? Often, No One”. Banking is headed down the same road. And it’s being driven by the technology behind decentralised finance, or DeFi. But just as the original rules of the road protected us from other drivers, so our current bank regulations exist mainly to prevent human failings. See: Intro to yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi At the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, we require every bank to have officers responsible for its safety — such as a chief risk officer and a chief audit executive. We limit how much banks can lend to their directors ...
Read More
Read More
Neo Financial and Concentra | Jan 13, 2021 CALGARY, Alberta--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Neo Financial (Neo), a Calgary-based fintech company created by two of the co-founders of SkipTheDishes, has announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Concentra Bank (Concentra), a Schedule 1 bank that is quietly fuelling innovation. Through this relationship, Neo is the first Canadian fintech company to offer a CDIC-eligible high-interest savings account that works like an everyday banking account. The accounts are held at Concentra, a Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC) member bank. Together, Neo and Concentra have opened the door for innovation that has historically not been accessible within Canada’s consumer banking sector. “Canada’s banking sector continues to trail other countries, using technology that is more than 50 years old, and unable to innovate. This is why we set out to rebuild it from scratch. We wanted to create a seamless consumer-first experience, specifically for Canadians,” says Andrew Chau, Founder and CEO, Neo Financial. “Our collaboration with Concentra Bank is a great example of how new technology companies can work with industry partners to innovate better and faster to ensure Canada doesn’t fall behind.” “We’re different from many banks—we’re open to creative ideas and solutions for our customers and we’re less ...
Read More
Read More
IMF Blog | Catalina Margulis and Arthur Rossi | Jan 14, 2021 Countries are moving fast toward creating digital currencies. Or, so we hear from various surveys showing an increasing number of central banks making substantial progress towards having an official digital currency. But, in fact, close to 80 percent of the world’s central banks are either not allowed to issue a digital currency under their existing laws, or the legal framework is not clear. To help countries make this assessment, we reviewed the central bank laws of 174 IMF members in a new IMF staff paper, and found out that only about 40 are legally allowed to issue digital currencies. Not just a legal technicality Any money issuance is a form of debt for the central bank, so it must have a solid basis to avoid legal, financial and reputational risks for the institutions. Ultimately, it is about ensuring that a significant and potentially contentious innovation is in line with a central bank’s mandate. Otherwise, the door is opened to potential political and legal challenges. See: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Central Bank Digital Coins (CBDCs) Now, readers may be asking themselves: if issuing money is ...
Read More
Read More
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