The Fintech Magazine #24

Transparency is king, and if the last year of shaky markets and robust regulation has taught the financial sector anything, it’s that open communication will get you far. In our 24th issue of the Fintech Magazine, FF News takes a serious look at the industry’s most cracking innovations and ponders on the question: what can we be doing better?

Improvements are to be made, and lucky for us, we got to speak to a whole roster of trail blazers leading the way in trading, banking, crypto, and trade.

Firms cannot afford to be lax with their transaction data anymore. Grappling with the sweep of demands made by MiFID II, SmartStream is helping financial institutions better streamline the reporting of investment data, with regulation checks every step of the way. “Right now, digital assets aren’t regulated, but, at some point, the European Security and Markets Authority will review them,” said Jethro MacDonald, Project Manager of AI and Machine Learning at SmartStream Innovation lab.

In the Lendtech division, the socio-economic floodgates are being torn open for the world’s most promising demographics. India roars on as one of the world’s most exciting world powers, their student enrollment rate in higher education has skyrocketed to 27.1%. We pin-balled between the nation’s most disruptive entrepreneurs, from Propelld to GyanDhan, about the focus on young talent and the agency student loans can provide young learners.

We now steer toward a Fintech mainstay: the cloud. The colossal wealth of data that is needed to process financial information nowadays is such that private databases are redundant. Cloud solutions are important because they evolve the financial services on a fundamental level. From Nationwide to TSB, big banks are investing heavily into the cloud to create fully-digital banking platforms, accessible for both customers and employees.

Says Gary Delooze, the CIO of Nationwide, “the simple fact is that a lot of the latest innovation is occurring in the cloud.”

We have had a tumultuous year, both in the financial sector and beyond, but our industry leaders are more than ready to face the challenges.

As always, if you prefer reading a physical copy instead of an online version, you can get The Fintech Magazine, and more of our fabulous content, through signing up here!

In this edition, we feature:

• Jethro MacDonald, SmartStream
• Dee Burke, Finastra
• James Binn, Barclays
• Mark Aubin, Aptitude
  …and many more!