UK tech startup, Habito, has launched the world’s first artificially intelligent Digital Mortgage Adviser (DMA) allowing millions of consumers to discuss their mortgage needs from any connected device, 24/7, without requiring a human broker.
Built using AI technology and Habito’s market-leading algorithm, the DMA marries all the elements of a customer’s financial life (e.g. employment, salary and personal life plans) with real-time market mortgage rates to calculate an indicative monthly payment. The DMA explains the impact consumers’ decisions will have on each mortgage configuration as a traditional mortgage broker would, but in a fraction of the time (average 10 minutes). Habito has the ability to search 100’s of products (versus a handful), so once the advice is complete consumers can be sure they’re on the best mortgage for them which can result in savings of thousands of pounds per year*.
In designing the new system, Habito analysed hundreds of advice interviews in order to understand what consumers needed and what formed the basis of informative advice. As a result, the DMA’s chat-like interface provides an unbiased, conversational experience, without the need for lengthy in-person queues, waiting on hold or paying a premium for advice.
“Finding the right mortgage product in the UK is like finding a needle in a haystack. Britons are crying out for some innovation and clarity in an outdated and overwhelming mortgage market,” said Daniel Hegarty, CEO and Founder, Habito. “Our digital mortgage adviser is a huge step forward in making mortgage advice accessible for consumers in the way they need it most: unbiased, always available and most importantly free.”
Habito’s digital mortgage adviser is a direct response to the FCA’s Financial Advice Market Review Report calling for greater, more accessible financial services advice for British consumers. Habito plans to roll out additional interactive features later this year, such as remortgage alerts, that will continue to optimise the mortgage application process for consumers across the country.
Anthony Duffy, Director of Retail Banking in UK & Ireland at Fujitsu commented:
“Habito’s launch of its Digital Mortgage Advisor is one of many Artificial Intelligence developments that Fujitsu expects to see enter the financial services industry over coming years.
AI offers the potential to lower costs, improve product and service delivery and enhance the overall customer experience. Furthermore, Fujitsu’s own research has found that consumers are equally prepared to explore the potential that AI offers. It found that 59% of those surveyed would be happy for their bank to use their data to lower their mortgage premium, while 47% of consumers would be content to allow banks to use their data to recommend relevant products and services.
Of course, the use of AI in financial services is not new. Trading businesses have used algorithms for many years. What is new is the increasing levels of interest being shown in AI by the industry and the widening range of applications to which AI technologies are being put. Many banks are already looking at their operations carefully, with a view to prioritising opportunities to deploy AI. Advisory offerings are proving particularly popular amongst retail-led companies.
In an industry increasingly characterised by sluggish revenue growth, costs which remain stubbornly high but where customers are open-minded towards using technologies, the attractions of AI will prove difficult for many banks to overlook.”
For more information, please visit: www.habito.com
The financial sector has paid 465% markup for IT products.
Suppliers are exploiting a lack of transparency in the IT market to inflate product prices, according to the annual KnowledgeBus IT Margins Benchmark Study.
Now in its fourth year, the study shows that the practice of charging excessive margins by suppliers is still commonplace across the financial sector.
Identifying the best price for IT products is notoriously difficult, given the short lifecycle of products and the constant fluctuation of trade costs. Although industry best practice, as specified by the Society of IT Managers, states that organisations should not pay more than a 3% margin to suppliers.
Despite this guidance, the research revealed that one supplier successfully charged a financial company a margin of 465% for an order of memory sticks.
The study suggests that awareness of the high mark-ups charged by some suppliers may in fact be worsening. The average margin paid across the financial sector was actually found to have risen to 19% in 2015 from 14% in 2014.
This also compares unfavourably with the average margin paid across the board by buyers, which currently sits at 17.6%.
Al Nagar, head of benchmarking at KnowledgeBus, said: “Organisations are getting better at scrutinising purchases and negotiating better deals with suppliers. But the analysis shows the many purchases are far in excess of industry best practice.
“The most extreme example of excessive margins are regularly found on those lower volume, spontaneous, ‘as and when’ purchases. These are typically unplanned purchases consisting of items such as memory sticks, power adapters and cables.
“All procurement officers need to be aware of this trend. Although this type of purchase may be perceived to be of a lesser value, compared to major pieces of IT infrastructure, they can make up a good 25% of the IT budget. By the end of the year, this can easily add up to a six figure difference to the overall IT budget.
‘‘Today’s procurement managers don’t have endless amounts of time to talk to multiple suppliers to find the best price. What they need is for there to be greater transparency between suppliers and customers. With the right tools organisations can gain that transparency and bring those margins down to 3%.’’
For organisations looking to achieve best practice levels on IT product purchasing, Al Nagar offers three key tips:
1. Benchmark
Organisations can empower their negotiators, and speed up the IT procurement process, by deploying benchmarking tools. This provides IT buyers with access to up-to-date and validated trade level information that will identify the exact margins suppliers are charging.
2. Agree ‘cost plus’ contracts
Companies can agree ‘cost plus’ contracts with their suppliers to ensure no IT product purchased exceeds an agreed maximum margin level. Procurement teams can use their benchmarking tools to police these contracts.
3. Monitor price trends
By analysing historic or seasonal trade price trends, IT buyers can identify the best times to buy. When trade prices fall to their lowest, suppliers often try to maximise margins achieved, but by monitoring the market, companies can counter this practice.
(Source: KnowledgeBus)
According to the Pulse of FinTech, the quarterly global report on FinTech VC trends published jointly by KPMG International and CB Insights, Asia’s FinTech funding has risen to US$2.6b in the first quarter of 2016. Following a significant pullback in funding in Q4’15, mega-rounds lifted quarterly investment into VC-backed FinTech companies by over 150%.
Global investment in private FinTech companies is said to have totalled US$5.7 billion in Q1’16, with US$4.9 billion specifically invested in VC-backed FinTech companies across 218 deals, a 96% jump in comparison to the same quarter last year. The fact that three mega-rounds accounted for 54% of VC FinTech investment in Q1’16 has resulted in the increase in funding. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, VC-backed FinTech deal activity rose 22% in Q1’16.
Warren Mead, Global Co-Leader of FinTech, KPMG International said: “Global VC investment into the technology sector may be experiencing a bit of a pause, however FinTech, propelled by some very large mega-rounds, has proven to be an exception to the rule. Investors are putting money into FinTech companies all over the world – from the traditional strongholds of China, the US and the UK – to up and coming FinTech hubs like Singapore, Australia and Ireland.”
“While FinTech startups continue to attract large investment both in the US and abroad, and investors gravitate to areas yet untouched by much tech innovation including insurance, recent events and public market performance suggest that growth-stage FinTech fundraising will be harder to come by moving forward in 2016.” commented Anand Sanwal, CEO at CB Insights.
Lyon Poh, Head of Digital + Innovation, KPMG in Singapore, added: “In Singapore, we have seen a flurry of activities in line with the government’s push for financial institutions to adopt innovative technology. For example, many insurers are building innovation centres and programmes to rapidly identify and adopt FinTech solutions to bring innovation back into their core businesses. This has in turn encouraged more FinTech startups to come to Singapore and use it as a base for developing their propositions, and for fund raising.”
In an attempt to give companies the ability to experience how technology is transforming the financial world and how it can be deployed to solve critical business issues, an ultra-modern innovation centre has recently opened its doors in central London.
Dedicated to next generation banking and finance, the state-of–the-art centre was launched by Synechron Inc. – a global consulting and technology innovator in the financial services industry, which has plans to open innovation centres in New York, Florida, Amsterdam and Pune over the next few months. The first innovation centre that the company launched was in Dubai in October 2015 and was the first of its kind internationally.
Through the combined innovation of augmented reality, artificial intelligence, block chain, natural language and biometrics, mobile, and touch and smart technologies, the brand new centre gives businesses the chance to fully immerse themselves in the plethora of new technology available.
The Synechron Digital Innovation Centres’ aim is to act as innovation hubs for individuals and businesses willing to invest in technology and particularly in digital transformation - solving critical business issues and scaling these investments to achieve greater future business success.
The Synechron’s centre will be fully-operational from May 25th 2016 and will offer a number of options: from a half day of brainstorming session for executive management, to a rapid prototyping challenge, or even just a one hour dedicated technology workshop. Some of the key technologies available to visitors include artificial intelligence, Amazon Echo (Alexa), new apps around block chain and tablets with new apps and gamification.
Faisal Husain, CEO of Synechron, said, “We envisioned and invested in building a space where our clients can come and touch the latest in the digital world, get inspired and learn about what trends and technologies are disrupting their customers’ banking experiences worldwide. We want to help our clients be at the very forefront of digital transformation to drive an entirely new concept of banking interaction and engagement.”
As technology’s tentacles increasingly affect every business, technology CEOs around the globe are notably more optimistic about growth prospects than CEOs from other industries.
According to PwC's 19th Annual Global CEO Survey: 90% of tech CEOs expect to increase company sales this year, while 94% of tech respondents anticipate that revenues will rise in the next three years. Responses from the 167 global tech CEOs surveyed gave way to four overarching themes that can help explain the mindset behind the CEOs’ optimism.
Growth in complicated times
“Despite some discomfort about the global economy, tech CEOs are clearly bullish about their own growth prospects,” said Raman Chitkara, PwC Global Technology Industry Leader. “While historically sensitive to managing costs, the number of tech CEOs highlighting cost management as a top priority has come down—consistent with their increased confidence in future growth.”
Only 50% of tech CEOs are focused on cost reduction this year, compared with 60% in last year’s survey. Cost reduction is also a lower priority for tech CEOs than it is for CEOs across other industries, where 68% are focused on cost reduction.
Overall, tech CEOs’ optimism about growth opportunities outweighs their worry about threats, and they are significantly more optimistic about opportunities than CEOs in other industries (72% vs. 60%). But tech CEOs remain aware of major business threats. Topping the list of threats, 80% of respondents are concerned about the availability of key skills—up from just 58% in 2010. Cyber security was second on the list of concerns, followed by the threat of being unable to keep up with accelerating technological change.
Cyber security moved from sixth on tech CEOs’ list of top threats to second this year, and tech CEOs are notably more concerned about cyber security than CEOs from other industries (76% of tech respondents vs. 61% in other industries).
Addressing greater expectations
The majority of tech CEOs believe top talent prefers to work for organisations with social values that are aligned to their own, with 65% of tech CEOs saying that corporate responsibility is core to everything their businesses do. So, not surprisingly, 75% of tech CEOs are making changes to their values, ethics and codes of conduct. Eighty-three percent of tech CEOs say that in five years’ time, successful companies will be guided by a purpose centred on creating value for wider stakeholders. A full 95% of tech CEOs name customers and clients as the wider stakeholders with the highest impact on their organisations’ strategies.
Transforming: Technology, innovation and talent
Indeed, technology is transforming relationships with customers and other stakeholders. An impressive 92% of tech CEOs agree that technological advances will most likely transform wider stakeholder expectations of technology businesses over the next five years. As a result, 86% of tech CEOs are changing how they use technology to access and deliver on wider stakeholder expectations.
“Consistent with their focus in previous years, tech CEOs believe data and analytics, R&D and innovation, and customer relationship management systems will generate the greatest return in terms of engagement with wider stakeholders,” said Chitkara. “This is one area where tech CEOs and their counterparts from other industries are in alignment.”
Two-thirds (67%) of tech CEOs plan to hire this year, a 12% increase from last year and the highest number in the past six years. As a result, they’re increasingly concerned about finding the right talent, in part because more than three-quarters of tech CEOs (78%) believe a skilled, educated and adaptable workforce is the most important outcome for society today.
A new study from Juniper Research finds that the global number of banking apps accessed via smartwatches will reach the 10 million mark in 2017, rising to more than 100 million by 2020.
The research found that the use of smartwatches to access ‘push’ banking information services has been steadily gaining traction over the past 12 months. A number of global banks have launched apps for the wrist, while the launch of Apple Watch in April 2015 further accelerated the demand for wearable banking apps.
Identifying Wearable Banking Use Cases
However, the new research, Worldwide Digital Banking: Mobile, Online & Wearable 2015-2020, notes that while wearable based banking information services has emerged as a key trend, it is perceived by many as a gimmick at present.
Juniper believes that while wearables, including smartwatches and glasses, are not suited for conducting complicated financial instructions, wrist based wearables will become a key device for multi-factor authentication - for banking transaction approval in the future.
“Digital banking has experienced a substantial progression towards personalised computing. We do believe that, keeping pace with technology evolution, wearable banking will witness a faster adoption rate than mobile banking especially amongst millennials”, added research author Nitin Bhas.
The Future of Digital Banking
The research also observed that although banks have introduced a number of innovative new services in the space, such as AR (augmented reality) banking apps and a cashless money box, these generally have a short life span with the consumers.
Juniper believes that banks and financial institutions will need to offer customers more targeted services, aimed at specific user needs. This will be enabled through customer analytics and big data management platforms from vendors such as Oracle, Infosys, Fiserv and SAP.
Babbel, the leading app for language learning, today announces the successful completion of $22 million investment round to drive further growth. The round is led by Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) and supported by existing investors Reed Elsevier Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), and VC Fonds Technology Berlin managed by IBB Bet.
The investment will add momentum to the company’s impressive growth, while ensuring the continuation of its cutting-edge product development. Babbel has been profitable since 2011, with its mobile app now seeing up to 120,000 downloads per day. As the highest grossing language-learning app in both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store, Babbel operates a subscription-based business model with www.mynikevisit-na.com a clear focus on consumers outside the realm of formal education. With its recently released app for Apple Watch, the company presents a strong vision for the future of language learning.
Babbel helps people to discover the fun of language learning and motivates them to stick with it. In fact, the average customer continues to use the app for more than 12 months. In order to get users conversational quickly, the company employs a team of education and language experts who create specific courses for each language pair – 14 learning languages and 7 display languages are currently on offer. Babbel is available on the web, for smartphone and tablet, and now for Apple Watch.
Apple Pay contactless payments use proven NFC (near field communication) technology built into compatible devices in conjunction with the iPhone’s existing Touch ID fingerprint sensor for security, allowing single step transactions. NFC automatically launches Pay when placed near a NFC terminal resulting in rapid transactions; supporting ‘queue busting’ customer journeys, such as transport hubs or supermarket checkouts.
Apple Pay can also be used online in a similar manner as long as merchants add support to their mobile apps. The payee credentials are held in the scheme’s enterprise systems but the transaction is tokenised, so no card information is available to the retailer.
Apple Pay maximum contactless payments will initially be limited by the wider industry agreed of £20 (rising to £30) but as early confidence builds in Apple Pay, it’s hard to see this limit remaining in the long term.
From a merchant perspective there is a 0.15% fee per transaction, which may initially limit merchant adoption. Following Apple Pay's UK launch, many of the earlier disputes over Apple transaction fees seem to be resolved – so all eyes are on the level of adoption in the UK which many think will comfortably surpass the US.
Today marks the launch of Apple Pay in the UK. First launched in the US last autumn and now reaching UK shores, UK customers will now be able to pay for items by tapping an iPhone or an Apple Watch to a card reader. Participating locations include Marks and Spencer and Waitrose, as well as TfL (Transport For London), the company which runs the London Underground.
Richard Koch, Head of Policy at The UK Cards Association, commented, "The introduction of Apple Pay and other new innovative ways to make card payments is great news for consumers and retailers, especially with the increase of the contactless payment limit to £30 from September.
“There has been major growth in the use of contactless as customers and retailers recognise how fast, easy and secure it is to make payments. Innovations such as mobile technology open up new opportunities for consumers to pay with contactless and we expect the surge in use to continue as a result.
“The introduction of the new £30 contactless limit from September is significant as it will narrow the gap between contactless payments and the average card transaction value of £44. Cards are increasingly the preferred method of payment for many consumers, now totalling three-quarters of all retail sales in the UK, and new innovations will only contribute to this.”
Recent figures show there was a 331 per cent rise in use of contactless in 2014, which is behind the increasing shift from cash to cards for low value payments.
According to Transport for London (TfL), on 13 March 2015 the number of contactless taps made on a single day across London's transport network reached one million. Over 14 per cent of all pay as you go journeys across TfL services are now made using contactless, with over 60 million journeys made in the last six months.
Intelligent Environments launched its first attack-aware security software for the banking sector last month.
Intelligent Environments will monitor the applications of its digital banking systems clients via its new Interact security application. The software developer built the new application into its Interact software to apply the AppSensor concept promoted by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), a platform aimed at making all web applications stronger. Intelligent Environments views collaboration across financial services as the best defence against the growing cyber security threat.
Rather than building 'higher' and 'thicker' perimeter defences and making passwords longer and more complex, the new attack-aware software works from the inside, monitoring behaviour inside the perimeter defences.
According to Intelligent Environments, up to 100% of retail banking security software fails to automatically detect and respond to intrusions behind the traditional perimeter defences of banking security protection. With AppSensor, Intelligent Environments has built a platform designed for collaboration. AppSensor is designed so that new detection points, such as data from other systems and devices, can be added to its system, enabling it to grow and evolve with the shifting approaches of cybercriminals. Whether through the new insights that AppSensor provides or new and evolving ways of detecting unusual behaviour, the hope is that the industry can collaboratively make the application stronger.
“For the first time, banks can now deploy security that responds from inside applications that are self-defending. By not being attack-aware, traditional security measures are like putting a lock on the door after the burglar is already inside the building. It’s not enough to have multi-layered security measures at the point of entry. It’s time we gave banks the chance to see what's going on inside the applications that their customers are using and to collect valuable data metrics that are currently absent, giving them security software that can monitor and spot when user activity falls outside an acceptable pattern of behaviour and automatically takes action,” said Clayton Locke, Chief Technology Officer, Intelligent Environments.
