Written by Sashreka Pillay

Nope. It’s not our four letter peak-traffic companion. (Although in some circles it does seem like as much of a swear word.)

To get there, let’s try something different. Imagine I’m standing in front of a white board signalling “one word, seven letters”. Then, in your mind’s eye see me enact the funniest moment of slapstick comedy you could ever think of; reminding you of your guiltiest pleasure YouTube “fail”video. You then scream out in triumph: “The word is Failure”!

Yes, that exercise was touch and go for me too. No, I haven’t been invited to many games of charades but now you know what I’m talking about. So it still worked. Yay.

Why even talk about failure in fintech? Because the industry is growing up. Use-cases are being tested and so is a firms’ stamina. We may be too polite to admit it but in most fintech spheres competition is growing. And as with any industry on its way to maturity, it can mean more than a few casualties.

Read more: Let’s talk about the F-Word in Fintech

Calling the world’s best fintechs to solve real business problems

One of the largest and most established Singapore banks has launched the TOV Innovation Challenge 2018 that aims to reimagine customer experience through co-innovation with fintech firms.

Shortlisted fintechs will be invited to join a 12-week programme where they will further develop their implementable solutions to address the challenges put forth by eight different business units in the bank. This is a collaborative programme where both fintechs and the respective business units will have to work closely together to co-develop and test the solutions.

The Opportunity
The TOV Innovation Challenge 2018 is open to any organisation that has developed and built a solution that aligns to one of the pre-defined opportunity statements:

Read more: Large Singapore bank launches Innovation Challenge

Written by guest blogger, Ruhan Basson

"You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.” ~Steve Jobs

In today’s world of omni-channel banking, over 90% of customers are dissatisfied with traditional methods of authentication (1). Some of the more common grumbles include:

• The time taken to authenticate
• Complex password and PIN requirements that are hard to remember
• Challenging questions that are intrusive and, in some cultures, offensive
• Authentication tokens that are inconvenient to carry around

Traditional frameworks and security approaches to mapping the customer journey are becoming obsolete. In today’s interconnected world, why would customers want to continuously authenticate themselves? They want synchronisation access across including branches, desktops, call centres and mobile phones. They want to choose between numerous channels, and move freely and seamlessly between them. Customer expectations are changing, and as such, the way that security supports the customer journey needs to adapt too.

Read more: Mismatched furniture? Hipster. A mismatched experience across channels? Not so cool.

Written by Matchi Fintech Lead, Sashreka Pillay

Have you ever seen the Facebook page “Millenials of New York”? I’ve had one visit and that was enough for me. It was around the time Prince passed away. They featured a stock-photo perfect face; the kind you find in all adverts targeting youths with messages of freedom and happiness etc. The caption below flaunted something like: “Prince is dead? The queen must be so sad!”

Yup. It didn’t matter that the page had more than 200 000 likes, I was out. So much so that I’ve spent many hours rejecting any definition of the millennial generation including my birth year.

More frightful for me: Are we really trying to design the future of finance based on what we bucket as the characteristics of this generation? It feels like our vision of the future should be set a little further and based more on what we imagine the future expectations of our customers to be.

Read more: Is Fintech really all about millennials?

How Insurtechs Can Unlock The Opportunity

Cyber risk is not just a wholly digital risk – it spills over into the physical world of tangible assets as well, e.g. hacking into a fire protection sprinkler system could lead to flooding and damage to physical property.

An integrated view of cyber is critical to fully address the range of risks that it can give rise to.

Cyber risk is a bridge between tangible and intangible assets, which leaves organisations exposed to a much wider scale of damage, which is not often adequately insured since Cyber Insurance has historically been focused on digital assets, such as client’s personal data or transactional data.

The increase in cyber attacks along with its wider impact has led insurers clients and insurers to rethink the knock-on effect on other insurance lines like personal (reputation), property (physical damage), intellectual property (competitor information) etc.

Read more: Matchi Report: Cyber Insurance

Transforming Financial Institution Business Models in the Cloud

Are business models and market conditions changing faster than your payment strategy can?

Changing business models require innovative agile technology and a recognition that innovation in payments is a necessity to keep existing customers and create new opportunities. Financial institutions are ill equipped and encumbered by legacy systems which prevent them from adapting to this new environment.

The right cloud based payments systems can help financial institutions compete in this landscape and not be left behind.

Successful implementation and integration of these systems are already taking place –and in many cases forward thinking Financial Institutions are already doing this.

Read more: Matchi Master Discussion: Agile Payments with i2c and KPMG

Global report on on fintech investment trends

Given the significant interest in fintech globally, and its ongoing evolution in terms of market drivers, technologies and potential use-cases, KPMG brings you the pulse of fintech investment globally. In this publication, we highlight key fintech deals, issues and challenges seen around the world, in addition to key trends and insights related to fintech in key regions, including the Americas, the US, Asia and Europe.

Despite a third straight quarter of decline in total global fintech deal volume, total investment rose slightly in Q4’17. A number of large deals helped to buoy investment levels, including the buyout of Bankrate and the acquisitions of BluePay and Trayport. The fintech market as a whole continued to mature during 2017, with global investors no longer just getting their feet wet within the fintech market, but making more targeted investments focused on value and long-term sustainability. Despite the narrowing focus on the part of investors, total global investment in fintech remained steady at over $31 billion, year-over-year.

Read more: KPMG Pulse of Fintech, Q4 2017