No, 40% of European startups are not lying about having “AI”
A series of news articles based on a report from venture capital fund MMC Ventures and Barclays made headlines revealing that 40% of “AI” startups in Europe do not have…
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VCs are ploughing money into AI, but are they using it to make decisions?
An interesting survey about venture capital attitudes to data and tech echoes trends in the financial services industry writ large. VC invested some $24.6 billion in AI and machine learning…
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About the NY Fed’s plan for tournament modeled on spies
The Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and New York inaugurated a joint research day on quantitative tools for monitoring macroeconomic and financial conditions, and remarks made by Simon Potter during…
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Regulators fire warning shot at bigtech, fintech out of crosshairs for now
A recent Financial Stability Board report highlighted the challenges to the financial markets of new market actors we often refer to as bigtech, defined by the global financial watchdog as…
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Key takeaways for financial services from Cybertech Israel
Transformation is a “magic” word that represents a slew of digital challenges coming down the pipe, which push banks to think about starting from scratch to find the right solutions.…
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Space: the next data frontier
As the market for space exploration grows and expands, the private sector is getting more significant in influencing and shaping it, said speakers at a recent conference in Tel Aviv…
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Fintech at Davos: not so gloomy, says expert
The general media commentary around Davos could be summed up as “gloomy and depressing”, but that doesn’t seem to be true for fintech. Granted, there may be some selection bias…
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What kind of humans do you need for financial AI?
Speakers from banking and insurance described a daunting reality for the staffing of so-called “digital transformations”, at the AI EMEA Live conference hosted by AI and Intelligent Automation Network. It…
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What IBM said about AI and quantum at CES 2019
CES, held in Las Vegas, is one of the year’s most closely watched consumer technology extravaganzas, and while financial services is not exactly spotlighted, IBM’s keynote had some announcements worth…
Read More Custodian’s cyber fallout with pension fund is a wake-up call
This week, State Street is going to be scrutinized for data security incidents that affected a pension fund client, LACERA (Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, $56bn AuM). Detailed summaries…
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2018 year in review: what happened in advanced (fin)tech
2018 was predicted to be the year of AI by many experts across a variety of sectors, and it was. But it’s also the year that quantum computing started to…
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What the buy-side thinks about alt-data and AI (Premium)
Alternative data and artificial intelligence for investment are exploding. But what do funds actually think about when investing? Key takeaways from the Battle of the Quants Big Data conference. Continue…
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Early AI adopters choose revenue and competition over cost savings
The latest MIT Sloan Management Review just published Artificial intelligence in business gets real, which details the results of the 2018 artificial intelligence global executive study and research project in…
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AI tech: are your neural networks convoluted? Try spikes.
The application of artificial intelligence across industries depends on hardware acceleration, and some of the ways that’s being done was detailed at a recent Nvidia conference for GPU (graphics processing…
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Nvidia boasts deep learning hardware breakthroughs, but early days for finance (Premium)
Nvidia has been getting a lot of attention for its GPU strategy in an era of artificial intelligence, not least due to the atmospheric rise of its stock price over…
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AI needs human-in-the-loop ethics. Is this a job for regulators?
Last year, the passing of a former Russian officer who averted nuclear disaster served as a reminder why “human-in-the-loop” ethics for artificial intelligence and machine learning isn’t merely jargon. In…
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Deep learning in finance is changing geography and systemic risk (Premium)
As the latest rounds get fought between New York and London for the coveted prize of world’s top financial center, some questions are being raised whether new technologies are changing…
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Regtech spotlight: using machine learning on network data
Corvil’s Intelligence Hub is now shipping, and the analytics and regtech firm is showing some early adoption use cases for its machine-time, artificial intelligence-powered analytics of network data. That may…
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A Framework for Evaluating and Prioritizing Automation Projects
Automation is the new “big thing” in capital markets, but weren’t computers invented to automate the work of humans that would otherwise be done by people? Predictions of wide scale…
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Fintechs must understand how cybersecurity rules are unfolding
Your executive board has just been notified of a spammy-looking demand from “North Korean” attackers to pay ransom on threats of releasing sensitive client information: What do you have to…
Read More Quantum computing insiders ride fintech hype cycle
In 2015, it was rumored that the notoriously secretive hedge fund RenTech, a pioneer in using advanced technologies for investment and trading, was hiring graduates straight out of University of Amsterdam’s…
Read More Putting machines to work for portfolio managers and traders
The upward mobility of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the mass consciousness can be described by the competitions they’ve competed in and won against humans. The companies and games…
Read More An AI winter is nowhere in sight, and neither is an AI definition
Whenever the hype over artificial intelligence goes a bit too far, the term “AI winter” tends to pop up, injecting a tone of cynicism that “we’ve been here before”, and…
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Big tech and startups lead on deep learning, and that’s OK
An interesting briefing from CB Insights detailed how a specific slice of artificial intelligence, called deep learning, has vast implications for mitigating risk and reducing costs in financial services. Based…
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US Treasury fintech report: four impacts to securities finance
The US Treasury issued the fourth report in their series, “A Financial System That Creates Economic Opportunities”; this one focuses on Fintech. Some of the recommendations speak to matters that…
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Managing data through complexity: business evolution in the machine age
The evolution of capital markets, including complex regulations such as the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR), has resulted in a need to manage and understand data as a core function,…
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Applying Artificial Intelligence to Securities Finance
Technology is the critical competitive element in our business today, ranging across all capital markets activities including securities lending. However, technological innovation is a difficult task to master: the current…
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The Basel Committee thinks there are five bank scenarios for fintech disruption; only one matters in capital markets (Premium)
In a report released this week, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision evaluated the implications of fintech developments for banks and supervisors. This healthy analysis came up with five scenarios…
Read More Custodians really are making the transition to “technology as a service” providers (Premium)
We’re making the call: the leading custodians are successfully moving to a new business model from the top down that sees technology as the main service they are providing, wrapped…
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SFM Magazine, Winter 2018, is now online
Artificial Intelligence, Asia, Collateral Management, Derivatives, Europe, Repo, Securities Lending, US
Securities Finance Monitor Magazine, Winter 2018, is now online. This edition, our Technology Special, features articles on what protectionism means for efficiency in global capital markets, a proposal for smart…
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Artificial Intelligence is one way of several to bridge the manual to STP gap (Premium)
Big banks, established vendors and start-ups are seeing a similar opportunity: technology should be used to get manual and voice transactions into electronic systems for post-trades processing, particularly for collateralized…
Read More Collateral management technology vendors on blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (Premium)
For our recently released survey of 21 collateral management technology vendors, we asked how far vendors had come in monitoring, testing or going live with a blockchain or Artificial Intelligence…
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Recent layoffs in securities finance show the impact of technology (Premium)
We have been wondering for a while if technology was going to mean fewer people working in securities finance. For the front office, the answer is now pushing towards a…
Read More DB chief warns banking jobs will be lost to robotics but history tells a different story
John Cryan, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, recently told bankers in Frankfurt that robots would replace many human workers at his firm. The modern history of technology, though, doesn’t…
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US Senate hearing add impetus to convergence between financial firms and fintech
The US Senate committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs recently held hearings on Fintech and regulations. The speed of Fintech making a tangible impact in financial markets is accelerating;…
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Finadium: The Business Case for Robotic Process Automation in Capital Markets
In an environment where compressed profit margins and general control remain high priorities, many approaches are being taken to increase automation. One of the most popular and potentially most expeditious…
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Applications for artificial intelligence in securities finance and collateral management
Following numerous hype cycles, artificial intelligence (AI) is now gaining widespread adoption, with the potential to radically transform many areas of the financial services industry. Continue reading
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The Fintech overhype cyclical has gone into overdrive
We went to a Fintech meet up last night and came away with one outstanding conclusion: the hype cycle in the startup financial technology market is beyond anything we consider…
Read More Finadium: AI in Capital Markets: What Matters and What Doesn’t
The technology buyer in capital markets is getting inundated with marketing about the latest hot trend in fintech: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Still reeling from the blockchain onslaught of the last…
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