Tech Giants in Financial Services, Use of AI in Banking, a Novel Approach to Auto Lending: Essential Banking News

This week we take a look at the tech giants in financial services competing for your customer and how AI is being used in banking today.

The tech giants are coming for your customers. Be ready.

Tech giants have already penetrated financial services, and they did it so stealthily that most players in the industry are in some form of denial. But, as Rob Blackwell writes, it's time to face the music. These tech giants are here to stay and are well-equipped to take your customers: 'Amazon, Google and Facebook are sitting on their own pile of data that includes everything from what customers already own to what they secretly covet (via searches online). There's no doubt that tech companies are eager to find ways to exploit that information in the financial services arena.'

Read more at American Banker

The Surprising Ways Finance Is Already Using AI

Just because artificial intelligence isn't yet being used as it is in most sci-fi movies doesn't mean there aren't creative ways financial institutions are using it right now. Jon Ogden writes in Forbes about what FIs can do to bring AI to their users today and in the future: 'Financial institutions can prepare for this AI explosion by embracing the flexibility of fintech APIs, data aggregation, analytics and more. There’s an opportunity here to get ahead of the curve by laying a solid foundation of data.'

Read more at Forbes

One community bank’s novel approach to auto lending

Access National, a community bank based in Virginia, is doing things a little differently as they look to get into auto lending. Access CEO, Michael Clarke, indicates that their approach will allow them to better understand the space: 'The group will initially focus on financing commercial real estate deals and acquisition for dealerships ... That will allow Access to become more familiar with the market, while giving dealerships a chance to learn more about the company.' 

Read more at American Banker

Bitcoin is making banks nervous. Here's why.

'We used to assume that large centralized organizations had legitimacy and power. But that’s starting to change. As distributed trust technologies develop, we will continue to see this power shift.'

Read more at the World Economic Forum

Banks, retailers, tech firms make rare joint call for federal data security rules

In a letter drafted to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, 22 financial, retail, and technology trade associations are calling for 'new legislation [that] should create a “flexible, scalable” standard that would account for the size, cost and nature of data collected by a company and that it should create a “notification regime” requiring timely notice of a data breach to consumers, law enforcement and regulators.'

Read more at American Banker

3 Biggest FinTech Trends For 2018

'With 2017 coming to an end, we can get a glimpse of what’s yet to come in the next 12 months through the number of investments and product testing.'

Read more at Plug and Play

 'Three of the top five money transfer companies worldwide will be implementing Ripple’s XRP token in their payment flow systems this year, the company said in a tweet Thursday. The tweet, which did not identify the partners, comes as XRP has rallied to overtake ethereum as the No. 2 cryptocurrency by market cap while Ripple has been criticized for its fair weather and sometimes opaque way of talking about the token.'

Read more at Coindesk