by George Polzer | Aug 30, 2015 | Banking, Digital Transformation, P2P, Studies

Bharat Masrani, TD’s CEO, warned in May that banking “is changing in fundamental ways and at breakneck speed, as new technologies lower the barriers to entry and innovative competitors emerge.”
Once the strongest connection with customers, bank branches are under siege. A fresh wave of technological innovation is changing the game, creating new competitors and a wider array of options for customers.
She’s a mobile
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by George Polzer | Aug 29, 2015 | Digital Transformation, VCs, StartUps... Acquisitions

SWISS banking giant UBS has launched a competition for game-changing entrepreneurs and technology start-ups around the world.
The UBS Future of Finance Challenge will be delivered in collaboration with several of the leading financial technology crowd-working and accelerator spaces including Level39 and JFDI.Asia, as well as the innovation agency 100%Open.
“By inviting entrepreneurs and startups to present their ideas, UBS also supports a more open
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by George Polzer | Aug 8, 2015 | Digital Transformation, Enterprise Solution, Investment Management, NextGen Advisor

The Robo-Advisor Value Proposition – Systematizing And Automation
Morningstar’s “gamma” research. Which means in the end, robo-advisors may be less of a threat to traditional advisors, than simply an acknowledgement that inefficient advisors that don’t systematize and utilize technology will be increasingly threatened by those who do – whether robot, or technology-augmented human.
Underlying the robo-advisor model, though, are insights that are relevant to any
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by George Polzer | Jul 31, 2015 | B2C, Blockchain, Crowd Based/Social, Digital Transformation, News & Trends

The financial system will need to be a platform that federates existing players (such as banks) and new players (such as telecommunication companies… )
1) bitcoin-inspired distributed systems
2) open APIs (application programming interface) as a new way to consumer business services on the internet
3) crowd-sourced identity schemes
4) open source hardware and applications
How can the traditional industry players prepare for such changes?
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by George Polzer | Jul 27, 2015 | Digital Transformation, News & Trends, Studies

How this New Power Persona is Reshaping the Finace Industry
Affluent Millennials — those with at least $100,000 in investable assets excluding real estate — have a uniquely progressive view of the future. They envision a cashless, sharing-based economy where banks no longer serve as their primary financial institutions.
Affluent Millennials have very strong expectations of a looming financial crisis. However, they also have very
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by George Polzer | Jul 27, 2015 | Digital Transformation

Even when explicitly defined, the term ‘digital transformation’ is still misunderstood.
Throughout their interviews, Altimeter “found digital investments have evolved beyond a follow-up to investments in traditional touchpoints and supporting systems. Now, they’re leading the way toward transformation.” Transformation not only of how such companies interact with customers, but also how they rise to the Digital Transformation challenge via internal reorganization.
Changing customer behavior, then,
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