The 2020 Interview Gap Report undertaken by Karat contains insights from over 300 engineering leaders on hiring strategies pre and post Covid-19. For prosperous growth of firms, software engineers are essential, but the interviewing and hiring processes tax engineering processes tax engineering productivity, underachieve on hiring targets, and frequently produce new hires that fail to meet technical expectations. The take-overs that the study suggests lies in the interview gap, mostly caused by lack of time and expertise. Read more

Deloitte’s Middle East FinTech Study shares in-depth findings from the FinTech industry. As such, we see a general trend of misalignment between customer expectations and bank offerings. The main causes for this effect are: the rapid evolving ecosystem in terms of deploying new innovations, the reluctance of banks to integrate FinTech into their strategies, customer behavior and missed opportunities by banks to leverage the full suite of Fintech solutions. Read more

Appen Limited, a leading provider of high-quality training data for organizations that build effective AI systems at scale, conducted its annual State of AI Report for 2020. The report highlights increasing C-suite involvement and investment in enterprise AI projects as well as data being a key challenge as AI models get more frequent updates in production. The report also reveals the recent acceleration of AI strategies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more

In terms of research from the funding sector, positive developments are taking place:

• RegTech investment in H1 2020 defies the odds in the current uncertain market, with growth in funding. RegTech companies raised nearly $4bn (€ 3.5bn) across 120 deals in the first six months of the year. US companies continue to dominate the RegTech space, capturing 80% of the top ten deals in H1 2020. Singapore continues to make good on their promise to promote RegTech innovation despite Covid-19 hurdles. Investors pour an increasing amount of capital into RegTech companies as the share of deals over $50m (€44m) nearly doubles since 2018. Read more
• There has been a set-back in venture compared to 2 years ago, when the funding in start-ups technology was at its peak. However, in the past month, the IPO market seems to be opening up with a number of tech companies filing to go public namely nCino, Snowflake, Palantir Technologies, Jamf and Amwell Health. Lemonade and Accolade both went public on July 2 as the third quarter kicked off. Read more
• Digital Insurance‘s quarterly review of Crunchbase data found that from 81 InsurTech investments in 2019, only 36 took place this year. The rounds of investments under $10 million (€8.8m) dipped less precipitously, however; from 21 to 15. Companies receiving funding in these uncertain times are: Oscar, Pie Insurance, Coalition, Bestow, CLARA Analytics, Planck, Openly, Clyde. Read more

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Read here our other sections of this week:

• Weekly funding highlights 10 July 2020
• Weekly news highlights 10 July 2020
• Weekly analysis & opinion highlights 10 July 2020

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