Together with the celebration of International Women’s Day, we explore for this week’s piece how to tackle gender biases in wealth management, take a closer look at encryption, explore superapps, highlight the importance of sustainability for the bank of the future, see which companies are dominating the EU fintech landscape, analyze further the implications of Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s speech, and get a better understanding on government support for fiscal matters. 

Tackling unconscious gender biases in wealth management (FinTech Futures)

Yaela Shamberg, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at InvestCloud, highlights the recurring gender gap within the wealth management industry. In order to promote a change in attitude, Shamberg pinpoints the importance of the whole ecosystem working together, with advisers recognizing their paramount role and challenging their understanding of female investors’ needs. International Women’s Day provides the perfect opportunity for the financial advice sector to reflect on how they can better serve and engage female clients. Read more

Breaking Encryption Myths (Global Encryption Coalition)

This report highlights the importance of preventing crime and keeping people secure online is a universal priority. While curbing the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online is an important goal towards this end, the European Commission’s leaked report outlines a handful of so-called “content moderation solutions” that would put all users, including children, at far greater risk of harm. While the report alludes to the idea that some may be less risky than others, each method presents serious security and privacy risks for billions of users worldwide. Read more

Walmart’s Fintech Ambition: A Super App, Not The ‘Bank Of Walmart’ (Forbes)

Ron Shelvin, Senior Contributor at Forbes, dives into why Walmart is moving into planning a “fintech” business unit. Furthermore, Walmart’s fintech aspiration is a lot bigger than just creating a digital bank—it’s creating a true digital ecosystem in the form of a super app. Walmart’s super app will be a self-service advertising platform for Walmart partners to manage digital ad campaigns. Read more

Redefine the Branch to Build Sustainability in the Future of Banking (Finextra)

Tushar Chitra, VP, Product Strategy and Marketing at Oracle, explains the outdated method of the branch as a servicing outpost. In order to be able to serve the customers in a digitalized context, the bank branch must be redefined into a branch of the future. This redefined branch will shift from a center of service to a center of sales that will accelerate revenue growth and strengthen customer relationships. Read more

The company now dominating European fintech is… Paypal (Sifted.eu)

Isabel Woodford, fintech journalist at Sifted.eu, pinpoints the most important names from fintech in terms of dominant EU players. For now, PayPal takes the lead in wallet services  and online payments, but is getting more competition in sectors such as Buy-Now-Pay-Later with companies like Klarna. Monzo, which won silver with ~2m UK downloads in 2020, while Revolut actually lags behind Monzo in the UK. Read more

Budget 2021: Fintech omission disappoints (Bobsguide.com)

Tom Lemmon, writer at Bobsguide.com, explores the aftermath of the speech given on March 3rd by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who failed to specifically mention the sector in his Budget announcement. Luke Hamm, CEO of R&D tax specialists GovGrant said in a statement that the government had “fallen short” of expectations. “Fintech is one of the crucial sectors for the UK’s economic recovery from coronavirus and Brexit. The Kalifa Review has highlighted this fact, and yet today’s Budget has offered nothing to further investment in the sector,” Hamm said. Read more

Fiscal Follies in the COVID Recovery (Project Syndicate)

Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, reviews whether additional stimulus is required with governments in advanced economies continuing to keep the fiscal taps open. This analysis highlights the importance of government support for those affected by the pandemic. Even in a post Covid-19 world, the “GDP gap” will be slow to close, because many sectors will continue to operate below normal capacity for some time to come. In fact, the IMF predicts that some countries will have to wait until 2022 before they return to pre-crisis GDP, because not all sectors can bounce back immediately. Read more

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