Jake Donoghue, author of the book Crypto Confidential, shares some of the worst practices he saw as a founder of a cryptocurrency company.

Karen Petrou, the managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics and a long-time observer of banking and regulation, says banks need to do far more due diligence on potential fintech partners and exert more control over these relationships.

Financial technology startups have developed some useful technology for consumers, such as automated savings, says Tescher, who founded the Financial Health Network 20 years ago. But some fintech innovations are more questionable. 

Geraldine Fleming, financial task force manager at United for Wildlife and Jonny Bell, director, EMEA, LexisNexis Risk Solutions explain how banks around the world are helping to catch criminals who illegally mutilate, kill and sell rhinoceroses, elephants, donkeys and other animals.

Eric Siegel, author of the book The AI Playbook, explains what it takes to take traditional and advanced artificial intelligence projects from idea to execution.  

The neobank doubled its membership to five million consumers and hired 200 people last year. Founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche explains how it fared during a time when many fintechs struggled.

Mike Abbott, global banking lead at Accenture, shared some of his predictions and opinions for the year ahead.

The fintech revolution has been more successful at working with banks than at trying to replace them, points out Gene Ludwig, former Comptroller of the Currency, chair of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, and co-founder of Canapi Ventures. Those with “must have” products will fare far better in 2024 than those with “nice to have” tools, he says.

It's been a rough year for fintechs and for the venture capital firms that fund them. Venture capital flows into financial technology companies dropped by 36% year over year to $6 billion in the third quarter of 2023. But Amy Nauiokas, founder and CEO of Anthemis Group, is optimistic about 2024.

Over the past year, the national bank regulators’ oversight of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, Silvergate Capital and other banks that failed has been criticized. Reports of a toxic workplace at the FDIC have come to light. And the OCC hired a Deputy Comptroller and overseer of fintech who had easily discoverable falsehoods on his resume. Michele Alt, cofounder and managing director at Klaros Group, explains what this might mean for banks in the coming year.

Penny Lee, president and CEO of the Financial Technology Association and Steve Boms, executive director of FDATA NA, explain what their members like about the proposed regulation and what they would change.

Community banks sometimes feel that they lack the budget and staff to compete with larger banks and fintechs on things like mobile and online banking, virtual assistants and most recently generative AI. Jim Perry, senior strategist at Market Insights, suggests steps they can and should take to stay relevant technology wise.

The case is not really about cryptocurrency but about fraud, points out Seoyoung Kim, department chair and associate professor of finance and business analytics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. But regulators and lawmakers are watching and the outcome of the trial will have repercussions throughout finance.

Bell, an attorney, founded Ready Life to help reduce the racial wealth and homeownership gaps by showing lenders that credit-score-less consumers have been responsible with their money, based on their daily transactions. Now he and Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, are buying a community bank just outside of Salt Lake City.

Financial institutions can trade billions of dollars per day and handle sensitive data for millions of customers across the globe, which make them enormously attractive targets for cybercriminals. Their defenses must be top notch and ever evolving to keep up with this threat, but FIs' infrastructures are usually vast and complex, straddling old, legacy mainframes and cutting-edge, cloud-based applications that can create security gaps. Moreover, regulations mandate that some divisions within institutions are siloed from each other, which complicates communication and a coordinated defense against cyber criminals.

In this difficult security environment, a hyper focus on integration is critical. FIs should look to consolidate tools to fewer vendors so they have less to manage. Many are grappling to understand their security posture and vulnerabilities, how to efficiently manage cloud-based applications, and whether they should buy or build their own security solutions. In this podcast, experts in the field will tell stories from the trenches – the good, the bad, and the ugly when protecting some of the largest, most complex networks in banking.

Though generative AI has limitations and risks, there is a cost to ignoring it, according to Ryan Favro, a managing principal at Capco.

Immersive technologies and automation are also on the list of technologies that are here, employees want them and companies like banks need to deal with them, says Phil Simon, author of a new book called The Nine: The Tectonic Forces Reshaping the Workplace.

Marisa Calderon, executive director of a nonprofit community development financial institution, explains why the wealth gap persists, for instance systemic bias in the appraisal process, and what lenders could do to reduce it.

Leaders of many of the biggest tech companies recently signed an open letter calling on all AI labs to immediately pause the training of advanced artificial intelligence systems. Seth Dobrin, advisor to the Responsible AI Institute and former chief AI officer at IBM, shares his thoughts on where banks should be careful about using AI.

Dr. Aniket Bera, associate professor at the department of computer science at Purdue University, explains how AI can be used in the financial services industry to detect when a customer is angry or depressed or even when an employee is upset or about to commit fraud.

Sumeet Chabria, founder and CEO of advisory firm Thoughtlinks and a former tech executive at Bank of America, explains some of the technology changes every bank should be making to ensure it’s not the next victim of a bank run.

Brian Graham, partner and co-founder of advisory and investment firm Klaros Group, breaks down what went wrong with Silvergate Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and what banks can do to avoid the problems that brought these banks down.

Penny Lee, president and CEO of the Financial Technology Association, is pushing back on some claims banks and their trade groups have recently made about financial technology companies, for instance that fintechs don’t meet consumer financial protection standards.

More than 50 million people are caught up in modern slavery, according to the U.N. Hidden crimes like human trafficking and elder abuse are more common than most people think. Ian Mitchell at The Knoble, who led crime detection at several financial institutions, works with banks to find signs of abuse and help law enforcement to help victims and catch perpetrators, including among Super Bowl crowds.

Matthew Pincoski, director of engagement systems at Ent Credit Union in Colorado Springs, describes some of the ways he and his team have been using low-code and no-code software to do things like create next-best-offer messages for customers.

Enlightenment can be found in everyday activities like work, says Thane Lawrie, author of the book, The Buddhist CEO. Lawrie explains some of the Buddhist ideas that, when practiced, can make people better leaders, colleagues and family members.  

Mike Abbott, global banking lead at Accenture, predicts the
trends that will change the way banks operate in the coming year,
including a rate environment that hasn't been seen in more than a
decade, a comeback for branches and soaring credit delinquencies.

About half of small businesses nationwide are now classified as financially unhealthy: They have difficulty paying bills on time, inadequate cash reserves or insufficient insurance. Eytan Bensoussan, founder and CEO of NorthOne, a neobank for small businesses, shares his thoughts on how banks and fintechs can help these customers survive.

The Florida bank has emerged from de novo status and can now offer its solar loans in a larger geographic footprint.

A panel of experts discuss the midterm elections, the FTX blowup and the legislative and regulatory policy implications that both will have in Washington.

If Web3 is real, where do banks fit in — if they do? Alex Tapscott, managing director of the digital asset group at Ninepoint Partners and co-author of the book Blockchain Revolution, explains how the internet has evolved and how banks might take advantage of the latest iteration of it.

Technology has turned the art of deposit pricing into a science, say Betty Cowell and Rohan Shah, experts at Simon Kucher & Partners. They also predict when the large banks will raise their rates.

“Animal welfare scores low in priority at many financial institutions” in the U.S., says Merel van der Mark, animal welfare and finance program manager for Sinergia Animal, an organization based in Brazil that has been maintaining a ranking of how banks around the world perform on several measures of ethics with regard to animals.

Consumer Bankers Association president and CEO Richard Hunt is retiring from the organization this summer, and in a wide-ranging interview he offers his thoughts on the future of the banking industry, the direction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and what how banks can compete against less-regulated fintechs.

DJ DiDonna, founder of The Sabbatical Project, says the breaks help companies avoid staff burnout and recruit and retain high-performing employees. That may be why double the number of Best Fintechs to Work For offer sabbaticals this year.

Ian Khan, futurist and author of the forthcoming book "Metaverse for Dummies," shares a vision of virtual workplaces where young developers, designers and other talented staffers will want to meet.

Foundational models like GPT-4, the large language model behind ChatGPT, have hoovered up content from publications like The New York Times and social media sites like Reddit and OpenAI, and it faces several lawsuits because of this. John Thompson, global head of artificial intelligence at EY and author of the book Data for All, has set up what is believed to be the largest private, secure generative AI environment in the world, with focus on keeping internal data protected.

One reason: lack of digital IDs, say Mary Ellen Iskenderian of Women’s World Banking and Janet Truncale of EY.

The acquisition of the small-business lending marketplace Boefly and partnerships with the loan software company nCino and the construction lending fintech Built are among the efforts helping the New Jersey bank compete with fintechs that have gotten good at serving niche markets, says Frank Sorrentino, its CEO.

The bank was one of the 11 that collaborated with Google in 2020 on a plan to introduce checking accounts through Google Pay. Josh Williams, chief banking officer and head of partnerships at Seattle Bank, talks about what the company gained from that experience and what he looks for in potential fintech partnerships.

TomoCredit's Kristy Kim watched while VCs wrote checks faster to her male counterparts with similar metrics, but bypassed her startup. Now she has the growth to show they were wrong.