November 2020

UK. More Consumers Than Ever Are Managing Their Pensions Online

New figures from the UK’s leading online pension provider, PensionBee, show that consumers are increasingly managing their pensions online, following a 96% increase in PensionBee app users, as well as an 85% growth in the number of invested customers year on year. PensionBee, the UK’s leading online pension provider, has experienced an 85% increase in the number of invested customers over the past year. Invested customers, defined as having pension assets in a PensionBee plan, currently number around 60,000....

UK. PensionBee mulls float on stock exchange

Pension consolidator PensionBee is seeking to float on the London Stock Trade in a transfer which can see it valued at £300m or extra, based on experiences. In keeping with The Occasions, the digital consolidator is looking for bank advisers for the float and plans to make an appointment earlier than Christmas. Romi Savova, founder and chief govt of PensionBee, advised the paper that robust efficiency in current months had accelerated plans to show PensionBee right into a public...

Building Better Retirement Systems in the Wake of the Global Pandemic

By Olivia S. Mitchell In the wake of the global pandemic known as COVID-19, retirees, along with those hoping to retire someday, have been shocked into a new awareness of the need for better risk management tools to handle longevity and aging. This paper offers an assessment of the status quo prior to the spread of the coronavirus, evaluates how retirement systems are faring in the wake of the shock. Next we examine insurance and financial market products that may...

October 2020

New Finance: In Search for Analytical Framework

By Jan Monkiewicz Since the beginning of the century, modern financial systems have been experiencing a period of dynamic change. These changes have caused the uniform fabric on which the systems were based for a long time to become eroded and a multitude of alternative solutions to appear in their place. The existing systems are becoming increasingly heterogeneous and increasingly less transparent. In addition to the traditional financial system based on highly regulated financial intermediaries with a legal monopoly,...

Fintech and Financial Literacy in the Lao PDR

By Peter Morgan, Long Q. Trinh A growing literature has examined the role of financial literacy in an individual’s income, saving behavior and the use of various financial products. However, so far, no one has examined the relationship between financial literacy and the awareness and adoption of financial technology (fintech) products, i.e., financial products provided via internet-based and mobile-based platforms. This paper examines this relationship in a developing country, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). We use information collected...

UK. PensionBee and Plaid team up to call for ‘open pensions’

The two fintechs are calling on the FCA to speed up the introduction of Open Finance to help people view their pensions all in one place. Digital pension provider PensionBee and financial API provider Plaid have joined forces to push for an open finance standard within the pension industry. In a report published by the pair yesterday, Plaid and PensionBee are calling for ‘open pensions’ to be made standard, something which they claim will “improve financial decisions”...

September 2020

Impact of Fintech Development on Savings, Borrowing and Remittances: A Comparative Study of Emerging Economies

By Angela Lyons, Josephine Kass-Hanna, Ana Polato e Fava Fintech is rapidly changing the landscape for financial services in terms of accessibility and affordability, especially in this post-COVID era. Digital finance now has the potential to be a game changer for the nearly two billion financially excluded persons in the developing and emerging world. Non-bank providers such as mobile money services have expanded and are leapfrogging ahead of conventional banking services. This study investigates the linkages between fintech development...

Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: A Transformative Symbiosis in Favour of Financial Technology

By Charalampos Stasinakis, Georgios Sermpinis The financial technology revolution is a reality, as the financial world is gradually transforming into a digital domain of high-volume information and high-speed data transformation and processing. The more this transformation takes place, the more consumer and investor behaviour shifts towards a pro-technology attitude of financial services offered by market participants, financial institutions and financial technology companies. This new norm is confirming that information technology is driving innovation for financial technology. In this framework,...

JPMorgan-backed Brazil fintech plans to expand in U.S., Mexico

FitBank Pagamentos Eletronicos SA, a Brazilian fintech backed by JPMorgan Chase, plans to open a U.S. office in the first half of 2021. The payment-services firm, which has more than 100 clients in Brazil, is also expecting to start operations in Mexico, Peru and Colombia sometime next year, according to Chief Executive Otavio Farah. Payment technology “doesn’t vary much from nation to nation,” Farah said in a virtual interview from FitBank’s office in Sao Paulo. “We can really go...

Digital financial services

By World Bank Access to affordable financial services is critical for poverty reduction and economic growth. Countries with deeper, more developed financial systems enjoy higher economic growth and larger reductions in poverty and income inequality. Access to financial services also increases opportunities and resilience for the poor, particularly women. Despite this, 65 percent of adults in the world’s poorest economies lack access to even the most basic transaction account that would allow them to send and receive...