Bankloch

Enormous investments have gone into optimizing the customer onboarding process. Fintechs have led the way in creating real-time, frictionless onboarding experiences that not only establish a customer relationship and open the necessary accounts but also handle all required KYC due diligence. For fintechs, whose survival often depended on rapid growth, fast customer acquisition was critical - making seamless onboarding a top priority. In response, many incumbent banks have adopted parts of these fluid onboarding journeys, reducing the initial competitive edge fintechs once held. By contrast, offboarding a customer is rarely as smooth. Often manual and cumbersome, this process tends to receive less attention - understandably so, as it represents revenue loss rather than growth. However, opportunities may lie in transforming offboarding into a strategic moment. Automating and simplifying it reduces costs, and a seamless exit experience can preserve goodwill. A customer leaving today might...

By 2035, data centers in Belgium could consume up to   five times more electricity  than today. This striking forecast comes from a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group. Artificial intelligence plays a key role in that projection - not only when we actively interact with it (like querying ChatGPT), but also when it runs in the background, continuously refining models through training. Yes, AI is energy-hungry. But here’s the twist:   AI can also be part of the solution . With the right mindset, technology choices, and policies, we can leverage AI to reduce digital waste, optimize software, and shrink our energy footprint. AI is becoming embedded in nearly every business application and its usage is rapidly expanding. But that growth comes with a cost. Global data center electricity demand already exceeds 415 TWh annually, around 1.5% of total global consumption. According to the International Energy Agency, this figure could more than   double to 945 TWh by 20...

Fraud is no longer confined by borders. It has evolved into an international issue, with perpetrators often operating from different countries than their victims. Developed nations such as the US, UK and the rest of Western-Europe remain prime targets. Particularly in the UK, the combination of a large population and English-speaking residents makes it a lucrative hunting ground for fraudsters. Despite the advancements in fraud prevention tools, reported fraud continues to rise year after year, exposing significant vulnerabilities in the global financial ecosystem. Financial institutions have invested heavily in fraud detection and authentication measures, yielding some success. Account Takeover Fraud   has decreased thanks to multi-factor authentication (MFA), risk-based authentication and customer education campaigns that teach users to avoid sharing sensitive information. Authorized Push Payment (APP) Fraud , like invoice scams, is being reduced through initiatives such as "Ver...

  Already 2 years ago, I explored in my blog " The UPI Phenomenon: From Zero to 10 Billion " ( https://bankloch.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-upi-phenomenon-from-zero-to-10.html ) how India’s   Unified Payments Interface (UPI)   reshaped the digital payments landscape. UPI has grown into one of the world’s largest digital payment systems, processing over 18 billion transactions monthly and accounting for more than 83% of India’s digital transaction volume. Its success is unprecedented, driven largely by a unique feature:   zero cost . Merchants don’t pay to accept payments, and users don’t pay to send or receive money. This absence of fees has removed all barriers for users and merchants for joining the system. But this model requires also heavy subsidizing by the Indian government and as UPI further grows and expands internationally (UPI is already live in countries like the UAE, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, France and Mauritius), cracks are beginning to show. It...