Ep. 169. FCA Crashes the BYOD Party

First up on today's news show, the FCA bans BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) across the the entire UK finance sector. Whilst regulation is on the tip of everyone's tongue, cryptocurrencies managed to sneak their way onto the show once more as Kodak launched KODAKcoin, boosting stock prices an outrageous 44%. From one major announcement to another, tech giant Tencent gets a licence to sell mutual funds to WeChat's 1 billion users in China.

Moving on, TransferWise is quietly launching its "borderless" debit cards to 1,000 customers, with a full rollout coming later in the year. We discuss what the future of borderless payments could look like and how this brings the company in closer competition with Revolut. Our next story comes from a report written by FleishmanHillard named 'The Fads, The Fears and the Future' which details the most overhyped technologies and trends in 2017. Simon Taylor interviews Claudia Bate the author, where they discuss the report at length including the methodology behind the statistics and upcoming regulation.

Our last episode was named 'Tis The Season of Open Banking and the subject just won't go away. The Guardian published an article which asks whether open banking is a 'radical shake-up, or threat to your private data?' and our panel explore this at length. Do people know where their data is going? Our panel explore whether or not consumers actually need to know how their data is being used so long as it creates a better product for them.

Next, we discuss Brexit's impact on the Fintech space and whether or not cynics have been proven wrong. Uncertainty has been prevalent over Brexit particularly in finance and this is something dissected during this episode.

Software-only Wealthfront were also in the news as they raised $75 million as they aim to target millennials. We discuss who the term 'millennial' refers to and also what the traditional demographic usually is.

We break down 'Meltdown and Spectre' (scary headline for a financial services story), a bug that could be used to compromise computer chips creating security vulnerabilities, what is being done to fix it and how it could impact legacy systems. On the brighter side of things, more than £300m of 'forgotten' money is to be stripped from bank accounts and given to charities and people in debt instead. Robin Hood springs to mind and the team details whether or not this is the right way of dealing with the dormant money. Finally, 'fake cannabis' drives record number of Swiss start-ups. Are we moving from 'Cash & Cocaine' to 'Bitcoin & Weed'?

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Special Guests: Charlie Wood, Pete Townsend, and Sarah Kocianski.

Links:

• FCA 'gold-plates' EU rule, bans BYOD across entire UK finance sector
• Kodak stock is up 44% after announcing it's launching a cryptocurrency called KODAKCoin
• Tencent gets a licence to sell mutual funds to WeChat’s 1 billion users in China
• TransferWise launches borderless accounts & debit card
• FinTech in 2018: The Fads, the Fears and the Future
• ‘Open banking’: radical shake-up, or a threat to your private data?
• Brexit impact on venture capital investment into UK fintechs
• Software-only Wealthfront raises $75 million
• What bankers need to know about Meltdown, Spectre chip flaws
• More than £300m of 'forgotten' money to be stripped from bank accounts and given to charities and people in debt instead
• Fintech and fake cannabis drive record number of Swiss start-ups