by Bob Vanstraelen
One of the hottest topics at every industry event I’ve attended recently is the threat of FinTech disruptors. As more and more of these small, specialist firms launch – think Revolut, N26 and Seamless (SEQR) – many retail bankers seem concerned that their size and portfolio is hindering them in the battle for customers. Actually, I think it’s quite the opposite, and it’s the wide breadth of services that traditional banks offer consumers, in contrast to FinTechs’ largely single-service offerings, that will prove to be their golden ticket to customer retention and loyalty. By offering a range of services, retail banks ultimately create more opportunities to understand their customers and therefore engage and grow with them – opportunities that single service firms don’t have. 
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At national discretion, the required stable funding (RSF) treatment for derivative liabilities can be reduced from 20% to no lower than 5%. We will continue to work on this issue and will consult if a change to this treatment is proposed. But the existing proposal should facilitate the implementation of the NSFR, which is due to begin on 1 January 2018, given that most jurisdictions have already published their final or draft rules.
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has banned Mrs Colette Chiesa and Mr John Chiesa from working in financial services for integrity failings. Additionally, Mrs Chiesa has been fined £50,000 for attempting to mislead the FCA during an FCA interview. Mr and Mrs Chiesa were founding partners of Westwood Independent Financial Planners (Westwood), a firm authorised by the FCA to provide personal investment advice. Continue reading…

A key role of …nancial intermediaries is to provide liquidity – essentially, on-demand access to cash –to their investors. Typically, …nancial intermediaries that provide liquidity also engage in maturity transformation. For example, banks issue long-term loans but grant their depositors the right to withdraw their funds on demand. Similarly, open-end mutual funds (“funds”) that invest in comparatively illiquidsecurities, such as corporate bonds, give their investors the option of redeeming their shares in cash every day. Daily redemptions allow fund investors to insure against their liquidity needs while participating in the higher return their fund earns on less liquid assets. At the same time, funds need to adequately insure the residual liquidity risk that they incur.1 Insu¢ ciently insured liquidity risk can trigger and amplify …nancial crises.
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It is worth repeating that public trust and confidence in the financial system cannot be compromised. The cost of financial crimes and terrorism financing are staggering. Based on the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), money laundering transactions are estimated to cost economies between 2% to 5% of global GDP. This equals to USD1 to 2 trillion annually. It is a humongous amount. Beyond monetary terms, these activities have destructive consequences for the lives of many, especially the poor and underprivileged.
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Risk managers and insurance buyers have a “narrow window” in which to prepare for the growing threat of cyber crime, says Kyle Bryant of Chubb. The WannaCry ransomware attack which affected businesses and individuals around the world in May this year served as a powerful reminder that vulnerability to cyber crime is the new normal. Continue reading…

The euro area continues to experience a solid, broad-based and resilient recovery. Deflationary risks have disappeared and some measures of underlying inflation have ticked up over recent months. But overall inflation developments, despite the solid growth, have remained subdued.
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