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The Unbundling & Rebundling of Banks

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This story originally appeared on iNovia conversations.

“Silicon Valley is good at getting rid of pain points. Banks are good at creating them.” — Jamie Dimon, CEO JPMorgan Chase

FinTech has made massive waves across the world in recent years, with more than 5,000 companies founded, raising nearly $6 billion in venture capital financing.

Let’s take a step back and reflect on why we have seen so many unbelievable entrepreneurs choose banks as the next establishment to disrupt. Of course, the simple answer is that banking is a large sector, with lots of room for improvement; and millennials desire digital experiences in their financial lives. While those are the most often quoted reasons we see in pitch decks today, we believe the real tailwinds behind the growth of this sector lie even deeper.

First off, an attractive quality of a market ripe for disruption is one where the critical infrastructure is already in place for innovation to be built upon. Matt Heiman at Greylock references that critical infrastructure in this post, citing data APIs like PlaidYodlee, and Flinks making it easier to work with financial data; payment APIs like Stripe making it easier to accept payments; and financial market APIs like Xignite, making it possible to pull in live stock prices. Having this foundation in place makes this space all the more attractive for entrepreneurs.

Second is the harsh reality that one’s financial picture today is much different than it was a decade ago.

  • Real annual wages have been stagnant since 2000
  • Education costs are rising exponentially
  • Credit card balances are higher than ever
  • Credit scores are lower than ever, limiting access to capital
  • Home ownership is at its lowest level since the Census starting tracking it
  • High deductible health insurance plans are now the norm
  • Populations are aging and retiring older

As Sarah Tavel points out in this post, called “Saving People Money”, in response to these changing macroeconomic factors, people need new ways to save money, manage money, and invest money. Cue the need for tons of innovation.

Lastly, banks have turned into modern-day conglomerates. The large banks today offer every product you can imagine, from insurance to loans, to mortgages, to cross-border money transfers, etc.

This is a prime example of an institution that does a whole lot of things, but does none of those things really well. This is the perfect landscape for a startup to focus its efforts on a select few of those items and execute to perfection.

The ability for a startup to begin “unbundling” some of those banking services is predicated on the notion that a physical presence in banking is no longer at the core of the customer experience. Alex Rampell, Partner at a16z, makes a great comparison between the financial sector and the retail one, citing Amazon as the retailer that caught these same tailwinds and removed the physical presence from the equation, allowing it to displace WalMart as the biggest retailer in the world. He leaves us with a crucial thought in this video, asking “when will banking have its Amazon moment?”.

These factors have opened up the possibility for thousands of startups to transform the way modern banking is done. Every transformation happens in multiple phases, and the first step in this equation is unbundling. The opportunity at hand is for startups to be exclusively focused on only one banking product (say savings or lending). Consider several examples of this being successful:

Alternative lending platforms such as SoFiKabbage, and Clearbanc have all taken advantage of the inefficiencies in the lending departments of large financial institutions. These lenders all have similar formulas in the way they disrupt traditional banks:

  • High Touch: Start by focusing on a specific user and understand that user really well. This allows the company to underwrite that specific user much more effectively than a bank would. Underwriting more users means more originated loans, and lower loss ratios. For example, SoFi has focused on students, Kabbage on SME’s and Clearbanc on entrepreneurs.
  • Reduce the margins banks earn on loans: A traditional bank accepts money (deposits) and pays a minimum amount of interest (<1%) and then loans that money (primarily on credit cards) for closer to 19% interest. There is a lot of margin there to cut in to for a startup. Given the lenders mentioned above don’t have brick and mortar operations to pay for, they can beat the banks loan rates in most cases, and offer credit to more borrowers.

Robo-Advisors such as WealthfrontBetterment, and Wealthsimple have automated a routine job that was typically done by financial advisors. Large mutual funds and ETFs were already mostly being managed by algorithms, however clients had to consult financial advisors prior to investing. By removing the advisor from the equation and promising individuals a balanced, diversified portfolio that fits their lifestyle, robo-advisors are able to offer equal returns with much less management fees (typically 0.5% vs 1.5% at traditional banks).

  • Savings platforms such as Acorns have found new, innovative ways to encourage people to save money. They are able to offer a fully digital experience, and have ‘gamified’ saving, by incorporating goal setting, rewards points, and a social element. Alternative savings platforms can earn a higher return for clients on their savings all with free accounts that they can contribute to or withdraw from anytime.

These examples continue across every facet of a bank. This image below gives a taste of the FinTech landscape today, and highlights every element of unbundling currently under way. This is the home page of Wells Fargo and it outlines the top startups picking apart every piece of the bank.

CB Insights/iNovia

Of course, unbundling is not the holy grail, it is merely phase one. Entrepreneurs’ ambitions and world domination plans are much larger than simply mastering one banking product. The first product, or the unbundling, is just the “hook” to acquire customers and begin building trust and brand name. Startups exploit the banks on one simple product as a hook to win the consumers’ business in the hopes of then being able to target that same consumer with other financial products in the future, hence phase two: rebundling. The more startups that begin offering additional financial products, the more those startups will begin to resemble traditional banks. Here are some examples of rebundling happening in action:

  • Acorns has now differentiated beyond simply a savings platform by launching Acorns Spend, a debit card product.
  • Square began as an easy-to-use terminal for on-demand workers to receive payment. They have now begun issuing loans to their merchants.
  • Paypal has launched a prepaid debit card that includes bank transfers, deposits, and cashing checks.
  • SoFi has moved beyond just student loans and into mortgages, wealth management, and life insurance.
  • Robinhood has extended its trading services to cryptocurrency
  • Stash has launched core banking and custodial services
  • Credit Karma knows everything (far beyond just credit cards).

What has emerged in the FinTech space is a race to own the end client relationship. Each startup took a different approach, chose a different vertical, and unbundled a different element of the bank. But as all those startups look to layer on, and rebundle the core services of a bank, they will all be vying for mindshare from the same customers. Suddenly, a group of thousands of companies solving various, unrelated problems, will become competitive and will race against each other to be the “go-to” digital bank (or the ‘Amazon Moment’). Despite the numerous examples of rebundling above, we are not quite there yet. As the graph below depicts, we are still at the tail end of the unbundling phase, with startups trying to achieve critical mass in their verticals, prior to commencing the rebundling process.

Once the rebundling phase begins on a macro level, the threat to traditional banks will increase exponentially. Today, consumers excited by digital offerings startups are delivering are faced with the pain of having to piece together all of their financial needs like a puzzle (since every startup only unbundled one product). Getting all of your financial needs serviced, requires interacting with many startups. This pain still generates enough friction for consumers that they maintain their relationship with their traditional bank, and experiment with one or a few new innovative products on the side. Most customers with an Acorns account, also have a traditional savings account at their bank (likewise with investments and loans).

While we don’t expect startups to attempt to put together products that cover everything Wells Fargo offers today, we expect them to bundle a subset of elements that have high synergies. In the past, a HENRY (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) would have one relationship — a big bank; in the future they won’t have 50 relationships (one for each service) but they may have 3–8 relationships with digital rebundlers. Customers will have the opportunity to transfer more and more of their banking relationships to their most trusted digital providers, and will be able to move further away from their traditional banking relationships.

We have yet to see the true threat to banks. But it is around the corner.

Let’s conclude by summarizing what all of this means for inovia in terms of how we allocate capital and make investment decisions in the FinTech space. Here are some of the key elements we look for:

Having a unique and differentiated customer acquisition machine: the ability to acquire customers cost effectively is of utmost importance in the FinTech space. As mentioned above, owning the client relationship is the holy grail, and having a customer not only counts as revenue for the current product, but also allows the startup to target that customer with additional banking products in the future. Here are some examples of unique customer acquisition strategies that have proven successful for FinTech startups;

  • SoFi began by targeting students with its loan products. This led them to be able to use universities as distribution channels and acquire students cheaply (this customer profile was being ignored by traditional lenders). They coined the term HENRY to describe their target customer. This profile was not of interest to banks since they were not wealthy enough (yet) to drive a significant amount of business.
  • Clearbanc offers revenue-based financing to entrepreneurs. They quickly realized that many small businesses use Facebook as their primary advertising channel and that one of the barriers for small businesses is access to capital. Clearbanc partnered with Facebook to help provide capital to these small businesses (much of it to be re-invested in Facebook ads for customer acquisition). This allows Clearbanc to acquire users cheaply through the Facebook merchant network.
  • Affirm allows consumers to pay for large retail purchases in installments. Rather than target consumers directly, Affirm used merchants as their distribution channel. Once a customer reaches the cash, the merchant would ask the customer if they wanted to pay using installment payments (powered by Affirm). This turned the business into a B2B model of selling to merchants rather than a B2C model of competing on customer acquisition.

A well-thought out rebundling strategy that involves owning the end consumer or merchant: Entrepreneurs need to think about pitching the big vision from day one. Building a massive business in the FinTech space will not happen with a series of accidental product additions along the way that we “hope” consumers will enjoy. Owning the end customer should be the objective from day one, it is the core of the business and the reason for existence. Then it is up to the entrepreneur to experiment with various “hooks” to lure in their first batch of customers cheaply. These hooks are more flexible and far less important than the actual master business plan. Here is some advice on choosing the right hook:

  • Test and iterate quickly on initial customer segments you are targeting and the product offering you’re selling. Try something and kill it within a few weeks if you are not luring a unique kind of individual. It is crucial to find a differentiated customer base to initially target, rather than going after the same customers as everyone else.
  • Pick something that resonates with millennials. For example, Ellevestcreates mutual funds tied to the unique career path of women, OpenInvestallows clients to add social impact stocks to their portfolio and Quantopianallows anyone to create financial trading algorithms. The overall vision of all of these companies is to be the trusted financial partner for their target client base, however they have all approached the market with hooks that resonate deeply with that market they are targeting.
  • Once you’ve found a differentiated customer base and a product that resonates with that base you will begin attracting attention to yourself. The idea is that you can use your initial base as a springboard to layer on your rebundling strategies in a more cost effective way. Start with engaged users, build brand awareness among them, garner attention, and then begin rebundling.

Innovate in a new area of banking: Over 40% of all investment dollars into FinTech startups to date have been poured into the alternative lending space, leaving massive industries (such as mortgages and insurance) with few well-funded companies. Additionally, there potentially many innovative ways to improve one’s financial lives that don’t even exist yet and are not even done by banks. Finding a new way to add value financially is a compelling way to disrupt the antiquated banking industry. Examples of radically new financial products are;

  • Mortgage companies like RibbonPoint and Properly that allow consumers the ability to sell their homes more efficiently and even offer the possibility of unlocking some of the equity in their home (things banks don’t do today).
  • Contextualized insurance companies like Lemonade, and Slice. Today, an individual may act as a business one day (renting our their home on Airbnb, or driving their car for Uber) and as a regular citizen the next. Insurance needs to adapt to understand the context in which your assets are being used.

Create your own infrastructure and be self-reliant: Many FinTech companies simply add a new layer or application on top of existing banking infrastructure. This is a great way to validate the problem, but in the long-term the majority of the gains will still accrue to the financial institution serving as the infrastructure layer. FinTechs that are self reliant can be more disruptive and rebundle other apps even easier than those that rely on others. This is one example of a well-planned rebundling strategy from the start.

At inovia we look to partner with audacious founders building enduring technology companies. It is clear that the ability to have an impact on one’s financial experience has the potential to disrupt everything we know about our banking systems. Those are the types of ‘big bets’ we thrive in undertaking.

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How businesses can protect themselves from the rising threat of deepfakes

Dive into the world of deepfakes and explore the risks, strategies and insights to fortify your organization’s defences

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In Billy Joel’s latest video for the just-released song Turn the Lights Back On, it features him in several deepfakes, singing the tune as himself, but decades younger. The technology has advanced to the extent that it’s difficult to distinguish between that of a fake 30-year-old Joel, and the real 75-year-old today.

This is where tech is being used for good. But when it’s used with bad intent, it can spell disaster. In mid-February, a report showed a clerk at a Hong Kong multinational who was hoodwinked by a deepfake impersonating senior executives in a video, resulting in a $35 million theft.

Deepfake technology, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), is capable of creating highly realistic fake videos, images, or audio recordings. In just a few years, these digital manipulations have become so sophisticated that they can convincingly depict people saying or doing things that they never actually did. In little time, the tech will become readily available to the layperson, who’ll require few programming skills.

Legislators are taking note

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a ban on those who impersonate others using deepfakes — the greatest concern being how it can be used to fool consumers. The Feb. 16 ban further noted that an increasing number of complaints have been filed from “impersonation-based fraud.”

A Financial Post article outlined that Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, Patricia Kosseim, says she feels “a sense of urgency” to act on artificial intelligence as the technology improves. “Malicious actors have found ways to synthetically mimic executive’s voices down to their exact tone and accent, duping employees into thinking their boss is asking them to transfer funds to a perpetrator’s account,” the report said. Ontario’s Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Framework, for which she consults, aims to set guides on the public sector use of AI.

In a recent Microsoft blog, the company stated their plan is to work with the tech industry and government to foster a safer digital ecosystem and tackle the challenges posed by AI abuse collectively. The company also said it’s already taking preventative steps, such as “ongoing red team analysis, preemptive classifiers, the blocking of abusive prompts, automated testing, and rapid bans of users who abuse the system” as well as using watermarks and metadata.

That prevention will also include enhancing public understanding of the risks associated with deepfakes and how to distinguish between legitimate and manipulated content.

Cybercriminals are also using deepfakes to apply for remote jobs. The scam starts by posting fake job listings to collect information from the candidates, then uses deepfake video technology during remote interviews to steal data or unleash ransomware. More than 16,000 people reported that they were victims of this scam to the FBI in 2020. In the US, this kind of fraud has resulted in a loss of more than $3 billion USD. Where possible, they recommend job interviews should be in person to avoid these threats.

Catching fakes in the workplace

There are detector programs, but they’re not flawless. 

When engineers at the Canadian company Dessa first tested a deepfake detector that was built using Google’s synthetic videos, they found it failed more than 40% of the time. The Seattle Times noted that the problem in question was eventually fixed, and it comes down to the fact that “a detector is only as good as the data used to train it.” But, because the tech is advancing so rapidly, detection will require constant reinvention.

There are other detection services, often tracing blood flow in the face, or errant eye movements, but these might lose steam once the hackers figure out what sends up red flags.

“As deepfake technology becomes more widespread and accessible, it will become increasingly difficult to trust the authenticity of digital content,” noted Javed Khan, owner of Ontario-based marketing firm EMpression. He said a focus of the business is to monitor upcoming trends in tech and share the ideas in a simple way to entrepreneurs and small business owners.

To preempt deepfake problems in the workplace, he recommended regular training sessions for employees. A good starting point, he said, would be to test them on MIT’s eight ways the layperson can try to discern a deepfake on their own, ranging from unusual blinking, smooth skin, and lighting.

Businesses should proactively communicate through newsletters, social media posts, industry forums, and workshops, about the risks associated with deepfake manipulation, he told DX Journal, to “stay updated on emerging threats and best practices.”

To keep ahead of any possible attacks, he said companies should establish protocols for “responding swiftly” to potential deepfake attacks, including issuing public statements or corrective actions.

How can a deepfake attack impact business?

The potential to malign a company’s reputation with a single deepfake should not be underestimated.

“Deepfakes could be racist. It could be sexist. It doesn’t matter — by the time it gets known that it’s fake, the damage could be already done. And this is the problem,” said Alan Smithson, co-founder of Mississauga-based MetaVRse and investor at Your Director AI.

“Building a brand is hard, and then it can be destroyed in a second,” Smithson told DX Journal. “The technology is getting so good, so cheap, so fast, that the power of this is in everybody’s hands now.”

One of the possible solutions is for businesses to have a code word when communicating over video as a way to determine who’s real and who’s not. But Smithson cautioned that the word shouldn’t be shared around cell phones or computers because “we don’t know what devices are listening to us.”

He said governments and companies will need to employ blockchain or watermarks to identify fraudulent messages. “Otherwise, this is gonna get crazy,” he added, noting that Sora — the new AI text to video program — is “mind-blowingly good” and in another two years could be “indistinguishable from anything we create as humans.”

“Maybe the governments will step in and punish them harshly enough that it will just be so unreasonable to use these technologies for bad,” he continued. And yet, he lamented that many foreign actors in enemy countries would not be deterred by one country’s law. It’s one downside he said will always be a sticking point.

It would appear that for now, two defence mechanisms are the saving grace to the growing threat posed by deepfakes: legal and regulatory responses, and continuous vigilance and adaptation to mitigate risks. The question remains, however, whether safety will keep up with the speed of innovation.

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The new reality of how VR can change how we work

It’s not just for gaming — from saving lives to training remote staff, here’s how virtual reality is changing the game for businesses

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Until a few weeks ago, you might have thought that “virtual reality” and its cousin “augmented reality” were fads that had come and gone. At the peak of the last frenzy around the technology, the company formerly known as Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, as a sign of how determined founder Mark Zuckerberg was to create a VR “metaverse,” complete with cartoon avatars (who for some reason had no legs — they’ve got legs now, but there are some restrictions on how they work).

Meta has since spent more than $36 billion on metaverse research and development, but so far has relatively little to show for it. Meta has sold about 20 million of its Quest VR headsets so far, but according to some reports, not many people are spending a lot of time in the metaverse. And a lack of legs for your avatar probably isn’t the main reason. No doubt many were wondering: What are we supposed to be doing in here?

The evolution of virtual reality

Things changed fairly dramatically in June, however, when Apple demoed its Vision Pro headset, and then in early February when they were finally available for sale. At $3,499 US, the device is definitely not for the average consumer, but using it has changed the way some think about virtual reality, or the “metaverse,” or whatever we choose to call it.

Some of the enhancements that Apple has come up with for the VR headset experience have convinced Vision Pro true believers that we are either at or close to the same kind of inflection point that we saw after the release of the original iPhone in 2007.Others, however, aren’t so sure we are there yet.

The metaverse sounds like a place where you bump into giant dinosaur avatars or play virtual tennis, but ‘spatial computing’ puts the focus on using a VR headset to enhance what users already do on their computers. Some users generate multiple virtual screens that hang in the air in front of them, allowing them to walk around their homes or offices and always have their virtual desktop in front of them.

VR fans are excited about the prospect of watching a movie on what looks like a 100-foot-wide TV screen hanging in the air in front of them, or playing a video game. But what about work-related uses of a headset like the Vision Pro? 

Innovating health care with VR technology

One of the most obvious applications is in medicine, where doctors are already using remote viewing software to perform checkups or even operations. At Cambridge University, game designers and cancer researchers have teamed up to make it easier to see cancer cells and distinguish between different kinds.

Heads-up displays and other similar kinds of technology are already in use in aerospace engineering and other fields, because they allow workers to see a wiring diagram or schematic while working to repair it. VR headsets could make such tasks even easier, by making those diagrams or schematics even larger, and superimposing them on the real thing. The same kind of process could work for digital scans of a patient during an operation.

Using virtual reality, patients and doctors could also do remote consultations more easily, allowing patients to describe visually what is happening with them, and giving health professionals the ability to offer tips and direct recommendations in a visual way. 

This would not only help with providing care to people who live in remote areas, but could also help when there is a language barrier between doctor and patient. 

Impacting industry worldwide

One technology consulting firm writes that using a Vision Pro or other VR headset to streamline assembly and quality control in maintenance tasks. Overlaying diagrams, 3D models, and other digital information onto an object in real time could enable “more efficient and error-free assembly processes,” by providing visual cues, step-by-step guidance, and real-time feedback. 

In addition to these kinds of uses, virtual reality could also be used for remote onboarding for new staff in a variety of different roles, by allowing them to move around and practice training tasks in a virtual environment.

Some technology watchers believe that the retail industry could be transformed by virtual reality as well. Millions of consumers have become used to buying online, but some categories such as clothing and furniture have lagged, in part because it is difficult to tell what a piece of clothing might look like once you are wearing it, or what that chair will look like in your home. But VR promises the kind of immersive experience where that becomes possible.

While many consumers may see this technology only as an avenue for gaming and entertainment, it’s already being leveraged by businesses in manufacturing, health care and workforce development. Even in 2020, 91 per cent of businesses surveyed by TechRepublic either used or planned to adopt VR or AR technology — and as these technological advances continue, adoption is likely to keep ramping up.

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5 tips for brainstorming with ChatGPT

How to avoid inaccuracy and leverage the full creative reign of ChatGPT

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ChatGPT recruited a staggering 100 million users by January 2023. As software with one of the fastest-growing user bases, we imagine even higher numbers this year. 

It’s not hard to see why. 

Amazon sellers use it to optimize product listings that bring in more sales. Programmers use it to write code. Writers use it to get their creative juices flowing. 

And occasionally, a lawyer might use it to prepare a court filing, only to fail miserably when the judge notices numerous fake cases and citations. 

Which brings us to the fact that ChatGPT was never infallible. It’s best used as a brainstorming tool with a skeptical lens on every output. 

Here are five tips for how businesses can avoid inaccuracy and leverage the full creative reign of generative AI when brainstorming.

  1. Use it as a base

Hootsuite’s marketing VP Billy Jones talked about using ChatGPT as a jumping-off point for his marketing strategy. He shares an example of how he used it to create audience personas for his advertising tactics. 

Would he ask ChatGPT to create audience personas for Hootsuite’s products? Nope, that would present too many gaps where the platform could plug in false assumptions. Instead, Jones asks for demographic data on social media managers in the US — a request easy enough for ChatGPT to gather data on. From there he pairs the output with his own research to create audience personas. 

  1. Ask open-ended questions

You don’t need ChatGPT to tell you yes or no — even if you learn something new, that doesn’t really get your creative juices flowing. Consider the difference: 

  • Does history repeat itself? 
  • What are some examples of history repeating itself in politics in the last decade?

Open-ended questions give you much more opportunity to get inspired and ask questions you may not have thought of. 

  1. Edit your questions as you go

ChatGPT has a wealth of data at its virtual fingertips to examine and interpret before spitting out an answer. Meaning you can narrow down the data for a more focused response with multiple prompts that further tweak its answers. 

For example, you might ask ChatGPT about book recommendations for your book club. Once you get an answer, you could narrow it down by adding another requirement, like specific years of release, topic categories, or mentions by reputable reviewers. Adding context to what you’re looking for will give more nuanced answers.

  1. Gain inspiration from past success

Have an idea you’re unsure about? Ask ChatGPT about successes with a particular strategy or within a particular industry. 

The platform can scour through endless news releases, reports, statistics, and content to find you relatable cases all over the world. Adding the word “adapt” into a prompt can help utilize strategies that have worked in the past and apply them to your question. 

As an example, the prompt, “Adapt sales techniques to effectively navigate virtual selling environments,” can generate new solutions by pulling from how old problems were solved. 

  1. Trust, but verify

You wouldn’t publish the drawing board of a brainstorm session. Similarly, don’t take anything ChatGPT says as truth until you verify it with your own research. 

The University of Waterloo notes that blending curiosity and critical thinking with ChatGPT can help to think through ideas and new angles. But, once the brainstorming is done, it’s time to turn to real research for confirmation.

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