SigmaWay Blog

The growth and development of digital financial services or modern banking platforms as we see today is a continuous evolutionary project unlike traditional software projects , it doesn’t have a beginning or end.To maintain a competitive edge, an organization must consider the following :

User Experience : Every single cent of investment in well designed customer experience would generate a huge rate of return.

Simple Personal Finance Management : A large proportion of banks still cannot offer 100% online account opening facility which shows the potential in this area. Banks should tread carefully and do not rush just for the sake of winning the competition in market.

Bots and Data :  Bots can hold intelligent conversation with your customers using natural language. Integrating bots on your financial platform would help you to achieve competitive edge.

Context : Banks should aim at varying the channel of their services according to the product.Users are more likely to access content on their mobile phones and  banks must take this fact into account.

Modern day banks need to adapt these changes and at the same time take care of current trends and experience of competitors, Simply cherry-picking best solutions doesn’t guarantee long-lasting success.Read more at : http://dataconomy.com/2017/03/choosing-digital-banking-platform/

Household survey data plays a critical role in sustainable development goals on poverty and hunger. Food constitutes for almost 50% of household budget, especially in low income countries. It was found that about 800 million people were chronically undernourished in 2015-16.Thus a proper measure of food consumption is essential for the well being of any population. Practitioners are guided to improve the design of surveys and minimize the cost of the survey. As the technologies become available a global program of survey methodology research will help the global statistical community to explore the domain. You can read more at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/sdgs-1-2-meeting-demand-more-and-better-household-survey-data

Financial professionals nowadays is managing price risk to handle many challenges like low price, randomness, oversupply and unpredictable swings. You should always be prepared for an unanticipated rise and drop in prices. You need to be foresighted to be good at managing risks. Having no hedging strategy is a risk in itself. Always have a plan according to your needs and experiences in your mind. Heterogeneity is also crucial for overall risk management. Self-made options, currency hedging and structured products are other important solutions to it. Taking an integrated approach is always a good idea. Gone is the time when the companies used to seek help from large banks. A new trend of working along with non-bank organizations to achieve their hedging goals is gaining popularity. Along with regulatory requirements, it ensures to provide a stable balance sheet and reputation. Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/cargill/2016/06/08/manage-risk-with-confidence/#7104ea8f6bd1

When Shahrukh Khan or Virat Kohli posts a picture, the engagement rates are higher. However a bank or insurer doesn't procure the same result. Banks were early adopters of social media for marketing. Twitter monitors and addresses customer issues, unlike Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube who concentrates on affinity based targeting and brand building. Nowadays, social media is an engagement and business acquisition tool because they can reach their target audience. Read more at: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/brand-equity/social-media-marketing-has-evolved-in-the-bfsi-category-out-of-compulsion/articleshow/52201952.cms

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launched its June 2016 round of 'Inflation Expectations Survey of Households' on 14th June, 2016 across 18 cities, including Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Patna and Thiruvananthapuram. This was released when rising Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index-based inflation is dominant. According to the RBI, the survey results will be providing useful policy information. Read more at: http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/rbi-launches-inflation-expectations-survey-116061401236_1.html

Over the past decades, risk management has been transformed in the banking sector after the emergence of global financial crisis. Still we can’t draw a blue print about the risk function. Since customers' experience has become more and more important, banks need to offer real time response to customers and their problems. Similarly, after evolution in technology, it has become important to look upon new risk management techniques. By 2025, manual interventions will be minimizing, hence, there is need to digitalize core processes. Also, more automation and digitalization leads more experimentation with machine learning and advanced analytics.

Better risk reporting requires to adjust with market development and broaden regulations. Different regulatory ratios require to collaborate with balance sheet optimization. With this, high performance data is the urge for high risk performing function. Build a right mix of talent and embed a right culture. To read more, click on the following link: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/the-future-of-bank-risk-management

Indian banks do not differentiate between a person with low credential rating and people with good financial records .There are no difference because both pay the same interest. In case, corporate customers are judged on the basis of credit rating given by organizations like CIBIL. Even though those corporates who have higher chance of creating NPA for the banks pay the same rate as individuals (with good record). This is because, in retail lending, Indian banks don’t follow developed countries' practices, where customers are charged differently on the basis of their credit ratings. On the contrary, they don’t give loan below a certain limit. Therefore, any one below that limit is refused of loan so there are no chances of different interest rates.

To read more:

http://www.businessinsider.in/retail-lending-indian-Banks/articleshow/52008213.cms

Any movement or step taken by a business often becomes the headlines of the press, thus helping experts in accessing the risk factor.Risk exhibits a situation of danger or loss to a business. It is a fundamental factor that every entrepreneur takes into consideration while aiming for profits, thus it becomes necessary for every business to assess the risks involved in various activities. Most of the businesses use their quantitative data to evaluate and analyse their risk component on one hand. On the other hand, they also use information and articles released by the press for the same.

Read more at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6d3a/508a0f788b40273498283e86c62ac39cc84f.pdf

Small business enterprises (SBE) have a large  contribution as compared to the large business enterprises (LBE) in  the economy of a nation. Personal Asset is something of value that a person or a business, whether small or large owns.On one hand, assets and resources of a small business enterprise have been proved to be an important source of support to them, through which credit accessibility becomes more convenient for them. But on the other hand, price fluctuations of the assets of SBE and financial institution’s lending policies make the differences for these SBE in accessing the credit.

Read the whole article at: http://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/moon_john.pdf

India is going to get a startup corridor soon which will enable incubators to create consortium. The government is providing a fund of INR 5 crores for the same. This setup will encourage startups and will team with multi - disciplinary incubation support. Startup Corridor will function under the science and technology ministry and NSTEDB will be the nodal agency to implement it. Read the complete article here: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/india-to-soon-get-startup-corridorwill-be-under-science-technology-ministry/articleshow/51487214.cms

Mythili Bhusnurmath, Consulting Editor ET NOW says that banking is not science which is claimed by many economists but an art. To prove this point she considers Fed and said that the broad consensus is that Fed is not going to hike its rate, which is in contradiction to the fact that macroeconomic numbers coming from US suggest that Fed should increase its rates.  The point is Fed is not driven by numbers. Roadmap clearly suggests that it would be a quarter percent hike every quarterly but Fed has not made any such announcement so far. So this proves the point that central banking is an art not science as the results which are suggested by numbers are clearly not followed. Read the article here: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2016-03-16/news/71573617_1_janet-yellen-mythili-bhusnurmath-fed

Exchange traded fund (ETF) is a fund that trades on an exchange like a stock. Some of the features of bond ETFs in the market place are:-

• The market price of these shares will fluctuate as the collective price underlying securities.
• Due to uncertainty of conditions investors sometimes sell shares at the same time which results in crashing the market price. Market of these shares is very volatile.
• There is a complete transparency in pricing, centralized trading, and visibility to all as a result there is more connectivity between buyers and seller. Therefore, trading ETF bonds is less complicated and more efficient as compare to individual bonds.

If you wish to read more on ETFs, click on the link below for full article by Matthew Tucker: http://www.investopedia.com/partner/blackrock/articles/investing/041516/what-happens-bond-etfs-stressed-markets.asp

Exchange traded fund (ETF) is a fund that trades on an exchange like a stock. It is traded in bundles basically because it becomes difficult to sell 10, 20 or 50 shares. An ETF holds assets such as stocks, commodities, or bonds, and trades close to its net asset value over the course of the trading day. Large financial institutes are known as AP’s (Authorized Participants).They partner with an ETF provider and create an initial fund share which is then made available for investors. AP also helps in stabilizing the price. When demand increases, ETF price increases and thus the AP buy security to meet the demand and vice- versa. To know more, you can read the following article by Matthew Tucker  

https://www.blackrockblog.com/2016/01/27/etf-strategy-new-year/?cid=blog:stressed:matt

The stability of financial services in Asia is at stake because of the growing threat of cyber crime. The challenge is the high cost of defending mechanism against low cost cyber-attack ($1million/$1000). These attacks fuels the expansion of the cyber security market with a CAGR of 14.1%, which will be worth $33 million by 2019. Major drivers could be. 1. Financial gain through theft of money or information.  2. Politically motivated attack. And 3. Destructive attack to core business.  Unfortunately, financial sectors in the Middle East and Asia are mostly threatened by cyber threat. So to combat this crime, there must be a community defense model, i.e. sharing of cyber threat info among Financial institutions in an effort to identify and block attacks which are already initiated by US and European companies and followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan & Australia. To read, follow:  http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1912324/asias-financial-services-industry-must-unite-against-threat

In order to increase standards of the capital markets post-crash and other unprecedented events, few regulations enforced by the market regulators are forcing the market participants to have a more thorough background research. Thus demand for data in capital markets is increasing as never before. The analysis reports are now being made at real time to increase the efficiency, and quality. But the problem at hand is how well firms can handle this data. Can they afford the data within their profits? Can data can be made available to all in proper usable format to all the participants at minimum price. How can the data made available be kept clean and free from corrupting? To read through some of these issues go through-http://www.automatedtrader.net/articles/feature/153959/the-data-deluge

There is a great potential in “unadvised assets”. The necessary growth rates for a profitable business are close to hundreds and millions of AUM increase per month. Alternative steps needed to be taken by the businesses are:
• Substantial growth in terms of AUM has to be made.
• Varying customer acquisition costs will have to be taken into account during profitability calculations.
• Shift to adjacent markets; from pure online to more sophisticated hybrid services.
• Separated commoditized investment management services and focus on areas of finance and estate planning.
• Get rid of proportional fee model.
Read more at: http://bankinnovation.net/2015/07/half-a-dozen-possibilities-in-automating-asset-management/

The credit facilities for business have always created a negative impact on credit score. The requirement of capital has been the prime concern for a successful business. The credit score is recorded as per the credit facilities one takes from the financial institutions. The credit score indicates the status of the person and takes into account the financial condition of the person. The credit score record the history and the individual have a specific allotted number by which the financial institutions check before giving credit. Rate shopping helps in continuous evaluation of interest rates before any credit purchase. The FICO score helps in determining the credit score in the daily basis transactions. The FICO scores determine how one individual is capable of maintaining their proper credit score. One with a high FICO score tends to take less credit on credit cards and maintain a proper debit credit ratio. The credit reports are essentially important to determine the credit score of an individual.

Read more at:  http://www.business2community.com/finance/understanding-many-credit-inquiries-can-hurt-credit-score-01284708

Banking sector has embraced new technologies to provide better services to its tech savvy customers. Hare are 4 ways that illustrate how banks have adopted new technologies:

(i) Mobile apps: several banks and financial institutions have generated mobile apps that provides mobile payment services.

(ii) Wearable tech: A major section of consumers prefer using wearable devices to make payments. Keeping this in mind, banks have launched apps that are supported by wearable devices.

(iii) Social presence: Banks are going social with their presence in various social media and networking sites.

(iv) Financial gaming: Financial institutions are using gamification technology to attract customers. Several financial institutions have launched gaming platform where customers, on the basis of how often they visit the bank’s website, can earn points and win prizes. Read more at: http://www.cio.in/feature/how-big-banks-use-tech-to-attract-savvy-consumers#