Jack Leach - August 28, 2020 - 311 views

By all accounts, the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Lending Program for small and medium-size businesses (SMB) has not been the type of rescue program many anticipated. Launched in April, the program did not make its first loan until July.  The Main Street program has suffered from comparison with the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), even though […]

Jack Leach - August 20, 2020 - 470 views

The impact of the pandemic on small businesses has spurred changes in banks’ lending practices – but the upheaval hasn’t stopped there. While the shifts underway in functions such as trade finance and mortgages are typically more nuanced, they speak to how important small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) are to banks – and how critical […]

Jack Leach - July 21, 2020 - 389 views

COVID-19 changed the stakes in small-business lending: While the top four banks provided 36% of small-business loans before the pandemic,  they disbursed a scant 3% in the first round of the CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). As large banks fumbled their PPP response, fintechs and smaller lenders stepped in to fill the gap. Online […]

Jack Leach - June 26, 2020 - 500 views

As someone who has spent his entire career in banking and financial services – and who currently lives in one of the largest U.S. banking markets – it’s good to see that banks are part of the solution for the $2.2 trillion (yes, trillion with a “T”) CARES Act for combating the adverse economic impact […]

Hector Pages - December 12, 2019 - 1594 views

With all the activity in the cards and payments space in 2019, 2020 promises to be even more interesting. The last 12 months saw several new fintech market entrants and digital commerce frameworks, continued expansion of the real-time payments infrastructure, investment in open-banking capabilities and heavy M&A by large incumbents. This made 2019 something of […]

Louis Marino - September 7, 2018 - 511 views

Banks called Atom, N26, Bunq and Monzo. Insurers named Lemonade and Oscar.  In their efforts to distinguish themselves from longtime industry stalwarts, new entrants into the fields of banking and insurance are choosing playful, whimsical names that make no reference to the space they’re trying to disrupt. Previous nomenclature in these business spaces has revolved […]

Makarand Pande - June 25, 2018 - 1177 views

Authors’ note: This is the fourth of a four-part series, in which we discuss the ways banks are adopting robotic process automation (RPA). In this installment, we explore what banks should be thinking about when moving from proof of concept-based, siloed, task-level automation to overall operations transformation and how platform vendors are working to support […]

Makarand Pande - April 4, 2018 - 1081 views

Authors’ note: This is the third of a four-part series, in which we discuss the ways in which banks are adopting robotic process automation (RPA) today. Part 1 offered a list of seven deadly sins that can derail RPA adoption. Part 2 identified seven virtuous steps banks can take to avoid these deployment pitfalls. In […]

Makarand Pande - October 10, 2017 - 605 views

Authors’ note: This is the second of a four-part series, in which we explore how financial services firms are using robotic process automation (RPA) to support accounting, compliance, financial risk management and other operations. In the first installment, we offer a list of seven deadly sins that can derail RPA adoption.  In our work with […]

Manish Bahl - September 9, 2016 - 172 views

Every time we download a new app, or sign up at a Web portal, we’re informed about terms and conditions of use, the seller’s privacy policies, cookie policies, and more. All pledge appropriate use of our personal data. Do we read these policies? I suspect many haven’t time—and assume they’re all similar. And although companies […]