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1 month ago | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Bank executives and boards continue to see technology as driving or facilitating the greatest risks to their institutions: cybersecurity and fraud. In Bank Director’s 2025 Risk Survey, sponsored by Moss Adams and conducted in January, 84% of bank senior executives and board members cite cybersecurity as a top risk facing their institution.
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2 months ago | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Artificial intelligence has great potential and application for financial institutions, but executives must manage its risks carefully. The prospect of such powerful technology has left many executives wondering what other institutions are doing and how they can benefit from early adopters’ best practices.
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2 months ago | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Banks involved in complex fintech partnerships known as banking as a service, or BaaS, have had a rough couple of years, but there might be brighter days ahead. The number of institutions offering BaaS grew rapidly several years ago as technology made it increasingly easy to enter the space. But almost as quickly, regulators increased scrutiny of these institutions, and some received enforcement actions.
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2 months ago | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Helping a bank adopt its process and approach for a more digital future can be tough. It requires a shared vision, common terminology, buy-in and daily work that pushes all parts of an institution forward. And, importantly, it requires accountability. It needs to be someone’s job to make sure this gets done. At ConnectOne Bank, the bank unit of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey-based ConnectOne Bancorp, that job falls to Siya Vansia, chief brand and innovation officer.
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2 months ago | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Smaller institutions usually have fewer resources and less internal data than large banks to help identify potentially fraudulent behaviors. One way for them to level that playing field is through fraud consortiums, according to a March 2024 report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. A spate of fraud consortiums started in late 2022 and 2023 could help do just that.
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2 months ago | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Are banks and credit unions spending enough on cybersecurity? And even with all the spending, is it actually making institutions safer? Cybersecurity concerns increased for bank directors and senior leaders in 2024, according to Bank Director’s 2024 Risk Survey, sponsored by Moss Adams, with 86% of respondents saying their concerns increased “somewhat” or “significantly” in the prior 12 months.
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Jan 23, 2025 | 
finxtech.com | Laura Alix |Ambrose Delahoussaye
A hacker for hire, Chris Silvers recalls clearly one of the few times he was stopped in his tracks while conducting a penetration test for a small retail company. He’d been hired to try to get into the communications room in the back of the store by impersonating someone from the corporate IT department. Outfitted with his toolbelt and an air of authority, he approached the cash register and informed the cashier that he was there from IT to troubleshoot some problems with the network.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Banks and financial technology firms talk a lot about partnerships, but rarely about deals. They don’t happen very often: There were only 94 fintech acquisitions from 2013-23 by the top 50 US banks and the top 15 Canadian and international banks, only 1% of global fintech deals, according to a study by consulting firm OliverWyman.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
finxtech.com | Alex McLeod |Jay Long |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Small business lending represents a $1 trillion annual opportunity for banks — provided they have the right technology and processes to compete. A persistent obstacle for many lenders is the leaky bucket problem: fragmented workflows, manual processes and broken handoffs. Despite heavy automation investments to patch these gaps, banks often fail to capture the most valuable resource: data.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
finxtech.com | Kiah Lau Haslett |Ambrose Delahoussaye
Could federal banking agencies do more to oversee the risks posed by third-party companies? While federal bank regulators mostly focus on chartered financial institutions, they have the power to examine third parties that have significant relationships with banks. But given the explosion of providers serving the industry and the pace of technological change, some are raising questions about the effectiveness of those exams, which are secretive and limited in number.
