2020 in review: Top core banking stories

Sometimes it can feel like the smallest hiccup can set back a core banking deal or implementation by months.

Banks have had to deal with remote implementations in 2020

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that a year of cuts, digital investments, and shake-ups will have had an effect on the number and size of core banking deals we saw this year.

Despite this there have been several vendors keen to show that things are business as usual. They have talked up their abilities to complete implementations completely remotely.

Here are some of the more eyebrow-raising core banking stories from this year (in no particular order).

US banks debut cloud-based Finastra Phoenix platform

In July, two US-based banks became the first to deploy Finastra’s Fusion Phoenix core banking solution in the cloud.

Florida-based Commerce National Bank & Trust and Washington-based Commencement Bank are accessing the Finastra platform via a … Read the rest

Aldi to boost annual spending on UK-made food and drink by £3.5bn

More than 1,000 small firms in grocer’s supply chain expected to benefit from cash injection

Aldi is boosting its support for British suppliers by announcing it aims to spend £3.5bn more on UK-produced food and drink annually within the next five years.

In a move that will benefit more than 1,000 small businesses in its supply chain, the discount supermarket is also extending by a year to the end of 2021 an agreement to pay smaller suppliers without delay.

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Reporter Gagosz departing Providence Business News

Alexa Gagosz is leaving the Providence Business News, where she covered all things COVID-19, health care, state government and hospitality. Her last day is Wednesday. She plans to freelance and look for a new...

The post Reporter Gagosz departing Providence Business News appeared first on Talking Biz News.

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2020 review: A year which saw fintechs cut jobs, pay & business arms

Despite banks’ top executives insisting that COVID-19 is “not a crisis in banking or a financial crisis”, a number of fintechs have still been tested – some to the brink of collapse.

Alternative lenders struggled through long accreditation processes and dried up reserves, before eventually taking on loans which carry the potential risk of high default rates.

Neobanks could no longer rely on interchange fees as a main source of income, prompting a number of them to pivot and focus on alternative revenue streams.

Payments firms whose customers are largely made up of shops and restaurants have experienced serious drops in volume.

But not all fintechs have struggled. Payments firms like Stripe, Fast and Checkout.com have seen their valuations soar because of their strong e-commerce customer bases.

Trading platforms also benefitted from the volatily. In March, Robinhood made $60 million – triple what it made in March 2019.

FinTech Futures… Read the rest