Zopa to launch digital banking service, becoming latest group to take the fight to traditional high street banks December 4, 2018 Peer-to-peer lender Zopa is to follow through on continued hints that it would launch a bank, this morning announcing that it had acquired a license to do so. The company said it will roll out a range of new banking products next year, including fixed term savings accounts, credit cards and a money management app, [...]
How the UK can work with Japan to make the world a safer and more stable place December 4, 2018 The language of diplomacy can sometimes be very general. Diplomats and politicians invoke the idea of “partnerships” and “strong bilateral relations” without making clear to their citizens why they matter or what the benefits might be. Talk about trading opportunities gives a sense of something practical emerging from these sorts of relationship, but trade and investment is just [...]
AI could be the answer to the four-day week December 4, 2018 Britons are under more pressure at work now than at any other time in the past 25 years. Leaders from the TUC to the shadow chancellor are calling on a four-day working week as the answer. While some businesses have welcomed the idea with open arms, many are still fearful of the impact of reduced [...]
Tencent music arm makes its move on delayed IPO set to raise up to $1.23bn December 3, 2018 Tech giant Tencent Holdings’ music subsidiary has moved forward on a New York Stock Exchange initial public offering (IPO) of up to $1.23bn (£1bn) today. Tencent Music Entertainment is hoping to raise between $1.07bn and $1.23bn, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, in a delayed offering that was originally planned to launch in [...]
Data literacy is a win-win for businesses and employees December 3, 2018 As the Fourth Industrial Revolution accelerates, in which data and automation are pervasive elements, debates around the impact these technologies will have on our working lives are widespread across the media, academic circles and the government. However, nowhere have these changes sparked more action than in the business world. With uncertainty around Brexit and the [...]
GDPR is now six months old. So where are all the blockbuster fines for data breaches? December 3, 2018 It has been six months since the European Union’s sparkly new privacy rules, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), finally came into effect. There was a flurry of activity in the run-up on 25 May as people received dozens (if not hundreds) of emails from businesses asking for consent to retain their data. But since [...]
The founder of DNAFit on how understanding our genetic makeup can help us get healthy December 3, 2018 We can see physical traces of our genetics in our parents, but for the most part, our DNA is a mystery that many of us can never truly comprehend. But what if we could understand some of the unique information captured in our DNA, so that we could use it like a map, helping us [...]
Bristol ‘virtual touch’ firm raises £35m December 3, 2018 Virtual touch technology company Ultrahaptics has raised £35m in a new funding round and brought in a major new backer. The University of Bristol spin-off has developed technology that projects the feeling of an object like a switch or a knob into a users’ hand. This is done by speakers sending out sound waves from black [...]
SpaceX delays rocket launch again December 2, 2018 Elon Musk's SpaceX pushed a satellite launch back a day to Monday, Pacific standard time, after saying more inspections were needed on the Falcon 9 rocket. The company announced the third rescheduling on Twitter less than 12 hours before launch at the Vandendberg Air Force Base in California. SpaceX said it needed to “conduct additional inspections [...]
Digital Withdrawal: How Britain’s fast-growing tech sector can flourish in the face of Brexit December 2, 2018 The last five years have seen an extraordinary phenomenon. The powerhouse that is the UK tech sector has boomed to a value of more than £180bn, outpacing the sluggish UK economy as a whole. Want to buy clothes online? Asos and FarFetch are leading the world. Play games on your smartphone? You’ve probably enjoyed one made [...]