Forget the fearmongering and embrace the internet of things January 19, 2018 Has your smart refrigerator been infected by a strain of zombie malware? Or maybe spies have been listening to you via your networked alarm? For some reason, the idea of connected devices – a vital part of the internet of things (IoT) – has sent the imaginations of some organisations into overdrive. Last February, Germany’s [...]
The best running tech and gadgets of 2017 review: From wearables to fitness trackers and sports earphones January 18, 2018 Are you marathon ready? How are your glutes? Firm and rippling? Should they be rippling? Oh my god somebody Google “rippling glutes” right now and tell me what it says. In the meantime, it’s time to peruse City AM’s exhaustive list of the absolute best running tech of 2017, from things that go around your [...]
Financial planner Symphony launches robo-advice service Finchtech with Tam Asset Management to plug the gap between Nutmeg and the super-rich January 18, 2018 Financial planning firm Symphony has become the latest to enter the growing “robo-advice” melee, launching an online wealth management service to rival competitors such as Nutmeg, Wealthify and Netwealth. The Finchtech platform will be aimed at clients who do not want – or can’t afford – bespoke advice services, but would like their money invested [...]
Robot bookworms? Artificial intelligence (AI) can now read as well as humans after Microsoft and Alibaba made research breakthroughs January 16, 2018 The march of artificial intelligence continues… Researchers at Microsoft have hailed a “major milestone” for the technology after they managed to create a system using the technology that can read just about as well as a human. They used what’s known as the Stanford Questions Answering Dataset (SQuAD), a tool commonly employed in scientific research [...]
Banks face a seismic technological upheaval – PSD2 is only the start January 16, 2018 The Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) came into force across the EU last Saturday, opening access to consumers’ financial data to thousands of companies that aren’t banks. The UK went a step further with Open Banking, enabling fintech players and retailers to take over the ownership of customer relationships from major banks. In the Open [...]
Tech predictions for 2018: Drones, crypto, and the rise of the robots January 15, 2018 The pace of technological change can seem exciting and daunting in equal measure. 2017, while seeing continued financial growth in the tech sector, brought even more sharply into focus the challenges inherent with the inexorable march of progress. From Amazon to Uber, tech giants saw their practices and business models scrutinised more deeply than ever [...]
Emma, the “banking app for millennials”, gets FCA approval and announces it will integrate Monzo and Revolut January 12, 2018 London-based Emma Technologies, which calls itself the "banking app for millennials", has today won approval from the City watchdog to provide payment services. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) gave the nod to the mobile-only app just over a month after it launched its beta service, helping consumers avoid overdrafts, find and cancel subscriptions and track [...]
Female-focused machine learning could change how financial advisers serve women January 10, 2018 Many companies already know that women are becoming more prominent as wealth holders, are directing more wealth investing than before, and are often their largest consumers. However, while women are the target customers, they are still underserved by financial advisers. Most financial services firms have optimised themselves to communicate with and serve male as opposed [...]
Machine learning could change the game for female investors in 2018 January 10, 2018 Many companies already know that women are becoming more prominent as wealth holders, are directing more wealth investing than before, and are often their largest consumers. However, while women are the target customers, they are still underserved by financial advisers. Most financial services firms have optimised themselves to communicate with and serve male as opposed [...]
A robot tax is a tempting but misguided response to our public funding crisis January 10, 2018 The threats posed by automation are now a common topic for futurologists. The reality is that automation has been quietly progressing for some time, and while we are a long way off a Skynet-style singularity, the development of artificial intelligence means robots are not only taking our current jobs, they are going to take more. [...]