Rebecca Mowat

AI and market concentration: what are the risks? Should we be happy to let big tech just get on with it and shape this nascent market or are the regulators right to be concerned? Very interesting points to views from Simon Hansford and Mark Boost

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It's beyond ironic that the Competition and Markets Authority has renewed its contract with Amazon Web Services (AWS) under the preferential pricing scheme negotiated by the Cabinet Office. Precisely one of the "theories of harm" being investigated by the CMA. More excellent sleuthing from ComputerWeekly.com and Caroline Donnelly #Cloud #Competition #Procurement #GCloud

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Digital verification innovation will transform how consumers and businesses engage with the financial services sector  Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) leadership bringing together a range of stakeholders in tackling economic crime will make it easier for businesses to access financial services.  The White Paper published today highlights how this industry leadership can have real positive impact. Terrific leadership by Leon Ifayemi Teresa Lam #FinTech #Innovation #FinancialServices #EconomicCrime #DigitalVerification  Charlotte Crosswell OBE Alex Marsh ★ Madush Gupta ★

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The Bank of England's Deputy Governor has said the UK is on the cusp of a technological revolution in finance. It's a trend we're seeing first-hand at The PHA Group, as we work with an expanding portfolio of payments clients around the globe. A recent blog here highlights the payment trends that will define 2024. In short, increased competition between big banks and challenger payment entities will trigger market consolidation. The goal for these challenger entities is ensuring they assume a sizeable market share and stand out from the competition. https://lnkd.in/eRZr92k6

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FCA giving a clear heads up as to disappointment in the consumer investment sector over identifying vulnerable customers in the Dear CEO letter published today. "Our 2022 Financial Lives Survey data shows that almost half (47%) of adults show one or more characteristics of vulnerability. This reduces to c.30% where invested assets are over £50K. Despite this, and as an example, our recent Wealth Management firm data survey found that 49% of firms had not identified any vulnerable clients within their retail client base. Furthermore, based on the data submitted by firms in aggregate, less than 1% of retail clients appeared to present with characteristics of vulnerability. We are currently working with industry bodies and individual firms to unpick this data to better understand how firms are: • identifying and categorising vulnerable clients; and • then modifying their product or service offering to meet those clients’ needs. "

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✨ Happy Monday 💥 Increased podcast usage of late (who hasn't!) and one that truly stood out was Matt Wilson at RSM UK's "The ultimate expert in fraud: an interview with a former fraudster". Alex W. being the previous fraudster. Clever conversation regarding fraudster profiles, psychological approach to targets, ability to pivot in response to defences and capacity to learn and move away from this career choice. Would recommend to anyone looking to increase their learning in this area and to ensure your team are well prepared for the tools at fraudster's disposal. Also patently inspiring on a personal level; you can be who you want to be... #fraud #fraudawareness #wellbeing

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Anyone interested in the future of public services and by obvious link the UK's economic performance should read this article by Theo Blackwell MBE and Andrew Greenway. What this and The Radical How - https://lnkd.in/euvx-vf4 by Public Digital are starting to move us towards is something I've been pondering on for a while. Despite being someone who makes a living from doing tech and data work, often in government, I don't think anything very fundamental can change further until the underpinning people/HR model of our public services change. In this sense it is about the people not the technology. Our model for people and talent that work in public services is unchanged now for the entirety of my career and I'm quite old. Whilst the world - finances, expectations and UK positioning - has fundamentally transformed. There is no incentive for bold, there are few punishments for mediocre, leadership cadres come from similar non diverse backgrounds (that's not just diversity in the usual sense of it), policy skills dominate, ministers build up little functional knowledge, required new types of talent can't work in the recruitment and HR model, most public servants stay in the sector for their entire career - I could go on. How can there be fundamental change when the people that have to deliver much of it work within such an anachronistic model. Cut taxes? Spend more money? Use AI? - fiddling whilst Whitehall has 20 person meetings for 4 hours.

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I spent 20 years in the Financial Services Industry and recently I was employed as a "UK Government Futurist" working for the Cabinet Office. Today, I was interested to read (and fully support) the comment by Rachel Reeves - "If we could unlock just 1% of the money in defined contribution schemes - and invest that in more productive assets [and] fast-growing British companies - that’d be £8bn to help finance growth and prosperity and wealth creation here in Britain." It's been our ambition too for the last four years. However, I don't believe the Government should administer this alone. Last year I met with directors at Proshare (https://www.proshare.org/ - "the voice of employee share plans"), who supported our ambition but stated they only work with blue chip enterprises, as the administration would be too difficult for SME schemes. I don't believe the Government should work with existing asset managers or big business to achieve their goals, as the "rarified air" fees they would charge would reduce the benefits the families (and economy) would receive. So, what's the "magic ingredient" we've been pushing? ...Access to financial education. Something that benefits everyone, especially future generations. At Hug we've spent four years building a model so we can generate impact returns, but also gift 100% of our education fees back to students (of any age) to invest in their local stock market or to create businesses, or just to acquire assets. Over a year ago I explained this to Civil Servants, how Hug could get more wealth in families pockets, but they told me the current administration wouldn't be interested... maybe the new administration would? If any of my network could introduce me to local mayors, council heads, politicians etc I can demonstrate how to get more wealth back into families pockets, in a way in which creates more investment in the domestic economy and stock market, to support fast growing UK business. And it's not just the UK who can benefit. Every country, such as the USA, Europe, UAE etc can stimulate growth through more domestic investors. Emerging economies such as South East Asia and African countries would also benefit tremendously because their administration would have empirical evidence of the good they're doing, increasing education rates and productivity, without having to sell their natural resources (thereby depriving future generations). If there are any ministers, philanthropists, NGOs or impact investors etc who would like to meet, please drop me a DM (we were ranked top 10% of ideas by Y-Combinator in 2021, have had multiple Middle East family partnership offers and several VC offers). https://lnkd.in/eJrbZzYB

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Surely, sharing exposure and other data to protect your organisations shareholders from unnecessary losses and you and your employees from job losses due to fraud is a no brainer? Beware of complacency and inertia, fraud is a growth industry and those fraudsters will shortly be targetting your weaknesses.

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The UK Government has published its Smart Data Road Map. Our key takeaways are: > Priority Smart Data Sectors: Banking, Finance (Pensions and Insurance), Energy & Road Fuels, Telecoms, Transport, Retail, Home Buying > Departments will progress the sectoral schemes - with the scheme implementation steps defined in the Roadmap the Roadmap sees all of the priority sectors progressing in 2024 > Existing funded projects are Open Property and Open Fuel - great to have something to cut our teeth on And there is much already under development that enables Smart Data to reach it's full potential: > 1st things 1st the DPD Bill is progressing through parliment - Section 3 is Smart Data provisions > Digital Identity - Section 2 of DPID Verification Services - currently 52 providers certified as compliant with the Digital ID Trust Framework including #Yoti #Onfido #iProov #Experian #GBGroup #Digidentity #OneID > Implementation Entity - Open Banking Ltd (formerly Open Banking Imp Entity) will be put on a long term footing to migrate it's support to Smart Data > DMCC Bill passing through parliment, creating the provisions for the CMA's Digital Marekets Unit which offers opportunities for many businesses by opening up market territories previously dominated by the Big Tech companies. Smart Data plays a huge role here providing all businesses with access to data as rich or richer than those used by the Big Tech. > And where is the Consumer in all of this - 2023 saw a 13% of digitally active consumers adoption of Open Banking, that's 1 in 7. An impressive user base already on the behaviour change journey of using Smart Data. Not a bad target market for any business to aim for. The Smart Data Roadmap is an phenominal step forward and much thanks needs to go to Gavin Starks and Kevin Hollinrake for co-chairing the Smart Data Council. Congratulations also to the Smart Data Team Siobhan Dennehy Agnieszka Scott Eleanor Stead Joseph Hartigan Amy Woy, PhD Dale Every Callum Ward . Special mention to John Fitzpatrick now at the FCA. And special mention to my fellow Smart Data Council members, and sub group members - too many to mention by name who all give up their time to progress this important agnenda for the UK Economy. Onwards

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Great article written by our CEO Dermot Corrigan on #WealthBriefing about KYC screening for the private banking and wealth management industry. smartKYC has seen great success in this market by utilising its far reaching federated search, peerless multilingual natural language processing, and highly sophisticated name and identity matching techniques. #AI #KYC #NLP https://lnkd.in/eV8zkwK6

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An interesting, but not surprising move by NatWest. Data sovereignty for business as well as Government remains its critical mass. Not only accessing, storing and securing it but having the ability to manage it sits central to its ownership. This trend will grow. Securing and encrypting the data is the next logical step for business to maintain #datacontrol . Who is next to say No to WhatsApp? #datasovereignty #datasecurity #WhatsApp

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As someone who spends much of my time studying the #AdviceTech both in #America and #Britain contracting the adoption of #FinTech and the reasons behind the differences across both jurisdictions is an interesting subject an excellent read from Alina Khan at FT Adviser. #WealthTech #FinancialAdvice

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I've sometimes mused with friends about how vulnerable UK elections are to being influenced or bought by states, businesses or just wealthy individuals given the combination of 1) a lack of effective restrictions on funding, 2) the relatively modest sums required to outspend other parties, and 3) the untrammelled power of whoever wins a majority in the Commons, which can be done with as little as a third of votes If you'll forgive the corporate M&A analogy, a hostile takeover seems relatively straightforward if there's a willing and funded 'barbarian at the gate' externally and a suitably telegenic proxy to front it. It's not as if the UK is immune from these things. To switch analogy, as pointed out in a review in the current LRB, despite the myth that the last successful invasion of England was in 1066, the government was in fact overthrown by seaborne invasion from abroad in 1139, 1153, 1326, 1399, 1460, 1471, 1485 and 1688. The vulnerability has in recent years been most famously illustrated in the Conservative party's reliance on dubious funding, though Labour's funding also gives cause for concern IMO. But now that Elon Musk is apparently thinking of outgunning everyone financially in the next UK election by providing $100M funding to Farage, the exploitation of these vulnerabilities seems set to move to another level. Peter Geoghegan of Democracy for Sale is well worth reading on what could be done - https://lnkd.in/eeSFW3kd p.s. on point 2), the two biggest spenders in the 2024 UK election were in the tens of millions (Labour + Co-op Party £60M, Conservative - £40M) and nobody else was above single figures. Sources: UK 2024 spend: https://lnkd.in/eWCzfXAY UK party individual donors: https://lnkd.in/eHxtMqQi

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Very useful topics discussed at this morning’s UK Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) launch of their Digital Hub to support innovation & economic growth. The helpful collaboration between Competition and Markets Authority, Ofcom, Information Commissioner's Office & the Financial Conduct Authority aims to deliver better outcomes for industry & consumers. Interesting that Digital Identity, along with Quantum, Immersive Tech, & GenAI / Deepfakes are all on the DRCF’s mind. Yoti #digitalID

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