News published by other companies, often with added comments by us.

Trends, trends, trends – nothing is as constant as change

The world is shaped by various trends, first and foremost megatrends. Megatrends describe complex dynamics of change that shape society for more than ten years. They can be used to make the complexity of change more understandable. Megatrends affect all levels of society and thus influence companies, institutions and individuals. It is essential for companies to analyze the opportunities & risks associated with the trends at an early stage. This blog post presents the selected megatrends of health and sustainability as well as the associated macro and micro trends.

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Collaborative value creation in digital ecosystems: Success factors using the example of a blockchain-based tokenization platform 

Nearly all companies today operate in ecosystems. Traditional business networks are giving way to this new value creation model, in which multiple organizations collaborate to more effectively meet the needs of customers. This shift to ecosystem-based value creation requires efficient coordination and the use of technology. In this regard, an innovative enabler for the establishment of digital ecosystems is blockchain. But what are the capabilities to participate as an actor in these new platforms? In this paper, we will take a closer look at these platforms using an existing example and derive initial insights for success factors in shared value creation.

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Business Ecosystems – Overrated or a real opportunity for financial services providers?

A few years ago, the topic of “business ecosystems” seemed to be the panacea for financial services institutions – everything “HAD” to be or become an ecosystem. Now, the yield curve is turning and earnings from maturity transformation are bubbling up again. So, all over with the “ecosystem”? In addition to answering this question, this blog post highlights aspects to be considered by organizations to successfully leverage the Business Ecosystems phenomenon.

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Microsoft Copilot – A First Look at the Workday of the Future?

Microsoft 365 has around 350 million paying users worldwide who use the Office Suite every day to create presentations, analyze data or collaborate in teams. Most of this daily work is done manually, as automation is not possible for all users due to a lack of knowledge. But it is exactly this challenge that Microsoft wants to solve with the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot. In this blog post, the function as well as the application possibilities of the Copilot are presented and fundamental implications of the collaboration between humans and arti-ficial intelligence in the everyday work of the future are shown.

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Insights from the Open Banking Summit 2022

“Financial Industry Meets BigTech”: On the 25th of August 2022, the third Open Banking Summit opened its doors in the Google event rooms in Zurich. The OpenBankingProject.ch organized this event for the third time and once again provided a stimulating get-together on the topic of open banking. The event featured national and international success stories, and the subsequent panel discussion reflected on and discussed selected topics and questions posed by the audience. Once again this year, around 120 decision-makers from the Swiss financial sector gathered to learn about current developments and to network over the subsequent aperitif.

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Core Banking Radar – “Neo Core Banking Systems and their importance for the IT Architecture of the future”

Various trends, such as an increased focus on customer interaction and embedded banking, will shape the bank of the future. To provide services along the entire “customer journey”, banks are increasingly dependent on networking with other industries. The expansion of partnerships in the ecosystem goes hand in hand with the promotion of integration capabilities via APIs and steady investment in the banking architecture. The latest Core Banking Radar article examines the system architecture of the bank of the future and, in this context, compares the four neo-core banking systems examined in earlier publications of this series.

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Beyond Banking: How Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Accelerates Customer Value Creation in the Financial Services Industry

Software is eating the world. The production of high-quality software solutions is increasingly becoming a decisive competitive factor for companies that operate in the environment of digital technologies. Particularly in a highly regulated market, such as the financial market, very special challenges apply to the companies involved in software development. One financial services provider that has been successfully using this approach for three years now is Commerzbank, and as part of a project, we had the opportunity to explore the topic of CI/CD with them in general and their experiences and learnings in particular. The result is the “CI/CD White Paper”.

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Core Banking Radar – “Vault Core – a hyper-configurable neo-core banking system from Thought Machine”

In cooperation with the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen (BEI), the Core Banking Radar of Swisscom has been monitoring the system support of banks since 2017, and analyses the most relevant systems for the Swiss market using a comprehensive assessment model. The latest publication of the Core Banking Radar looks at Vault Core from the U.K.-based company Thought Machine, which aims to adopt best practices in software development from technology companies with a cloud-native platform and give banks the flexibility to develop any product with smart contracts.

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Core Banking Radar – «From Modularbank to Tuum – a core banking system that’s not only for banks»

Since 2017, the Core Banking Radar has regularly analyzed the most common as well as emerging core banking systems in Switzerland using a comprehensive assessment model[1]. The latest publication highlights the Estonian neo-system Tuum and shows success factors for its use. The Core Banking Radar is a joint project of Swisscom and the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen.

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FinTech landscape in Switzerland: Blockchain and DLT

With a share of 10% of all FinTech companies in Europe, Switzerland is one of the leading innovation centers. The focus on distributed ledger technology is striking in Switzerland, especially in Crypto Valley Zug. In the meantime, 250 crypto companies have already settled there or are planning a location. However, Switzerland cannot rest on its laurels: to remain a leading innovation center, it constantly needs new FinTechs with innovative ideas. In order to identify gaps in the existing range of Swiss blockchain FinTechs and thus the innovation potential for further services, I analyze in this article the current service offering of the Swiss blockchain FinTech scene.

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Open Banking Summit 2020 – Opportunities and Implementation Scenarios for Open Banking in Switzerland

Recently, the Swiss Bankers Association published an overview that outlines the status of open banking in Switzerland and formulates requirements for its further development of open banking. These requirements include the clear strategic positioning of Swiss banks and the joint development of standardized APIs for data exchange between financial institutions and third-party providers. The aim of this overview is to “support the dialogue in the financial center”, as Richard Hess writes in the initial contribution to the blog parade of the Swiss Bankers Association. The Open Banking Summit of the standardization initiative OpenBankingProject.ch pursued the same goal on September 10th, with various presentations focusing on these two requirements.

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Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on the Financial Industry

Since the beginning of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has caused an enormous slump in the global economy due to lockdowns all over the world. The IMF expects global GDP to decline by 5%, and for the euro zone it is likely to be as much as 10.2% [1] – and these are the figures before a possible second wave. It remains to be seen how the economy will recover. What can already be well assessed, on the other hand, are the qualitative effects of the pandemic on the macro trends relevant to the financial industry.

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[Event] Crypto Meets Banking: How to Blockchain-Enable the Financial Sector?

Crypto Meets Banking: How to Blockchain-Enable the Financial Sector? On January 20, 2020, we will discuss this question at an event hosted by the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center and by BEI St. Gallen. We think it is now clear that blockchain, crypto assets and DLT have made their way, will not fade away and will revolutionize the financial sector. The question therefore is how to blockchain-/crypto-enable existing banks and financial institutions.

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