Leadership in Swiss Banks

How are leadership styles developing in Swiss banks – basically, Lewin’s traditional leadership styles such as authoritarian/patriarchal, cooperative, etc. are well known. Nowadays, a distinction can also be made between transactional and transformational leadership. This article explains how these leadership styles differ from each other and why the leadership styles in banks are changing towards agile organizational forms.

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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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Asymmetric cryptography and digital signatures – Part 2

The first part of this blog series introduced the concept of symmetric cryptography, which can en-sure the confidentiality of data to be exchanged. Symmetric cryptography is based on the funda-mental assumption that the key used, which is to be kept secret, must be transmitted between the communication partners via a secure channel, since otherwise third parties with knowledge of the key can access the ciphertext. Accordingly, with the help of symmetric cryptography, the problem of secret message transmission is reduced to secret key transmission only. To get around this prob-lem, this second part of the blog series presents an introduction to the concept of asymmetric cryp-tography.

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Trend Impact Radar 2023: New Trends for the Financial Industry – Part 2

The Competence Center Ecosystems regularly identifies and analyzes the most important trends impacting financial institutions and financial-related service providers. In doing so, we address the development of megatrends, macrotrends and microtrends as well as their impact on the financial industry. As a follow-up to our last blog, which focused on the megatrends and macrotrends we identified as newly relevant to the financial industry in our last internal update, today I would like to present a selection of related microtrends that relate to the topics of data, customer, employees and corporate responsibility.

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Trend Impact Radar 2023: New Trends for the Financial Industry

The Competence Center Ecosystems regularly identifies and analyzes the most important trends impacting financial institutions and financial-related service providers. In doing so, we address both the development of megatrends, macrotrends and microtrends as well as their impact on the financial industry. Today, I would like to share the four mega and macro trends that we have newly identified as relevant to the financial industry in our latest internal update: Web 3.0, AR & VR / Metaverse, Generation without Borders / Permanent Beta and Standards in Telecommunications.

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Applying Reference Models – From Bank Model to Core Banking Radar

Reference models are, as the name suggests, models that can be used as a reference when creating a company-specific model. In order to show how the use of a reference model can look like, this article describes how the so-called functional model specific to the Core Banking Radar was derived from the bank model, which queries the coverage of functionalities in core banking systems.

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Exemplary Measures & Key Takeaways for Banks in the Context of Launching a Digital Assets Offering

The first part of this two-part blog post outlined challenges for a bank launching a digital asset offering. As a starting point, a financial institution was outlined which, in a first step, would like to enable wealthy private clients to trade selected digital assets (e.g. Bitcoin and Ethereum) in cooperation with an external partner. In the second part, selected measures are presented, success factors are described and key takeaways for the launch of such an offering are highlighted. The contents are based on experiences from projects and discussions with experts.

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Selected Challenges & Success Factors for Banks in the Context of Launching a Digital Assets Offering

Various banks have opened up more to the topic of digital assets in recent months and are actively driving forward concept and implementation projects for a digital asset offering or are already offering one. For a successful launch, various fields of action need to be addressed. The basis for the conception, operational implementation and launch of a digital asset offering is to ensure the relevant expertise in the appropriate depth and breadth both in the project team and in the specialist departments involved during the conception and implementation phase, the leap from a project-oriented way of working (Change the Bank, CtB) to operation (Run the Bank, RtB), and anchoring in the corporate culture.
This blog post will outline selected challenges in these three areas of action, present exemplary measures, describe success factors, and highlight key takeaways.

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A General View on the Developments Concerning FTX

Cryptocurrencies are once again on everyone’s lips after one of the largest trading platforms for cryptocurrencies, FTX.com, with a market valuation of $32 billion, filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022. The cause was a liquidity shortage at the Bahamas-based crypto exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried as a result of a bank run. In this blog post, we have a deeper look at the developments leading up to the crypto exchange’s insolvency.

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