Bank technology

A lot of what Cathy Bessant knows about directing a team can be traced back to her days as patrol leader of her Girl Scouts troop.

Randolph Bancorp raised $57 million in a mutual-to-stock conversion and is using the proceeds to fund acquisitions — it closed its first-ever deal in July — and dramatically improve its digital capabilities.

Financial institutions must act on the "urgent and fundamental" need to transform the correspondent banking system, the consulting firm said in an annual report on global payments.

Yahoo says no bank account or card data has been compromised in its massive data breach. Yet hackers could use their ill-gotten personal information about customers to mess with bank accounts.

Financial services IT teams must think like cybercriminals and develop an offensive approach to security at a time when threats are growing in frequency and sophistication.

Starting Friday, all U.S. banks should be able to receive same-day payments. But by itself, same-day speed may not be enough to meet the demands of an increasingly digital world.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and our social media platforms.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are not moving fast enough on fintech, prompting Rep. Patrick McHenry to introduce a bill designed to give them a push.

JPMorgan Chase is shifting its IT organization to private and public cloud computing. The motivation is not just saving money — on the contrary, CIO Dana Deasy vows the IT budget will not shrink. Rather, the main goals are saving developers' time, redirecting resources away from basic infrastructure and toward innovation and working with fintech startups.

JPMorgan Chase has made an equity investment of an undisclosed size in InvestCloud, a startup that provides cloud-based software to the securities industry.

Banks continue to gather ID documents manually from would-be customers, even ones who sought to open accounts online. Bringing the manual process into the digital age is the goal of several startups.

Paper-based marketing — not digital communication — remains a more promising way to reach customers 50 and older, who also tend to be a bank's wealthiest client segment.

Swift is taking another step to protect the payment system following a multimillion-dollar cybertheft early in the year.

WASHINGTON — A Republican lawmaker is urging the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to consider issues related to virtual currency companies as the agency develops a fintech regulatory framework.

Fraud analytics, e-signatures, consent tools, artificial intelligence and notifications are all being floated as possible defenses against employees falsifying account openings and product sales.

Virtual currency advocates are hoping a recent surge of support in Congress can help them accomplish a long-sought goal of creating a safe harbor for companies that do not directly hold customers' funds.

Bankers may have a reputation for being old-school, but their rapidly growing digital-ad budgets are in step with the rest of the business world. Banks can both gather valuable demographic data from who clicks on their ads and better measure returns on their investments.

Banks can be more effective in connecting with customers by offering them personalized communications, rather than bombarding them with general sales pitches.

The surprise vote by the U.K. in June to leave the European Union may encourage fintech firms in London to expand across the pond. That was the case with Duco, a financial data management company, which recently added senior managers in New York. "Hiring talent in London was already hard on the tech side, and we think it's going to get even harder" says CEO Christian Nentwich. Duco was selected last year to participate in Accenture's Fintech Innovation Lab in London.

There's no tech solution in the world that can prevent cybersecurity attacks. To mitigate risks, however, banks can apply four controls after they first determine their risk tolerances.