Disruptors

The bitcoin blockchain poses a negligible competitive threat to legacy institutions, but the technology could open up new markets for financial services, says a new report by Citigroup equities analysts.

Attendees at the recent White House fintech summit shined a spotlight on shared innovation challenges. To overcome them and help the U.S. make progress in financial services, we need to embrace these three regulatory reforms.

Although intended to protect investors from market volatility, a decision by Betterment to temporarily suspend trading the morning after the British referendum has the wealth management industry wondering aloud if the robo-adviser harmed its reputation instead.

Bankers, fintech entrepreneurs, regulators and other financial services players gathered in New Orleans last week to discuss the future of the industry at SourceMedia's Digital Banking 2016 conference. Here are some of the highlights of the conference. For more, check out the hashtag #digibank16 on Twitter.

Chief Technology Officer David Reilly has had to make major reductions in traditional expenses so Bank of America can afford to collaborate with fintech firms that are developing innovative products the bank craves.

For the first time, Ginnie Mae has edged out Freddie Mac as the second largest securitization platform.

The recent White House fintech summit was helpful in exposing companies to regulators, and vice versa, but we need to strengthen the lines of communications even more.

Digital tools improve a bank's traditional sales process, but relationship-based banking is still a huge factor in winning over millennial customers.

Contrary to doom-and-gloom attitudes of some about banks' ability to compete for millennials' business, the industry will build on its history of innovation to meet the technology needs of future customers.

Microsoft is in the process of rolling out a mobile wallet for its small share of the smartphone market. But the company has been steadily developing this technology across much bigger platforms.

Who is Microsoft Wallet for? With just 1.6% of the U.S. smartphone market as of January, it's unlikely that even Microsoft believes Windows Phone users are a huge untapped audience for mobile payments.

Facebook is poking its fingers into a lot of seemingly unrelated businesses, but commerce is always at the heart of its efforts. Here are some ways Facebook is building a new foundation for payments.

A growing number of marketplace lenders and other fintech companies say they no longer use FICO scores or are using them in a limited way. The open question is whether their alternative methods will be more effective.

Nonbanks now set the digital banking experience bar, but in less than a decade large banks will have swallowed them up and will have become digital financial superstores.

The Bank of England is among the central banks exploring possible uses of blockchain technology. In a recent speech, a BOE official noted how it would open access to central banks beyond commercial banks. "Everyone – including individuals – would be able to hold such balances," he said.

Throw Cathy Bessant of Bank of America a question about a hot tech topic, and she's got answers. Blockchain? She loves it but is still waiting for its use case. Patents? The law is making us be aggressive. Swift? A call to action. And that's just the start.

Embracing technology that gives innovators access to their platforms will provide banks with the upgrade they sorely need.

MFA Financial has carved out an impressive niche for itself by buying re-performing and nonperforming residential mortgages and securities.

Well-established tech giants like Amazon and Google pose a more formidable threat to banks than the thousands of startups populating the fintech market.

As PayPal has grown over the years, it has made enemies. Some of these rivalries were short-lived, while others persist to this day.