What’d I miss? News and Insights that got noticed

Key themes this week (April 14-20)

• Apple Savings Account Easy Onboarding
• Goldman Sachs mulls sale of Greensky
• Fintech helping to reduce bias in lending
• BNPL not used for groceries

How Spotify Knows What You Want to Hear Next

"...Spotify’s head of personalization explains how popular playlists like ‘Discover Weekly’ are created. With 500 million monthly users, Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming service. Here’s an inside look at how the platform uses machine learning technology to generate personalized recommendations."

Key takeaways:

• Starts with collaborative filtering, followed by content-based filtering and grouping by temporal structure. Cultural context is also taken into consideration and reinforcement learning is applied
• Some industry experts critical of Spotify approach are worried about algorithmic bias

LinkedIn Post

Banking associations want payments removed from EU digital identity plan

"...The European Digital Identity (eIDAS 2.0) proposal will see the creation of digital identity wallet is a secure app that will allow citizens across the continent to verify their ID, access public and private services and store sensitive digital documents in one place.”

Key takeaways:

• If widely used cards and payment specifications were included in the new wallet infrastructure, "huge investments" would be required not only in the financial sector, but also for the overall acceptance network, hitting merchants and service industries.
• The call comes even though a multi-country consortium consisting of banks and technology companies has already been chosen to deliver a cross-border payments pilot for the digital identity wallet

LinkedIn Post

Liberty Bank launches Owners Bank for small businesses in the US

"...Owners Bank will offer business interest checking and savings accounts equipped with digital tools to help small businesses manage their finances, set up savings goals and send and accept digital payments."

Key takeaways:

• Users will have access to a personalized dashboard that can consolidate all their bank accounts (including those from other financial institutions) into one platform
• The new digital bank will also start offering business loans and credit from mid-2023

LinkedIn Post

Goldman Sachs mulls potential sale of BNPL fintech GreenSky

"... Goldman has been working to scale down its retail banking activities and instead focus on three divisions: trading and investment banking, asset and wealth management, and a third division including transaction banking and other partnership operations including those with Apple.”

Key takeaways:

• The bank’s CEO David Solomon told analysts this week that despite GreenSky performing well, “given our current strategic priorities, however, we may not be the best long-term holder of this business”
• Goldman reported Q1 2023 earnings down 19% thanks in part to a $470 million loss on the sale of some Marcus loans, which was largely offset by $440 million reserve release in provision for credit losses, Reuters reports

LinkedIn Post

Apple Launches New Savings Account

“…As one of the Apple Card customers I was able to open my Apple Savings account today with only a few clicks as you would expect from an Apple experience.”

Key takeaways:

• Part of the journey was the ability to deposit my Daily Cash (which is the cash-back from the Apple Card) which now allows me to receive interest on this money
• Overall, a great onboarding experience from the comfort of my phone/home only taking a couple of minutes
• The one thing I did have to do was update to the latest version of iOS (16.4.1) for the savings account to show up in the Apple Wallet

LinkedIn Post

Inclusive lending fintech Stratyfy raises $10M

"...Stratyfy, a fintech that builds machine learning software solutions to help firms mitigate risk, remove bias and enable inclusive lending, announced $10 million in funding last month.”

Key takeaways:

• Kornhauser said the fintech’s present clients and the metrics showing the customers it gained with its tools contributed to the successful fundraising event
• “[UnBias] offers financial institutions a tool for proactive, unfair bias detection. Should an unfair bias be identified, [UnBias] gives them the opportunity and the actionable recommendations to proactively address and negate that bias,” she said

LinkedIn Post

Financial automation start-up Clerkie bags $33m Series A

“…The consumer debt market is fundamentally broken for consumers and the creditors that serve them, as evidenced by the predatory collections practices and the crushing amount of debt burdening American families,” says Guy Assad, CEO and co-founder of Clerkie.”

Key takeaways:

• Assad claims “tens of millions” of Americans are currently struggling with debt and falling into delinquency
• “It’s a lose-lose situation for the borrowers and for the banks who are racking up billions in losses. Our goal is to support struggling American families by giving them better tools to responsibly fulfil their debt obligations and ease their debt burden.”

LinkedIn Post

Grocery Shoppers Who Try BNPL Do Not Stick With It

"...The study found that, in March, only 0.3% of those surveyed had paid for their most recent grocery purchase with BNPL options, down 50% year over year from the 0.6% who said the same in March 2022.”

Key takeaways:

• A PYMNTS study of more than 2,400 U.S. consumers who have purchased groceries at least once in the past month revealed that very few shoppers — even those who are struggling to pay their bills each month — are willing to pay for their groceries in installments.
• These low numbers of BNPL adoption suggest that consumers have been disappointed, given that, just a year and a half ago, many grocery shoppers were interested in trying out the payment method

LinkedIn Post

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Curinos (F)insights presents: The Chrisman Commentary | Funded Mortgage Volume; Curinos' John Sayre on Production Trends and Data; Fed Rate Hike Predictions

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