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

Key themes this week (April 21-27)

• Hyena going to compete or improve ChatGPT?
• Is the metaverse still a thing?
• Super.com all-in-one savings SuperApp
• JPMorgan using ChatGPT to understand Fed

How Bank Apps Know You’re You

"... If we’ve learned one thing from years of hacks and phishing, it’s this: A username and a password alone aren’t strong enough to protect our most precious accounts. So why don’t our bank apps require us to pile on extra security settings?"

Key takeaways:

• Banks run a lot of software in the background to make sure you’re really you
• Among several factors considered during logins are: the time of day, location, device IP address, mobile carrier, and if any links prompted users to open the app

LinkedIn Post

This new technology could blow away GPT-4 and everything like it

"...In a paper published in March, artificial intelligence (AI) scientists at Stanford University and Canada's MILA institute for AI proposed a technology that could be far more efficient than GPT-4 -- or anything like it -- at gobbling vast amounts of data and transforming it into an answer.”

Key takeaways:

• Known as Hyena, the technology is able to achieve equivalent accuracy on benchmark tests, such as question answering, while using a fraction of the computing power
• In some instances, the Hyena code is able to handle amounts of text that make GPT-style technology simply run out of memory and fail
• Poli and team argue that they have not merely tried a different approach with Hyena, they have "broken the quadratic barrier", causing a qualitative change in how hard it is for a program to compute results

LinkedIn Post

Is the TD-First Horizon deal any closer?

"...The Canadian bank’s CEO said this week he still “[sees] the benefits” of the acquisition but didn’t comment on potential renegotiation. First Horizon, meanwhile, said it had “no further updates."

Key takeaways:

• An extension would push the deadline for closing the deal beyond May 27 and mark the second delay the transaction has faced
• Much has changed in the banking landscape, though, since First Horizon’s early-March SEC filing
• The timeline to potential approval could stretch even longer now that “US regulators have their hands full with more immediate banking issues

LinkedIn Post

US savings app Super.com lands $85m in Series C fundraise

"…New investors, including a number of angel investors, join existing investors Inovia Capital, Telstra Ventures, Acrew Capital, Lion Capital, NBA superstar Stephen Curry, and more.”

Key takeaways:

• Formerly known as SnapCommerce, the company rebranded to Super and launched SuperCash – a cashback card that allows users to build credit with each transaction – in October 2022
• With its expansion into fintech, Super aims to offer an “all-in-one savings super app” for Americans

LinkedIn Post

DailyPay racks up bank clients

“…Santander Bank last Wednesday became the third bank to say it’s partnering with on-demand pay provider DailyPay to offer earned wage access services to corporate clients who want to extend the service to their employees, according to a post on the company’s LinkedIn page. DailyPay has also lined up PNC Bank and TD Bank as clients, said a spokesperson for the New York City-based payments player.”

Key takeaways:

• With its payments to clients’ employees, DailyPay is the second-largest user of The Clearing House’s real-time payments network, behind only digital payment pioneer PayPal and its Venmo unit
• DailyPay, founded in 2015, charges a corporate customer’s employee $2.99 per transfer to have their pay instantly transferred to an account, and provides its next-day ACH payment service for free

LinkedIn Post

Should Financial Institutions Consider Metaverse Solutions?

"...The metaverse is going to have a massive impact across all industries, according to McKinsey. In 2022, well over $120 billion in private equity and venture capital funding went into metaverse-related businesses, according to the firm’s report, “Value Creation in the Metaverse.”

Key takeaways:

• The report also claims that the metaverse will generate $5 trillion in value by 2030. In other words, the metaverse is becoming increasingly harder to ignore
• Given how banking organizations are experimenting with augmented reality, virtual reality and the metaverse, it is clear that this technology is still being defined

LinkedIn Post

Banks’ use of ChatGPT-like AI comes under CFPB’s watch

“…The CFPB is thinking about the future of banking — whether it be in the metaverse or in some sort of augmented reality context — and we’re starting to look at some of the building blocks that are out there,” Rohit Chopra said Tuesday.”

Key takeaways:

• CFPB is doing some work right now on how [generative AI] might undermine or create risks in customized customer care, to the extent that biases are introduced, or frankly, even the wrong information
• The interagency statement comes as the growth of machine learning, generative AI and the attention surrounding text generator ChatGPT have raised questions about security and bias in a wide swath of industries

LinkedIn Post

JPMorgan uses ChatGPT to analyze Fed speeches - Bloomberg

"...JPMorgan has built a ChatGPT-based language model to analyze Federal Reserve statements and speeches in an effort to sniff out potential trading signals.”

Key takeaways:

• The model scoured 25 years' worth of Fed speeches to rank them on a "Hawk-Dove" score, says Bloomberg
• JPMorgan economists then plotted the index against asset performances and found that the AI could potentially help in predicting policy changes and be useful for trading

LinkedIn Post

Mexico’s Clara secures $60m in equity funding round led by GGV Capital

"...Clara, a corporate spend management platform operating in Latin America, has secured $60 million in an equity funding round led by GGV Capital.”

Key takeaways:

• With the new money, Clara plans to boost the development of its platform, grow its engineering and product teams, and solidify its presence in the Latin American market
• The firm has also made five new appointments to its executive team

LinkedIn Post

Check this out:

Small Business Could Mean Big Opportunity

“…Small?business?is a?highly?attractive?segment, particularly in the current deposit environment,?because, among other advantages,?it?represents?low betas with higher average balances than the consumer segment…”

https://curinos.com/our-insights/this-month-in-retail-banking-small-business-big-opportunity/

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