“Finthreat”, fee-fi-fo-fum – the scent of digitisation!

Fintech has received much attention recently. Tightly coupled with the revolution to produce alternate financial services (such as crypto assets, online peer to peer lending and insurance, alternate payment platforms and robo advice) is undoubtedly the advent of exponential technology. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, cloud computing and the internet of things looks set to transform the way we live and consume financial services. Huge benefits emerge such as seamless transactions through facial recognition or convenient online borrowing through new alternate scoring models, emanating from social media data. New fintech threats though run alongside these new tools, techniques and services. Both macro-level (systemic) and micro-level threats (“finthreats”) are surfaced and warning flags sounded. Regulators caution that these threats must be recognised and adequately addressed, whilst hailing in a new digital financial services era.