August 16

Low-code platforms like Genesis (an Insight Partners’ portfolio company) provide ready-made, reusable code components that can simplify and speed up the development process.

A consortium of global banks recently launched Octaura, which has built an electronic trading platform with baked-in analytics that will replace the traditionally phone-call-driven process of trading syndicated loans and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). The platform progressed from proof-of-concept to launch-ready in record time because of Genesis Global. Genesis’ platform has reusable “building blocks” that financial institutions can use to either launch services like Octaura or integrate new apps into their existing legacy systems.

“It enables agile, fast development,” Citi exec and Octaura cofounder Vitaliy Kozak told Insights Distilled, estimating that Genesis allowed Octaura’s platform to launch about five times faster, and at a fraction of the cost, than it could have otherwise.

Citi, Bank of America, and BNY Mellon recently invested $20 million into Genesis, though Citi first made an investment in 2020.

“This is going to be a game-changer for the whole industry,” said Citi director and Octaura cofounder Katya Chupryna, who works in a unit that invests in and incubates tech companies. There are currently several active Genesis deployments across the firm.

“The world is changing, the pace of development is changing, and we’re trying to change with it,” Kozak said, “And Genesis is one of our partners to help us get there.”

By combining automation and personalization, banks can increase customer satisfaction – and wealth.

Ally Financial knew many of its customers struggled to save money, so it became laser-focused on creating ways to make it easier: Its Smart Savings tools provide customized prompts and automated transfers to help users grow their account balances. The tools are working: Customers who have used them have saved twice as much as those who haven’t, Ally’s data shows.

While fintech upstarts previously dominated this arena, simple, set-it-and-forget-it tools for building wealth are becoming non-negotiable for traditional banks: Roughly a third of top banks offer some kind of automated savings feature, according to a Javelin Research survey from 2021.

Ally and its Smart Savings tools were recently recognized in the CIO 100 awards alongside six other financial services firms – you can read about all their projects here.

As everyday consumers put an onus on sustainability, it’s a competitive differentiator to help users to track their own environmental impact.

A whopping 83% of consumers think companies should be actively shaping environmental, social, and governance (ESG) best practices, according to PwC research, and, in alignment with that majority, Dutch bank ING is offering a subset of its clients access to carbon-tracking tools from fintech Cogo.

Cogo estimates the carbon emissions of all a user’s transactions, and then pairs that carbon data with behavioral science to nudge them on ways they can reduce their personal carbon footprints. Users will also be able to see how their footprint compares with the Dutch national average.

“We want to make it easier for our customers to make the right choices for their own financial health and for our planet,” an ING spokesperson told Insights Distilled. “Limiting our own footprint is essential, but as a bank we are ambitious, and we realize that we make the biggest impact together with all our customers.” NatWest, TSB, and Commonwealth Bank have also worked with Cogo.

Banks and other financial institutions continue to invest heavily in blockchain tools and services to support (and gain experience in) the crypto ecosystem without needing to engage directly.

Financial institutions are among the top public companies investing in blockchain firms in the past year, according to an analysis by BlockData, collectively participating in more than 30 funding rounds between September 2021 and mid-June.

Custody solutions and technology providers (like NYDIG, Fireblocks, Gemini, and Anchorage Digital) were popular among banks, as their client demand for digital assets has increased, as were blockchain infrastructure companies like Figment, Talos, and BlockDaemon.

See the chart from BlockData, which is owned by market intelligence platform CBInsights:

*Certik and FTX are Insight Partners portfolio companies.

Rigorously tracking diversity, equity, and inclusion data is necessary to both monitor progress and find insights in that data that may highlight weak points and influence future strategies.

Big financial institutions need to be better at tracking, forecasting, and reporting on their own diversity statistics, according to Dr. Hood in the same way “we’re presenting data on deposits and things like that.” And it needs to be more specific than just following overall workforce numbers: For example, a bank should know the percentage of people across different races and genders that are progressing through specific parts of its pipeline at any given time, he said. An ability to measure progress is crucial to accountability and ultimately to a firm’s ability to hire, onboard, and retain diverse talent long term. Read the rest of Dr. Hood’s interview on Insider.