EY executive director sees blockchain as valuable problem-solving tool
Emerging tech can help speed insurance claim process.
While
blockchain is a big buzzword in the business world these days, EY
executive director David Bassi says he doesn’t think about the hype
around what it may be capable of doing someday, but instead considers
blockchain as one more tool in his bag to solve issues now.
“We’ve
got this transformative technology. What does it really do, how are
people using it, and why does it matter?” he explained. “I don’t play in
the space where it’s all about finding new technology and finding cool
things to do with it. I play in the space where we’ve got a problem and
we’re trying to find a solution.”
Bassi’s
work at EY centers around the insurance industry, an area that he says
blockchain can be useful because of its ability to speed processes that
involve information changing hands repeatedly and information that needs
to be accurate and quickly accessible.
“In
business transactions, I’ll start with information, I’ll send it to an
intermediary who may send it to another party, who may send it to
another party. And by the time it gets to the end user, it may not look
the same as it did originally,” he said. “Despite all the work we do on
authentication, on insuring the information remains accurate as it moves
along, we still get into arguments.”
Blockchain
can allow all involved parties of a particular incident to access the
same information, track who made changes and when they made them, and
ultimately result in a faster payment of claims, Bassi noted. He used
the example of marine shipping company Maersk, pointing out the huge
number of people and documentation needed to keep track of cargos and
ships, as well as the outside companies that needed the information in a
timely manner – especially insurance companies.
“Everybody
had problems with the administrative costs, everybody had problems with
information security,” he said. “When there’s such a large group of
entities involved, blockchain is a great solution, but you need to get
everyone aligned on how it’s going to create value for all of them. So
an important part of the journey was bringing them all together and
helping them understand what was in it for them, and creating a system
that worked for them.”
February 28, 2019 by Farmer School of Business
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London Stock Exchange Leads $20 Million Bet On Blockchain To Cut Out Custody Middlemen
If
Nivaura gets its way, the world’s capital markets will run like vending
machines. Instead of a complex web of depositors holding stock
certificates and investment banks holding cold, hard cash, while
counterparties frantically move around virtual representations of their
assets, investors will deal directly with each other and hold their own
assets, using the blockchain technology made famous by bitcoin.
After
three years of making occasional but notable appearances in the press,
Nivaura has harnessed the attention of some of the largest financial
players in the world and turned it into $20 million in seed funding to
make its founders’ vision a reality. Closed on Tuesday and announced
today, the unusually large seed funding round is being led by the London
Stock Exchange, the sixth-largest exchange in the world by volume, and
stands to change the way investors and companies connect.
If
Nivaura achieves its goals though, it’s not just the companies that
survive the simplified transaction flow that stand to benefit. By
changing the role these traditional middlemen play, Nivaura CEO Avtar
Sehra estimates that the time to market for issuing bonds, loans and
equity will be cut by at least 60%, time that he expects will result in
savings for investors as well.
“In
the traditional world, you have this complex and paid chain of custody
that can be eliminated using a blockchain,” says Sehra, who previously
worked as an astro-physicist and applies his experience conducting
scientific experiments to simplifying capital markets. “But also the
cost of custody potentially goes down for the investors as well.”
In
addition to the London Stock Exchange, the $20 million seed round is
being joined by the venture capital arm of Santander bank, law firm
Allen & Overy, blockchain venture capital firm Digital Currency
Group and several others.
Nivaura
currently employs about 30 people, dispersed throughout England and
Italy, where the company’s chief technical officer and chief information
officer live, and plans to expand its team to the United States and
Asia using the new funding. In addition to the new hires, who will help
scale the platform, called Nivaura Connect, into different regulatory
jurisdictions, the company plans to invest the funds in research and
development efforts aimed at using artificial intelligence to tailor
services for customers based on past usage patterns.
As
part of the investment, Nivaura’s board of directors will add two new
members, Spencer Lake, the former head of global markets for HSBC, who
is also joining as an investor and commercial advisor on business
development, and Nikhil Rathi, the CEO of London Stock Exchange plc and
director of international development for the London Stock Exchange
Group.
Current
board members are Sehra; cofounder Marcello Fiori, who is the head of
the company’s blockchain development; Alan Morgan, the former head of
financial services for McKinsey, Europe-Middle East, who serves as
chairman; Peter Walker, from Link Asset Services and Simon Hill, a
senior partner at Allen & Overy.
February 27, 2019 by Michael del Castillo
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Julius Baer gets into crypto banking with
SEBA partnership
ZURICH
(Reuters) - Julius Baer plans to offer access to digital assets through
a partnership with Swiss start-up SEBA Crypto in the latest move into
cryptocurrencies by a Swiss private bank.
The
partnership, which follows a similar move by smaller rival Falcon
Private Bank, will enable customers of Julius Baer, Switzerland’s
third-largest listed bank, to store, trade and invest in digital assets,
the two firms said on Tuesday.
Banks
see promise in the blockchain technology underpinning cryptocurrencies,
but have not rushed into an industry which has faced regulatory
scrutiny and extreme price swings.
Falcon
has allowed private and institutional clients to invest in bitcoin,
ether and litecoin and has gradually expanded its offerings since a
partnership with Bitcoin Suisse in 2017.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase this month said it would launch its own digital coin.
“We
are convinced that digital assets will become a legitimate sustainable
asset class of an investor’s portfolio,” Julius Baer markets head Peter
Gerlach said in a statement.
SEBA
is seeking a license from Switzerland’s financial market supervisor to
build a bank offering cryptocurrency services as well as extending
traditional banking services to firms in the new industry.
It
closed a 100 million Swiss franc ($100 million) funding round in
September and plans to launch its own cryptocurrency via an initial coin
offering in the third quarter this year. It aims to go live during the
second quarter of this year.
February 26, 2019 by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi
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Kabam founder Kevin Chou believes blockchain will revolutionize game economics
Kevin
Chou, who led Kabam in mobile games and Gen.G in esports, announced
last week that he has created a blockchain gaming company called Forte
(pronounced for-tay).
He
and his cofounder Brett Seyler drew the team from Kabam, GarageGames,
Unity, and Linden Lab. They have reviewed the rise of blockchain and
cryptocurrency, and they want to create something that will make a
bigger impact than many of the startups, scams, and crazy ideas we’ve
seen so far in the crypto space. Kevin Chou, who led Kabam in mobile
games and Gen.G in esports, announced last week that he has created a
blockchain gaming company called Forte (pronounced for-tay).
He
and his cofounder Brett Seyler drew the team from Kabam, GarageGames,
Unity, and Linden Lab. They have reviewed the rise of blockchain and
cryptocurrency, and they want to create something that will make a
bigger impact than many of the startups, scams, and crazy ideas we’ve
seen so far in the crypto space.
I
talked to Chou and Seyler in an exclusive interview, and they noted
they are well aware of the crypto bust and the scams — and the impact
they have had in creating skepticism about crypto among investors,
gamers, and developers. But they are forging ahead with a plan to take
advantage of blockchain — a decentralized immutable ledger — technology
that has mostly been used to create secure and transparent
cryptocurrencies.
“The
emergence of free-to-play and cloud gaming let us deliver games on
Facebook and on mobile,” Chou said in our interview. “But while we got
hundreds of millions of people to play, a very small percentage paid. So
the incentives for the game developer were very hard to align with the
incentives for the players. It devolved into ‘pay to win’” schemes that
left many users frustrated.
Chou will be a speaker at our GamesBeat Summit 2019 event on April 23 and April 24 in Los Angeles.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: Where is Forte going to be based?
Kevin
Chou: We’re setting up in the Financial District in San Francisco. We
have a small office near some of the other blockchain technology folks.
It’s been good to get a new company off the ground and get it all
started here.
GamesBeat: Tell me more about what you’re doing.
Chou:
The high level is that we’re a bunch of game developers and game
platform makers that are starting a new blockchain technology company.
The key news we’re coming out with is that me and Brett and several
other Kabam folks are getting together to start this company. We don’t
have a funding announcement, which we typically like to do with these
types of coming-out stories. We’re probably about two weeks away from
closing a major partnership that we’re lined up to announce before GDC,
with some big numbers attached to it.
February 26, 2019 by Dean Takahashi
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7 Universities Offering Online Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and FinTech Education
In
the relatively young market of blockchain and cryptocurrency, finding
accurate information on a specific topic can be time-consuming and
sometimes difficult to achieve. In this article, I want to provide
reputable online blockchain courses, brought to you by renowned
universities.
You
can enroll in all courses without any admission requirements, except
the MSc in Digital Currency. To be eligible for enrollment, you will
need to verify obtaining a Bachelors Degree in any random field. The MSc
has specific application dates and starting times. Most courses
referred to in this article can be followed for free.
These
online courses are often offered as a Massive Open Online Course or
MOOC. MOOCs provide an affordable, flexible way to learn new skills,
advance your career and improve upon your personal development.
Platforms like edX and Coursera collaborate with renowned universities
and institutions to offer affordable and free online courses.
MSc in Digital Currency, at the University of Nicosia
In
2014, the largest private university in Cyprus, University of Nicosia,
started offering the Master in Digital Currency. The MSc in Digital
Currency is designed to help financial services and business
professionals, entrepreneurs, government officials, and public
administrators better understand the technical underpinnings of digital
currency, how it will likely interact with existing monetary and
financial systems, and what opportunities exist for innovation in
digital currency systems.
The
program is structured into three semesters, with each completion being
rewarded with 30 ECTS. The total tuition fee is estimated at 12,800 EUR.
If
you are interested in applying for the MSs in Digital Currency, but you
are not ready to fully commit yet, I suggest following the free MOOC.
You can register for the course, DFIN-511: Introduction into Digital
Currencies, by following this link. Over 22,000 students have already
enrolled in the free MOOC, with a completion rate of 17%.
University of Oxford
One
of the world’s top-rated universities, the University of Oxford, also
offers various online blockchain courses, without admission
requirements. For instance, the Oxford Blockchain Strategy Program that
offers business leaders and innovators insights to blockchain technology
and how it works, how blockchain will affect the future of business
organizations and how to make better strategic business decisions. This
course is priced at 2,350 GBP.
February 26, 2019 by Linda Willemse
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About STARBIT
Starbit
aims at spreading theoretical - practical knowledge among ordinary
people, without being an expert or willing to become an expert. Starbit
is aware of the impact that blockchain and crypto currencies will have
on people's lives: for this reason it promotes a mass literacy.
Starbit selects everything needed for a person to be informed and about
blockchain technologies and various applications, making it easier, in a
progressive manner, accessible to all, thus saving time and resources
to anyone interested in this area. The goal is to offer various degrees
of knowledge (first level is free as Club Member and the others included
in the products purchasable by customers) to those who are interested
in playing an acting rule. Starbit also offers an opportunity to those
who want to transform all this in a work from home opportunity.
DISCLAIMER
Registration
to the Club is totally free and gives access to the basic information
on Blockchain and its applications on the market, the most important of
which is constituted by the so-called crypto currencies. At the Club
members who are interested in having a more complete knowledge and
information is also offered the possibility (it is an option, not an
obligation) to buy upgradable services or applications (the acquisition
of knowledge is a fact known to be progressive over time).
Any coins (when free attributed by third parties) that may result
gradually, will of course be the exclusive property of the customer and
should not be considered in any relationship the servicies or
applications purchased.
For maximum clarity applies the following example: if a person acquires
an organic farming course that includes in addition to the theory, also a
practical detection of cultivation of an organic garden (like was done
by Michelle Obama at the White House), any products (carrots, tomatoes,
peas, etc.) that will enrich his table, will obviously be of full
ownership of those who have grown the organic garden and will not of
course no relation to the person who sold the course, even if he has
supplied the equipment for the practical test, such as seeds, tools,
pots, fertilizers, various preparations, etc.
Subscribers to the Club have the power to start the business, if
authorized and in acceptance of all the terms and conditions for the
Promoter, explained in the Promoter Agreement and in the Policies and
Procedures. They should not incur any fees and never any obligation to
buy anything. If as a result of the promotion done, some new Club
member, decide to buy a package Information, the Promoter will receive a
commercial fee as provided by the terms and conditions above mentioned.
It is not authorized anyone to provide news other than those listed
here and on the official website, to promise false gains and / or try to
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