West Monroe (September 9)
“Legacy banks are at an inflection point.” Today, banks ”are no longer just competing with each other, but rather a sprawling field of fintechs, embedded finance players, and tech firms—all of which are delivering faster, cheaper, and more intuitive financial services. The field is fragmented, but the pattern is clear: customers now expect their bank to act like a digital platform, not just a financial service provider.”
Tags: Cheaper, Competing, Customers, Digital platform, Embedded finance, Faster, Financial services, Fintechs, Fragmented, Inflection point, Intuitive, Legacy banks, Tech firms
Washington Post (December 6)
“Global temperatures remain at near-record levels. After 2023 ended up the warmest year in human history by far, 2024 is almost certain to be even warmer. Now, some scientists say this could indicate fundamental changes are happening to the global climate that are raising temperatures faster than anticipated.”
Tags: 2023, 2024, Faster, Fundamental changes, Global, Global climate, Human history, Record levels, Temperatures, Warmest
Bloomberg (March 16)
“Powerful AI systems like GPT-4 aren’t going to replace large swaths of professional workers, as many have instinctively feared. But they will put them under greater pressure to be more productive and faster at what they do. They will raise the bar on what is considered acceptable output and usher in an era of ultra-efficiency unlike anything we’ve seen before…. Watch out for how they might take you a tiny step closer to burnout.”
Tags: Acceptable, AI, Faster, Fear, GPT-4, Output, Powerful, Pressure, Productive, Professional workers, Replace, Ultra-efficiency
American Banker (December 9)
“Fintechs turned cross-border payments into a hotbed of innovation over the last five years. Now the card networks and banks are responding with disruptions of their own. It’s not just the competitive threat from fintechs developing faster, cheaper and more transparent cross-border payment options. The changing economy is now adding urgency for legacy cross-border providers to modernize their services.”
Tags: Banks, Card networks, Cheaper, Competitive threat, Cross-border, Disruptions, Economy, Faster, Fintechs, Hotbed, Innovation, Legacy, Modernize, Payments, Services, Transparent
BloombergQuint (May 31)
“Wednesday was a bad day for Big Oil, or a good one, depending on your point of view. They’re going to have to clean up their acts a lot faster than they were planning. Three of the world’s biggest publicly traded oil and gas companies — Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, and Chevron Corp. — were dealt stinging blows on May 26 by shareholders and a Dutch court demanding that they act more quickly to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”
Tags: Big oil, Chevron Corp., Clean-up, Dutch court, Emissions, Exxon Mobil Corp., Faster, GHG, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shareholders, Traded
Bloomberg (December 4)
“Chinese scientists claim to have built a quantum computer that is able to perform certain computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most advanced supercomputer, representing the first milestone in the country’s efforts to develop the technology.” This would be “exponentially faster than existing supercomputers.”
Tags: Advanced, China, Faster, Milestone, Quantum, Scientists, Supercomputer, Technology
