Virtually a decade in the past, monetary establishments, together with banks, and most shoppers have been outrightly skeptical of the legitimacy of cryptocurrency. Quick ahead to as we speak, and cryptocurrency is all over the place, quickly making its method into the mainstream – from LA’s iconic Staples Heart now being renamed as Crypto.com Area, to one of many nation’s high politicians, Mayor Eric Adams of New York Metropolis, having his first paycheck transformed into Bitcoin and Ethereum through Coinbase.
Roughly half of all US crypto merchants acquired into the market solely final yr, and over 300 million crypto accounts exist worldwide as we speak. However, if 2021 was the yr cryptocurrency was adopted into the mainstream, 2022 is trying just like the yr cryptocurrency might be regulated. Just a few months into this yr, and already, governments are prioritizing the regulation of the crypto area of their agendas – with the Treasury calling for regulation of crypto intermediaries and secure cash, and the CFTC asking Congress for better authority to manage crypto belongings on which derivatives are primarily based.
Whereas cryptocurrency regulation continues to be in its nascent levels, the reality is business regulation significantly round AML and KYC compliance, information privateness, and shopper protections, will solely assist additional make sure that the business continues to develop and appeal to a good wider base of shoppers. This, nevertheless, signifies that banks have to be ready for these upcoming crypto rules, and make investments now in updating their inside processes, programs, and controls, to ensure they will shortly and flexibly pivot at second’s discover as soon as regulation is handed in addition to when it evolves down the road.
Many shoppers at present log into a number of totally different platforms to examine in on and deal with the complete gamut of their monetary wants – their loans, bank card funds, mortgage funds, deposits, and many others., which cannot solely change into unnecessarily tedious and sophisticated, but additionally open them as much as better vulnerabilities than want be, as totally different platforms retain totally different items of knowledge, and make use of totally different compliance controls and programs. Add cryptocurrency funds and merchandise into the combination and the complexities between platforms will solely develop.
For that reason, banks want to take a position now in an answer that may streamline and unify all merchandise, enterprise traces and capabilities end-to-end, in order that they will have interaction with their clients in an optimum method – via a single entry and exit level, with as full and correct of a profile as potential. On this method, banks can decrease the probabilities of gaps inside their programs that may stop them from detecting a difficulty and are in a position to maximize their skill to have interaction with and defend their clients throughout all of their capabilities.
Such an answer should even be technological, as extra of our world, significantly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerates its digital transformation and goes on-line. Backbase’s Engagement Banking Platform is one such answer that gives the singular digital platform that banks must first play catch-up as wanted, streamline their present operations, and remove inefficiencies attributable to legacy programs. It additionally allows banks to then get forward of the sport and put together for inevitable technological and subsequent regulatory change sooner or later head-on.
In a yr the place cryptocurrency will solely change into extra mainstream, and regulatory motion will most actually comply with, banks should guarantee they will stay compliant and higher defend their clients by investing in a singular, digital answer that unifies their enterprise end-to-end.
