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11:FS announced today that Microsoft has become a strategic partner over the forthcoming months across our Fintech Insider podcasts. Microsoft wants to be an integral part of tackling some of the biggest challenges in financial services and collaborate on topics of interest to the industry audience.

You may have noticed recently that we’ve putting out a bit of content around our interns, like Petrit, Sam, and Tom. In a move that should surprise no-one, we’re launching the start of our internship programme today! For all you students and fintech fans we’ve got a list of top tips you should follow to get ahead of the curve. The rest of our wonderful readers should be sharing this with everyone you know looking to get into fintech. You don’t need a degree to apply, just be awesome.

We’ve finally turned 2! Just two short years ago a small group of plucky young(ish) fintech experts set up our challenger consultancy. They also kicked off a podcast that has become probably the best fintech insight platform out there thanks in no small part to the amazing (and wholly unbiased in this case) media team.

Offering customers access to cryptocurrencies is fast becoming a must-have feature for fintechs in the banking and investment segments. Startups are racing each other to launch the broadest range of services possible in this space.Revolut has today taken another step forward in this arena by adding XRP and Bitcoin cash to the range of cryptocurrencies customers can buy, hold, and sell within its app.

Over the last two years we have kept coming back to one diagram, the 11:FS Banking Battlefield. We use this to explain the changes we see in the financial services industry. In fact, one particular workshop we did in Australia last year had us talking through this diagram for the entire day! Seriously. It also featured in three bank board packs in the last 6 months which is also a pretty good indication we’re onto something.

For many large financial institutions, cloud is, increasingly, the answer. Not that they’re necessarily sure what the question is, but the answer is definitely cloud.

When news broke a week or so ago that, Swedish payment fintech, iZettle planned to IPO this year, I pondered whether it would be the first of a flood of European fintech IPOs. We now know it won’t.

In her latest column for Forbes, 11:FS Head of Research Sarah Kocianski examines the new set of authentication requirements and asks if consumers and their bank are prepared.

Biggest nothing-statement of the year: onboarding is important. As I recently covered here, over 50% of digital retail banking customers got bored and switched off before they’d finished in 2020. Not a great stat.

I think we’re all agreed that innovation is crucial to the continuing success of any organisation. But what does innovation really mean?

This year we’ve made a true commitment to double down on our D&I efforts across 11:FS, starting with a company-wide discovery phase led by Elysian, looking into the current makeup of the business and piloting a survey to dive deeper into the thoughts and opinions of our Elevens. 💭

InsurTech is an industry that’s really taken off in the last few years with many different tech and AI developments and new challengers springing up, as talent breaks away from incumbents to go it alone. We thought it was the perfect time to discuss all the new developments in a brand new podcast.

Despite attempts to portray the opposite, traditional financial organisations are struggling to innovate. In fact in many cases they are having to spend a fortune simply to stand still. As we highlighted in our recent report, this is due to three principal reasons:

Picking apart the week on the Fintech Insider News show alongside hosts Sarah Kocianski and David M. Brear are Lucy Woolfenden, Marketing Director at Yolt and Pol Navarro, Digital Innovation Director at TSB. Sarah also catches up with Alex Park, Digital Director at Metro Bank for a one to one interview. Listen here for the episode in full, stream it below or read on for extra insights.

Long-time supporter signs as lead sponsor for the expanded second season of the Fintech League.