The decision applies globally across both retail and institutional segments and reflects the bank’s growing acceptance of regulated crypto exposure in mainstream finance. Clients’ holdings in crypto ETFs will now count toward net worth and liquidity calculations, placing them alongside stocks and real estate in eligibility assessments. The move expands on JPMorgan’s prior case-by-case approach and follows similar digital asset initiatives from other banks, including Morgan Stanley. The change comes amid a broader shift in regulatory tone under the current administration. Spot bitcoin ETFs — approved in January 2024 — now collectively manage over $128 billion in assets, making them among the most successful ETF launches in U.S. history. Dimon said: “I don’t think we should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke. I defend your right to buy bitcoin. Go at it.”
Worldpay to offer EWS Paze as a checkout option to its merchants. featuring network tokenization framework for securing consumer’s credentials
Worldpay and Early Warning Services have announced a new partnership at Worldpay’s annual client and partner event, Rethink, to enable Paze℠ as a checkout option available to its merchants. Paze is an online checkout solution developed by Early Warning Services that is offered by leading banks and credit unions in the U.S. The convenient Paze checkout experience enables consumers to pay online with their preferred credit and debit cards via added security through tokenization, and seamless digital authentication. Leading banks and credit unions enable Paze for their eligible cardholders, and cardholders do not need to sign up or download an additional app to use the checkout option where available. Working together, Worldpay and Early Warning Services are bringing new levels of convenience and security to online checkout. Because purchases made using Paze utilize the network tokenization framework, the consumer’s credentials are more secure than traditional manual entry and merchants can experience higher authorization rates. Seamless checkout can increase conversion rates by reducing the steps and friction to complete a purchase. Worldpay’s vast merchant network in the U.S. using hosted payment pages will soon see Paze as a checkout option, and others will be able to “turn on” Paze as a checkout option with limited integration needed.
Regions appoints new Head of Originations for affordable housing previously led sourcing and origination across the Southeast
Regions Bank on Thursday announced David Payne has been elevated to Head of Originations for Regions Affordable Housing.
Regions Affordable Housing Head of Originations David Payne In this role, Payne will oversee all affordable housing originations by relationship managers supporting developers in many key growth markets across the country. Through low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs), comprehensive financial solutions, and a holistic suite of additional banking options, Payne will provide business development and leadership to the group. He has 23 years of industry experience in affordable housing and will leverage that work to guide the Originations team to deepen support with developers. Payne will report directly to Katie Such, Head of Regions Affordable Housing. “Regions Affordable Housing is uniquely positioned to provide financial services and solutions clients need to expand affordable housing access and strengthen our communities for the long-term,” Such said. “David Payne is an advocate for affordable housing, an intentional collaborator and a respected industry leader. We look forward to his work helping current clients grow and welcoming future clients to experience the Regions approach to affordable housing.” Payne previously served as co-head of Originations for Regions Affordable Housing and led the bank’s work in sourcing and originating transactions across the Southeast. He served as a relationship manager and credit underwriter before that. Additionally, Payne has leadership experience with various state-level affordable housing trade groups over the years. “Regions Affordable Housing has skilled bankers with deep industry experience in affordable housing finance, and it is a real honor to lead the Originations team into the future,” Payne said. “At a time when affordable housing is critically needed to support continued economic growth, Regions can make a difference in helping developer clients and community leaders with the resources to create safe and affordable housing options for residents. The result is stronger communities and improved quality of life for the long term.” Regions Bank, through Regions Affordable Housing LLC, is a national leader in affordable housing. Through the LIHTC program, Regions is one of the nation’s largest participants in affordable housing finance, providing comprehensive real estate banking and capital markets services to meet the debt and equity capital needs of developers and investors. Regions Bank is also a Fannie Mae DUS MAH Lender, HUD/FHA Affordable Lender, and Freddie Mac Optigo TAH lender.
Experian and Plaid partner to pair traditional credit data with cashflow insights creating new opportunities to assess risk more efficiently and holistically, particularly for consumers with limited credit histories
Experian and Plaid announced a strategic collaboration to lower barriers to accessing cashflow solutions and expanding financial inclusion. Now, banks, credit unions and consumer lenders can leverage Experian and Plaid’s combined expertise in real-time cashflow data and credit analytics to accelerate decisions, sharpen risk assessments and improve borrower outcomes. Now, banks, credit unions and consumer lenders can leverage Experian and Plaid’s combined expertise in real-time cashflow data and credit analytics to accelerate decisions, sharpen risk assessments and improve borrower outcomes. “We are highly focused on making real-time cashflow data and insights more accessible to drive greater financial inclusion and enable our clients to have a more holistic view of an individual’s financial health,” said Scott Brown, Group President Financial Services for Experian North America. “This is just the beginning of what we believe will be a very powerful relationship with Plaid. Together, we’re helping to accelerate the adoption of cashflow insights to drive faster decisions, stronger portfolios, and new financial opportunities for consumers. We’re achieving this while delivering an experience that is transparent and provides consumers with control every step of the way.” How it works: turning real-time cashflow data into actionable insights. As part of the newly forged relationship, lenders can leverage Plaid’s secure connectivity capabilities used by 1 in 2 U.S. bank account holders, and Experian’s expertise in advanced credit analytics and decisioning from a single solution.
When a consumer consents to share cashflow data from their bank account during a loan application, a Consumer Report is generated on their behalf by Plaid’s consumer reporting agency — and then securely delivered to Experian via a seamless integration. Experian analyzes the data and returns a predictive Cashflow Score or set of Cashflow Attributes to the lender in near real time. Consumer Report provides up to two years of historical data and the latest cashflow data from more than 12,000 financial institutions. Backed by the largest open banking data network — powering 7,000 apps and services — Plaid enriches and analyzes over 500 million transactions daily with proprietary machine learning and AI-powered categorization specifically for lending. Experian’s Cashflow Score provides up to a 25% lift in predictive performance when compared to scores using conventional credit data.1 The score ranges from 300 to 850 and can be used to make decisions across credit cards, personal loans, auto loans and more. When traditional credit data is paired with cashflow insights, it creates new opportunities to assess risk more efficiently and holistically, particularly for consumers with limited credit histories. Incorporating cashflow insights gives lenders a broader view of consumers’ finances, which can improve risk management and help expand access to more affordable credit. Ultimately, the collaboration between Experian and Plaid provides lenders with the capabilities and insights needed to offer first- and second-chance credit opportunities to even more consumers.
Truist’s AI data chief prioritizes guardrails and monitoring model outputs in near real time to ensure they remain within defined thresholds
Thomas Mazzaferro, chief AI data and analytics officer at Truist Bank, said the bank partners with providers that use AI for threat detection and to scan the environment to take down attacks. Mazzaferro said his bank uses AI not only for detection but also to scan the entire ecosystem, both on-premise and in the cloud, to map where critical data resides and understand exposure. Truist uses machine learning models for scanning in cases where it has “defined inputs, defined logic, and defined outputs,” he said. For detecting undefined threats and attack vectors, where patterns may differ from normal, the bank uses solutions based on generative AI, which is more tolerant to unstructured data. Models that Truist trains internally on the bank’s own data are less valuable than models trained by vendors on data from multiple banks, Mazzaferro said. He indicated a preference for partnering with vendors and focusing on integrating these solutions and automating the response to alerts and triggers because combining data provides more threat patterns for the models to recognize. He said the focus should be on minimizing bias and ensuring models perform as expected. This happens when a bank establishes guardrails and monitors model outputs in near real time to ensure they remain within defined thresholds. Truist maintains a “champion-challenger” mindset, training a discovery model in parallel with production models so that if a deployed model performs inappropriately, there is an alternative to assess. Mazzaferro noted that while the technology exists, the bigger challenge is overcoming the “human behavioral piece” and resistance to changing how teams think about their work.
Wells Fargo plans to expand further in credit cards and investment banking, while also investing in wealth and commercial banking; it will not expand in mortgages
Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf knows he has a reputation for sternness, but he said that when the bank was finally freed of a $1.95 trillion asset cap by regulators on Tuesday, he became emotional. “Everyone thinks that I’m this tough, tough person … but it’s been so long in the making, it’s impacted so many people so negatively,” Scharf said. “All of a sudden, it’s like it’s all been worth it and everyone’s feeling it.” Scharf took the helm at Wells Fargo in 2019, vowing to repair its deeply entrenched problems from a fake-accounts scandal that erupted in 2016. The bank faced a public outcry, was blasted by lawmakers and slapped with billions of dollars in fines. The Federal Reserve’s decision to lift one of Wells Fargo’s last major punishments this week has largely closed that chapter in its history. It also cements Scharf’s legacy after a grueling turnaround in which he overhauled management, slashed headcount and shed businesses. He is turning his focus to growth after serving almost six years as Wells Fargo’s fixer-in-chief. He plans to expand further in credit cards and investment banking, while also investing in wealth and commercial banking. It will not expand in mortgages, he said. The bank exited many of those operations after they were beset by scandal. As Wells Fargo aims to increase earnings, it plans to raise its dividend to keep payouts consistent for investors, Scharf said. Share buybacks will continue, but their pace will probably slow as the bank invests in growth, he said. Wells Fargo shares were up 0.5% on Wednesday afternoon, having climbed more than 8% so far this year as investors became more optimistic about the bank shedding its regulatory baggage.”I would expect that across all the remaining businesses that we have, with the slight exception of our mortgage business, all have opportunities to grow and produce higher returns. So it’s true of the wealth business through commercial still true of CIB (corporate and investment banking), because even though we’re seeing results and significant upside there, it’s true in our business, and super importantly, it’s true in our consumer and small business banking business, where they were most impacted by the sales practice scandal. We’re just introducing disciplines back to be able to serve customers more broadly and grow in ways that we haven’t been able to.” In some ways, it’s a totally different company. The culture is different here, it’s not a “me” culture. People want to be treated fairly, they want to be paid fairly, but they come here because they want to work together. That is incredibly important. Carried to an extreme, it hurt us because we didn’t make difficult decisions about people, we didn’t confront things. But I do think a culture like that, in a balanced way, is incredible to have. It takes a long time to build.
Imandra Universe, a new platform enhances AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor with advanced logical reasoning capabilities to perform complex reasoning tasks more accurately
Imandra Inc. has launched the Imandra Universe, a new platform that enhances AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor with advanced logical reasoning capabilities. This platform allows these AI systems to perform complex reasoning tasks more accurately by using Imandra’s symbolic logical reasoning engines. With a quick 10-second setup and an Imandra API key, users can enable their AI to employ this new functionality. The Imandra Universe offers a feature known as Reasoning as a Service®, which integrates into AI systems, allowing them to think more precisely and validate their outputs mathematically. This improvement aims to enhance workflows by enabling AI to delegate challenging tasks effectively to specialized reasoning engines. For example, if Claude is given the job of planning a multi-step event, it often misses important details. However, by utilizing the Imandra Universe, it can delegate the complex aspects of this task, improving its overall performance. In addition to enhancing existing AI assistants, the Imandra Universe positions itself as a tool that could revolutionize how users interact with artificial intelligence, bridging the gap between simple user commands and complex logical tasks. The technology aims to provide real-time support for neuro-symbolic AI, enabling more sophisticated and accurate outputs.
Future AirPods could get lasers to read the wearer’s lips & process requests
Apple is researching how AirPods could use sensors like the ones used in Face ID to read the user’s lips and process what the user wants, even if there isn’t a spoken request. The “Wearable skin vibration or silent skin gesture detector” patent proposes using what it calls self-mixing interferometry to recognize more nuanced gestures. Beyond full head movements like a nod or shake, much smaller ones such as a smile, or a whispered command, could be detected. Deformations in the skin, or skin and muscle vibrations, could be spotted and interpreted by the interferometry sensor. The idea is that as a user speaks, the movement of the jaw and cheeks is detectable through the use of a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) in the frame of the device. The idea is that the VCSEL emitter and sensor, similar to the combo used in Face ID, could be in the frame of the device. And, users could select how the AirPods react to different skin and lip movements picked up by that combination of emitter and sensor. In the case of AirPods that go inside the ear, instead of solely over the ear AirPods Max, Apple also says that “the self-mixing interferometry sensor may direct the beam of light toward a location in an ear of the user.” When that light and its reflection back to the sensor alters, it will be because of head or skin and muscle movement. The patent is then specifically about methods by which such movement could be detected, but beyond the specifics, there are two clear benefits. One is that movement detection allows for what Apple calls silent commands. Currently AirPods Pro support a silence nod or shake of the head to accept or reject phone calls, but they could be set to interpret a mouth movement as meaning “skip track.”
Hugging Face says its new robotics model is so efficient it can run on a MacBook
AI dev platform Hugging Face released an open AI model for robotics called SmolVLA. Trained on “compatibly licensed,” community-shared datasets, SmolVLA outperforms much larger models for robotics in both virtual and real-world environments, Hugging Face claims. “SmolVLA aims to democratize access to vision-language-action [VLA] models and accelerate research toward generalist robotic agents,” writes Hugging Face. “SmolVLA is not only a lightweight yet capable model, but also a method for training and evaluating generalist robotics [technologies].” Hugging Face claims that SmolVLA is small enough to run on a single consumer GPU — or even a MacBook — and can be tested and deployed on “affordable” hardware, including the company’s own robotics systems. SmolVLA also supports an “asynchronous inference stack,” which Hugging Face says allows the model to separate the processing of a robot’s actions from the processing of what it sees and hears. As the company explains, “[b]ecause of this separation, robots can respond more quickly in fast-changing environments.” SmolVLA is available for download from Hugging Face.
Voice AI funding surges 8X as businesses humanize chatbots
Voice-based AI agents are advancing to such a degree that they are now outperforming call centers and beginning to replace human labor in industries from healthcare to retail, according to venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Making voice programmable means AI can now interpret, respond to and act on voiced queries with more accuracy and reliability. Moore said voice AI lets businesses respond to customers 24/7 instead of having to wait until an office is staffed. For consumers, “We believe voice will be the first — and perhaps primary — way people interact with AI.” Last year, voice AI startups raised $2.1 billion, up eightfold from 2023, according to research firm CB Insights. The 2024 bumper crop included ElevenLabs’ $180 million fundraising round. Growth was driven by advances in voice AI models — such as OpenAI’s Realtime API for speech-to-speech applications — that gave a big boost to applications in various use cases. “It’s really in the last 12 to 18 months that we’ve seen AI voice agents performing as well or better than humans,” Alex Levin, co-founder and CEO of voice AI company Regal, told. A year ago, OpenAI unveiled a “voice mode” built on top of GPT-4o that offered real-time voice responsiveness, the ability to be interrupted, and a diversity in emotional tones rather than robotic responses. ElevenLabs followed with Conversational AI in November, with version 2.0 coming out last month. Meanwhile, players like Kyutai and Speechmatics brought real-time, full-duplex conversations into production, Moore said. These models also became more affordable as latency dropped. OpenAI cut GPT-4o API costs by up to 87.5% last December, according to Moore.