Pulse360 has launched its groundbreaking feature, Dynamic SmartFields, a first-of-its-kind feature that enables advisors to seamlessly pull critical data from third-party software directly into their client documents with just a few clicks. Dynamic SmartFields streamlines complex workflows, minimizes administrative overhead, and enhances data accuracy—directly boosting the productivity and profitability of financial advisory firms. By pulling critical client data directly from Wealthbox, advisors eliminate time-consuming copy-paste tasks and the risk of manual errors. One key use case is meeting preparation. With Dynamic SmartFields, advisors can effortlessly access up-to-date client details—such as attorney names, custom fields, and other vital information—without tedious data entry. This ensures they walk into every client meeting fully prepared, allowing their team to focus on strategy and service rather than manual busywork. The first integration, with Holistiplan, laid the groundwork—this latest collaboration propels the industry toward seamless automation.
ChatGPT hack embeds malicious URLs into input parameters, forcing the application to make unintended requests and triggering data breaches
According to a blog post by researchers from the cybersecurity company Veriti, a critical vulnerability in ChatGPT could be used by cybercrooks to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. The flaw, CVE-2024-27564, could pose a risk to businesses that use the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) application. “It allows attackers to inject malicious URLs into input parameters, forcing the application to make unintended requests on their behalf,” the post said. These attacks could lead to data breaches, unauthorized transactions, regulatory penalties and reputational damage. The good news is that the ChatGPT bug is officially classified as being of “medium severity” on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Database. The bad news is that as of Thursday (March 20) CVEDetails.com updated its Exploit Prediction Scoring System score of the bug from 1.68% to a much more concerning 55.36%. The Veriti post said the most common exploitation targets are U.S. financial institutions and government entities. “Banks and FinTech firms depend on AI-driven services and API integrations, making them vulnerable to SSRF (Server-Side Request Forgery) attacks that access internal resources or steal sensitive data,” the company said.
Sezzle launches virtual card technology for ‘smarter spending’ enabling BNPL at non-partnered retailers through single-use cards and customizable spending limits
Pay later provider Sezzle says it has added improved shopping features to its platform. Amin Sabzivand, the firm’s chief operating officer, said, “By introducing these new features, we’re helping consumers effortlessly find the best deals and maximize their savings — wherever they shop.” Among the new offerings is Sezzle On-Demand, created in response to what the company says was a strong demand for a non-subscription version of its subscription product. This new product lets shoppers create a single-use virtual card for a set amount, allowing them to split payments “without being limited to partnered merchants,” Sezzle said. In addition, Sezzle has added features to its product marketplace that included personalized recommendations and instant price drop alerts. The company has also introduced an “auto couponing feature.” Shoppers can now access exclusive deals directly through the Sezzle app, with available coupons automatically applied at checkout — no extra steps required
Imprint’s cloud-based credit card platform includes a proprietary ledger system for micro-targeting of item-level rewards, e.g. for store-branded products vs. other products
Startup Imprint’s cloud-based credit card platform would allow brands to customize rewards and micro-target promotions for their best customers to a degree older technology wouldn’t. Imprint draws 60% of its revenue from interest payments from consumers who don’t pay their card balances in full each month. Imprint has signed up eight brands, including H-E-B, Texas’ largest grocery chain; Turkish Airlines; Brooks Brothers; Eddie Bauer and Holiday Inn Club Vacations. The technology advantage Imprint touts over older providers is its home-grown transaction ledger system, which makes better use of alternative data and establish more granular, item-level connections between a consumers’ purchases and the rewards that accrue on their cards. That tech is how H-E-B cardholders can get 5% cash back when they buy the grocer’s private label, store-branded products, but just 1.5% when they buy anything else. Imprint has a travel card coming out this year where cardholders will get 4% cash back while they’re on vacation–Imprint’s system will link to consumers’ travel reservations to verify when they’ll be away. Imprint says its software also lets businesses test the effectiveness of different marketing and rewards schemes and that its consumer credit card app is easier to use than those of the incumbents. This summer, Imprint plans to start letting its customers offer standalone BNPL loans which can also be transferred to an Imprint card to earn rewards.
Glyue connects Zoom’s communication tools with financial institutions’ core systems to automate CX workflows and personalizing customer interactions
Sandbox Banking announced that Glyue has been introduced in the Zoom App Marketplace, a powerful collaboration with Zoom that transforms the Zoom Contact Center into a comprehensive solution for banks and credit unions. Selected by Zoom for its expertise in fintech integrations, Sandbox Banking has developed the Glyue for Zoom app to effortlessly link Zoom’s communication tools with back-office systems, automate workflows, and provide deeper insights into customer or member interactions. Glyue for Zoom is an integration application that enables unified data flow between Zoom’s video, chat, and telephony tools and financial institutions’ core systems, enhancing operational efficiency and delivering more personalized customer or member experiences. Key features of the Glyue® app include: Enhanced AI Capabilities, Global Telephony Customization, Advanced Analytics. The Glyue® for Zoom app addresses a critical need for financial institutions to deliver faster, more personalized service while simplifying operations. AI-driven account holder engagement tools, like those enabled by Glyue®, not only improve satisfaction but also build trust by anticipating customer or member needs.
NY Fed’s data shows that 86% of interchange fees is passed on as rewards; banks’ average interchange income is 1.82% of purchase volume on average, while rewards costs are 1.57%.
Research this week from the New York Fed underscores the economics of interchange fees, putting a number on the scale and scope of the rewards programs and how they are paid for, and that at a high level keep the four-party card ecosystem running. The ecosystem’s been around for decades, the funding mechanism’s not new, but the figures show just how the rewards expenses — for the six largest card issuers at about $67.9 billion — are covered. The Fed’s data delves into the extend to which the rewards expenses are covered by the banks’ interchange income. The Fed found that banks’ average interchange income is 1.82% of purchase volume on average, while rewards costs are 1.57%. The majority of the income, then — at about 86% — is passed on to cardholders in the form of rewards. Banks and payment networks are in the ever-constant midst of upgrading and improving their fraud defense systems, and the more cardholders use their cards, the more the rewards programs and the defenses must be expanded. The economics of interchange, whether credit or debit, remains a timely topic. The U.K.’s in the midst of a battle over debit interchange that would cap those fees. In the U.S., the Credit Card Competition Act, reintroduced in the last Congress, may surface yet again, would seek to drive interchange fees lower as merchants choose the networks over which they would route card transactions. But as it stands now, in the four-party model that’s been in place for decades (the consumer, the merchant acquirer, the card issuing bank and the merchant) the interchange fees are paid by merchant acquirers to the card issuer. Interchange fees are a percentage of a product’s purchase price (around 2% usually, per the Fed’s analysis) that is charged to the seller and paid out to the banks. As Karen Webster noted in this column, the network “isn’t touching the interchange fee, which goes right to the issuer. And … the interchange fee isn’t a cost to the consumer. The issuers get the fees and generally pass them along to consumers in the form of rewards and other benefits.”
H2O.ai offers Enterprise LLM Studio- fine-tuning-as-a-service for enterprises to train, evaluate, and deploy domain-specific AI models using own private data
H2O.ai, announced H2O Enterprise LLM Studio, running on Dell infrastructure which provides Fine-Tuning-as-a-Service for businesses to securely train, test, evaluate, and deploy domain-specific AI models at scale using their own data. Enterprise LLM Studio automates the LLM lifecycle — from data generation and curation to fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment. It supports open-source, reasoning, and multimodal LLMs. By distilling and fine-tuning these models, H2O.ai customers obtain reduced costs and improved inference speeds. Key Features: 1) Model Distillation: Compress larger LLMs into smaller, efficient models while retaining crucial domain-specific capabilities 2) No-Code Fine-Tuning: Adapt pre-trained models through an intuitive interface, no AI expertise required 3) Advanced Optimization: Distributed training, FSDP, LoRA, 4-bit QLoRA 4) Scalable AI Training & Deployment: High-performance infrastructure for enterprise workloads 5) Seamless Integration: Fast APIs for production AI workflows. Demonstrated Benefits include: 1) Cost: Fine-tuned open-source LLMs have reduced expenses by up to 70%; 2) Latency: Optimized processing cut inference time by 75%; 3) Self-Hosted Solution: Preserves data privacy, ensures flexibility, and avoids vendor lock-in; 4) Reproducibility: Other teams can re-use refined open-source models to iterate on new problems 5) Scalability: Handles 500% more requests than the previous solution.
U.S. Bank’s new platform enables investment managers to cost-effectively launch alternative investment products through registered closed-end funds and shared service functions
U.S. Bank Global Fund Services has introduced its CEF Accelerator Platform, which provides an efficient and cost-effective way for investment managers to launch alternative investment products through registered closed-end funds. Rockefeller Municipal Opportunities Fund (RKMIX) from Rockefeller Asset Management is the first fund to use the platform. The CEF Accelerator Platform brings a suite of skilled partners – legal counsel, auditors and distribution – to manage the compliance, operations and governance of closed-end fund products. The platform also includes oversight by an experienced board of four independent directors. The CEF Accelerator Platform gives investment managers an advantage by offering a turnkey solution to launch registered closed-end funds through a shared service model, similar to a multiple series trust (MST). U.S. Bank services nine multiple-series trusts and more than 100 registered closed-end funds. The CEF Accelerator Platform combines their multiple-series trust offering with the product expertise of their registered closed-end fund services, including transfer agency, custody, fund accounting, fund administration, regulatory administration and tax services. Jay Martin, president, U.S. Bank Global Fund Services adds, “Offering all these capabilities via a shared-service model helps clients reduce fund start-up and ongoing operational costs, and shortens time to market. This allows investment managers to dedicate attention and resources to more value-added activities like asset management and capital-raising responsibilities.”
ICE Mortgage Technology automates borrower asset assessment using AI driven data analysis and configurable logic to identify large deposits and withdrawal patterns
ICE Mortgage Technology has announced the debut of ICE Asset Analyzer and ICE Audit Analyzer, adding to the existing ICE Income and ICE Credit analyzers. The products, which are fully integrated into the Encompass system, allow mortgage professionals to quickly and accurately streamline lending processes, improve accuracy and support compliance efforts. Asset Analyzer uses data analysis and configurable logic to “simplify the traditionally manual process of assessing borrower assets,” ICE said. It added that its key tasks include identifying large deposits, recognizing withdrawal patterns and applying a standardized checklist to ensure consistency across loans. The tools allow lenders to free up employees to execute higher-value work, ICE said. ICE’s Audit Analyzer is designed to improve post-closing quality control. Instead of relying on manual checklists, the tool uses automated technology to help identify missing documents, data discrepancies and compliance risks to ensure document accuracy, improve regulatory adherence and limit repurchase risk. Tim Bowler, president of ICE Mortgage Technology, said “By integrating these Analyzers within Encompass, we’re enabling our customers to perform more of their essential work within a single platform, making their lives easier, and saving them time and money they’d otherwise have to spend performing these functions offline.”
Virgin Money Credit Card App integrates Mastercard’s open banking tech, enabling users to view balances and transactions from multiple banks in one place
Virgin Money, a UK financial services provider, is set to offer its credit card customers the ability to view balances and transactions from other banks directly within the Virgin Money Credit Card App. This feature is part of a collaboration with Mastercard, a global payments technology company, and uses Mastercard’s open banking technology. Open banking allows third-party financial service providers to access consumer banking data through APIs with consumer consent. This integration enables Virgin Money users to manage various financial accounts through a single interface, providing a comprehensive view of customers’ finances without requiring them to switch between multiple banking applications. The move aligns with trends in the financial services industry towards greater integration of financial data and services, as banks increasingly recognize the value of providing comprehensive views of their finances through primary banking applications.