The rise and scams of cryptocurrencies have attracted much public, academic, and economic attention. While most cryptocurrencies have already failed, less attention has been given to the long-term regulation of those that might be successful, all of which purport to be 'eternal' stores of value or mediums of exchange. Now is a good time to review this experience and draw lessons for regulators, investors, and promoters interested in better management of risk around alternative currencies, and cryptocurrencies in particular. This paper concludes that conventional risk control concerns are relevant even when a technology is novel. The typical choice of blockchain technology with proof-of-work all but guarantees that efficiency concerns are material, and that the purely digital nature of cryptocurrencies offers opportunities for regulators to insist on comparison of outcomes with simulation modeling as one basis for regulatory control.
In this paper, we look at the emerging trend towards value stream led operating models for organizations. The benefits of value streams include a sharp focus on end-products and services that drive value for the organization, resulting in both monetary gains as well as improvements to the efficiency, morale, and status of the organization as a leading employer. We argue that if one looks beyond the hype, there are genuine benefits to focusing on a clear “path to value”. We explore the key challenges to implementation and offer the key measures needed to make the abstract concepts of value streams a pragmatic reality for financial services organizations.
Operational resilience has risen to the top of board and senior management agendas due to the ever-expanding threat of business disruptions. These disruptions can be caused by social unrest, cyber attacks, third party risk, climate change, pandemics, and geopolitical risk. In response to the recognized need for guidance, various regulatory authorities – such as those of the U.K., the U.S., and the Basel Committee – have issued their expectations for improving the resilience of financial services firms. They have stressed the need to limit the impact of disruptions to business functions and emplace the ability to quickly recover and restore business processes when incidents occur. At the same time, the ongoing digital transformation, with its triad of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA), has attained the necessary maturity to begin to be implemented across the financial services industry. Specifically, RPA holds the promise of becoming an indispensable part of operational resilience, given its ability to create autonomous bots that can perform human operator tasks. This paper outlines the reasons for the adoption of RPA and why it is a necessary component of operational resilience, and explains the challenges inherent with its adoption as well outlining the benefits of adopting it within control-centric functions.
In this article, we compare the fundraising processes of initial public offerings (IPOs) and security token offerings (STOs) and explain how the STO process can be operationally more efficient and less costly using distributed ledger technology. We also highlight recent technological advancements surrounding STOs and the world of decentralized finance. We collate information about recent developments in regulation and digital exchanges to support the growth of STOs. We emphasize some important issues to tackle before STOs can be widely accepted as the new way of financing for companies. Finally, we argue that although STOs have the potential to revolutionize the security value chain, they do not have to replace IPOs completely, and the two channels can coexist to provide more opportunities for businesses.
Teams are the fundamental building blocks of modern organizations, but despite over 50 years of research and practice most organizations are still notoriously inconsistent in creating high performance teams. Traditional checklist approaches have not worked, because successful teams often display contrasting features in member composition, power structures, decision making processes, and resource levels. Teams with identical characteristics frequently deliver vastly different results. Based on recent empirical evidence from 25 leading organizations across seven countries, this paper advances the notion of “team to market” (T2M), an emerging approach that can significantly increase the chances of organizations creating “dream teams” through an outcome-driven culture, an experimental approach, and a greater level of diversity.
