Lawmakers as representatives of the people should resist the anti-competitive proposals of the banking sector and embrace a vision of the digital euro that serves the collective interests of Europeans, Dr Martijn van der Linden and Vicky Van Eyck write. The influence of the banking lobby on policymakers risks undermining the digital euro's potential. Lawmakers as representatives of the people should resist the anticompetitive proposals of the banking sector and embrace a vision of the digital euro that serves the collective interests of Europeans. This means that the digital euro must be attractive, accessible and beneficial to all. The deliberation process must be free from the disproportionate influence of an industry that has much to lose from a level playing field for payment services and financial intermediation.
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Purpose: Small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) operating in the alternative financing sector are typically heterogenous in nature making them differ greatly from traditional banks. Where traditional banks must comply with strict banking regulations, developing uniform regulations for the alternative financing sector remains a challenge. This paper examines the current challenges and solutions from a sociological and institutional perspective in developing standards for SMEs operating in the alternative financing sector in the Netherlands. Adopting minimum quality standards should lead to increased transparency and public trust in the non-banking sector.
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Innovative work behavior has been one of the essential attribute of high performing firms, and the roles of entrepreneurial orientation and self-leadership have been important for promoting innovative work behavior. This study advances research on innovative work behavior by examining the mediating role of self-leadership in the relationship between perceived entrepreneurial orientation and innovative work behavior. Structural equation modelling is employed to analyze data from a survey of 404 employees in banking sector. The results of reliability measures and confirmatory factor analysis strongly support the scale of the study. The results from an empirical survey study in the deposit banks reveal that participants’ perceptions about high levels of entrepreneurial orientation have a positive impact on innovative work behavior. The results also provide support for the full mediating role of self-leadership in the relationship between participants’ perceptions of entrepreneurial orientation and innovative work behavior. Additionally, this study provides some implications for practitioners in the banking sector to facilitate innovative work behavior through entrepreneurial orientation and self- leadership.
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Whitepaper: The use of AI is on the rise in the financial sector. Utilizing machine learning algorithms to make decisions and predictions based on the available data can be highly valuable. AI offers benefits to both financial service providers and its customers by improving service and reducing costs. Examples of AI use cases in the financial sector are: identity verification in client onboarding, transaction data analysis, fraud detection in claims management, anti-money laundering monitoring, price differentiation in car insurance, automated analysis of legal documents, and the processing of loan applications.
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This white paper is the result of a research project by Hogeschool Utrecht, Floryn, Researchable, and De Volksbank in the period November 2021-November 2022. The research project was a KIEM project1 granted by the Taskforce for Applied Research SIA. The goal of the research project was to identify the aspects that play a role in the implementation of the explainability of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in the Dutch financial sector. In this white paper, we present a checklist of the aspects that we derived from this research. The checklist contains checkpoints and related questions that need consideration to make explainability-related choices in different stages of the AI lifecycle. The goal of the checklist is to give designers and developers of AI systems a tool to ensure the AI system will give proper and meaningful explanations to each stakeholder.
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Explainable artificial intelligence (xAI) is seen as a solution to making AI systems less of a “black box”. It is essential to ensure transparency, fairness, and accountability – which are especially paramount in the financial sector. The aim of this study was a preliminary investigation of the perspectives of supervisory authorities and regulated entities regarding the application of xAI in the financial sector. Three use cases (consumer credit, credit risk, and anti-money laundering) were examined using semi-structured interviews at three banks and two supervisory authorities in the Netherlands. We found that for the investigated use cases a disparity exists between supervisory authorities and banks regarding the desired scope of explainability of AI systems. We argue that the financial sector could benefit from clear differentiation between technical AI (model) explainability requirements and explainability requirements of the broader AI system in relation to applicable laws and regulations.
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With the rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), digital technology changes how banks translate new customer demands into new products and services. To achieve this translation, banks should increase their intrapreneurship capability through Individual-level Innovative Behavior (IIB). However, research on how to manage and promote manager's IIB in the workplace is still at the nascent stage. Therefore, this study investigates an under-researched topic: how Perceived Organizational Innovativeness (POI) affects manager's IIB through self-leadership strategies, and whether perceived organizational risk-taking and the gender of the respondents facilitate or impede the process. The study surveys 340 managers in the Turkish banking sector and analyses the results through SEM. The findings indicate that POI, self-leadership, and strategies of self-leadership are positively related to manager's IIB. Further, the results show that self-leadership fully mediates the relationship between POI and manager's IIB and that the perceived organizational risk-taking and gender of the respondents moderate the mediating effect of self-leadership on the relationship between POI and manager's IIB. Overall, the contribution of the research is not only to gain a more holistic understanding of manager's IIB antecedents but also to provide managers or practitioners with guidance on designing organizational environments that encourage innovation in the technology-driven sector.
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Bij de aanvang van het lectoraat 'sociale infrastructuur en technologie' was onze doelstelling te komen tot een inventarisatie van ict gebruik in de sociale sector. Daarbij ging het ons om praktijken en initiatieven in de sociale sector waarbij men gebruik maakt van moderne technologie ter versterking van de sociale infrastructuur, de leefbaarheid van samenlevingsverbanden, de participatie in de publieke besluitvorming, de hulp- en dienstverlening aan cliknten en deelnemers. Met de sociale sector worden alle institutionele arrangementen bedoeld die het werken aan welzijn als primaire doelstelling hebben. Het gaat hierbij niet om een zoveelste onderzoek teneinde een volledig, kwantitatief gericht beeld te krijgen. Er werd gestreefd naar een beschrijving van veelbelovende aanpakken, niet alleen binnen de institutionele welzijnszorg, maar ook projecten en activiteiten die op initiatief van burgers buiten de sociale sector-in strikte-zin zijn opgezet.
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The recent bank collapses and bailouts highlight the fragility of the banking system and our bank deposits. The digital euro is an opportunity to reconfigure our monetary system to serve the interests of people and society, by making money safer and more inclusive. However, the European Central Bank’s (ECB) current proposal for a digital euro falls short of this potential. The current plan relies heavily on private financial intermediaries and envisions putting important limitations on the use of digital euros, thereby impacting its capacity to be a universally accessible public good and risking undermining the uptake of the digital euro. By heeding to the bank lobby and baking their interests into the design of the digital euro, the ECB is missing an opportunity to develop an appealing and public digital alternative to private bank deposits. The digital euro must be developed with the aim of benefiting people and society over private interests, and these considerations should guide its design. In the short term, the digital euro should: 1. Be universally accessible. People should be able to access digital euros through a diverse range of intermediaries, which include non-profit and public entities. Implementing a tiered identification system for account-based digital euros, and introducing a value-based option, would ensure the availability of digital euros to the most vulnerable segments of society. 2. Be free of cost for users. Any future legislative framework on the digital euro should include a list of basic services that should be provided for free to users, such as opening and managing an account and the provision of a payment instrument (e.g. a card). 3. Offer a high level of privacy and data protection. Cash, which is fully anonymous, should be used as the baseline when developing the digital euro. A value-based option should be introduced alongside an account-based one, and it should be designed to be fully anonymous. For the account-based option, a ‘privacy threshold’ can ensure that users’ data for small transactions is protected. 4. Have a clear European Central Bank branding. Clear branding will help to differentiate public digital euros from private bank deposits. 5. Bring resilience to the payment system. By providing an offline value-based option, and by ensuring that the digital euro’s legal and technical core infrastructure is public and works independently of any private system, we can offer an alternative to existing payment rails and increase resiliency in case of outages. The digital euro is also an opportunity to improve financial stability by transforming the banking system, and helping central banks to more effectively carry out their monetary policy. The design of the digital euro should be flexible enough to allow for the achievement of these longterm goals, and more research should be conducted to explore how different features could help achieve them. For instance, a digital euro without any holding limit could reduce moral hazard in the banking sector, and the adjustment of interest rates on digital euro deposits and direct monetary transfers could improve the transmission of monetary policy.
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This dissertation increases our insight into the role of the service employee’s intercultural competences in the service to culturally diverse customers. Investigating the effect of the intercultural competences of service employees is of major importance because, as a consequence of globalization, the number of intercultural service encounters has increased dramatically and still does. The delivery of service to a culturally diverse customer-base requires a combination of knowledge, skills and attitude; the intercultural competences (also known as Global Mindset). In this study the hotel sector has been investigated specifically. The hotel sector is an important economic player that continues to grow inspite of economic downturn. The special characteristics of hotel services make the sector also very suitable for the research of face-to-face encounters in an international context. In this dissertation, a holistic approach has been chosen, meaning that in the four empirical studies not only the perspective of the manager, but also that of the employee and the customer was investigated. All three of the above-mentioned are actors in intercultural service according to the argumentation of the ‘service-profit chain’ (Heskett, Jones, et al., 1994). Together, the manager, employee and the customer form the so-called ‘service triangle’ (Bitner, 1990).
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