Written by Andy Mather, Financial Service and Emerging Technology at Telstra Global If you're a tad sceptical about the value of collaborative approaches to producing security-related technologies, you need look no further for confirmational evidence than one of the most prodigious platforms on the planet: the Dark Web.There, you will find a criminal fraternity running thousands of marketplaces in which they are making available tens of thousands of collaboratively-produced, open-source hacking tools at any one time. To say these hackers are successful at collaboration would be the...

Written by Andy Mather, Financial Service and Emerging Technology at Telstra Global In 2017, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recorded an approximate 75% increase in the number of investigations for potential market misconduct, compared with the previous year. What’s the reason behind the rise in numbers? Mark Steward, Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA, credits the introduction of the Market Abuse Regime (MAR) in 2016 as one of the key factors. Why does the industry need MAR? Due to the scale and damage of recent high-profile scandals, such as...

The “barbell analogy” is traditionally used to describe investment strategies where half a portfolio is anchored in defensive, low-risk assets and the other half is focused on much more aggressive positions, with nothing in between. In a period of industry consolidation or disruption, it is also used to suggest a hollowing out of the centre ground, where a market becomes increasingly dominated by a handful of major players on one side and a larger number of small niche firms on the other, with very few mid-tier providers in between. Can technology help even things out in financial...