Trends & Signals
Explore the latest insights, thought leadership, and research from FCAT®
Gender Equality Challenges in the Wake of the Pandemic
January 12, 2021
Before the novel coronavirus swept through the world, things were looking bright for women in the US workplace. For the first time in almost a decade, women made up the majority of the workforce; 42% of businesses were women-owned; women with...
Understanding the Bitcoin Blockchain Header
December 9, 2020
The composition of the block header is an intricate and highly consequential process. If Bitcoin is a living, breathing organism, then the block header is the heart of the entire machine. The “block” in the Bitcoin blockchain is what moves and...
The Future of Finance Might Be Autonomous
December 3, 2020
Until recently, the cognitive load of almost all financial decisions has remained with individual users. But now, the ability to source and collect reams of data, combined with rapid progress in artificial intelligence, lays the groundwork for...
Embedded Finance: Finance-as-a-Service
November 20, 2020
As the as-a-Service business model keeps expanding from infrastructure to applications, financial services capabilities and products are being re-built to benefit from, and participate in, the platform economy.
Q&A with Dr. Nicholas Christakis
November 13, 2020
FCAT hosts an ongoing Speaker Series as part of its mission to “bring the outside in” and share diverse perspectives with Fidelity associates that provoke conversation. A few weeks ago, as part of that series, the FCAT Research team hosted a...
Green Fintechs Innovate to Combat Climate Change
November 10, 2020
Just as COVID-19 has inspired a wave of invention across industries, a new breed of green fintechs are tackling climate change via financial innovation in payment, lending, trading, investment, and insurance.
A Q&A on Multiparty Computation and Zero Knowledge Proofs
November 5, 2020
The following is excerpted from an interview with Carmit Hazay and Muthu Venkitasubramaniam. The two are experts in the fields of lightweight scalable protocols for secure multiparty computation (MPC) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), as well as...
The Promise and Peril of the Latest Tiny Technologies
October 30, 2020
Technologies have been getting smaller, and smarter, for a long time. But recent developments in miniaturization have changed the game. In medicine, nanotherapies – where nanoparticles (larger than an atom or a molecule, but smaller than a bulk...
AI, Neuralink, and the Evolution of Human-Machine Interfaces
October 22, 2020
Humans have enjoyed an intimate and physical relationship with technology and how they have interacted with tools throughout time. Throughout history the tools created by people have the same two basic characteristics: tools require that a user...
Women in Artificial Intelligence – A Conversation
October 16, 2020
FCAT’s Sarah Hoffman, VP AI and Machine Learning Research, sits down for a far-ranging interview with Haptik’s Burka Gurgenidze-Seinau, discussing the AI field, how AI influences our daily lives, and how it may reshape the future. This engaging...