Trends & Signals
Explore the latest insights, thought leadership, and research from FCAT®
How We Do Research
February 4, 2021
FCAT Research is a bet on the value of outside-in thinking, a rigorous analysis of external trends that we believe will have a dramatic impact on our business, our industry, and on the lives of our customers and associates. Our goal is to help...
Building Trust in AI Systems
January 28, 2021
Bias in data used by AI algorithms is drawing increasing attention. The internet is full of examples of AI systems bias: recruiting algorithms trained on data that favored male candidates, facial recognition software unable to appropriately identify...
Q&A with Andrew J. Scott, PhD, Co-author, “The New Long Life”
January 14, 2021
FCAT hosts an ongoing Speaker Series as part of its mission to “bring the outside in” and share diverse perspectives with Fidelity associates to provoke conversation and action. A few weeks ago, as part of that series, the FCAT Research team hosted...
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...