InsurTech weekly - What can we learn from innovations in other Financial Services?

_{Will insurance agents follow retail banking?}

The last few years have been among the most successful in the recent history of retail banking, with a confluence of macroeconomic trends driving growth and profitability. In some geographies, pandemic-era government stimulus lifted economic growth, fueled consumer spending, created favorable conditions for balance sheet expansion, and helped keep credit risk in check. Following the pandemic years, rising interest rates improved banks’ net interest margins as loan interest grew faster than the cost of deposits.

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_{How AI Agents could benefit Financial Services?}

The big open question in financial services AI is, where are all the consumer AI agents? AI agents will eventually switch deposits to the highest rate, switch utilities to the best supplier, and be your private banker buying investments for you. There's just one problem. We won't get the AI agent vision unless these Agents can legally buy a financial product on your behalf. We need to give AI the power of attorney. We need to manage the real risks of harm to consumers. While it annoys the tech crowd, this fact keeps us returning to law and regulation. We might not like the EU's AI act for harming innovation or cheer Gavin Newsom's blocking of a California AI law to preserve it.

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_{Trends still at work in the crypto industry}

Times have changed, as our newly released 2024 State of Crypto Report makes clear. Our (a16z) report covers crypto’s rise as a hot policy topic, the many recent tech improvements to blockchain networks, and the latest trends among crypto’s builders and users. The report also: digs into the emergence of key applications such as stablecoins — one of crypto’s “killer apps”; explores the intersection of crypto and other key tech trends like AI, social networks, and games; shares new data on swing states’ levels of crypto interest ahead of the U.S. election, and more. The 2024 State of Crypto report also reveals all-time highs in crypto activity. And it analyzes how blockchain infrastructure has matured — especially after recent scaling upgrades drastically decreased onchain transaction costs alongside the rise of Ethereum L2s and other high-throughput blockchains.

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