Advanced analytics and machine-learning applications present financial services firms with a challenge. On one hand, consumers want their financial institutions to utilize technology to provide new and more frictionless services. But they also want their sensitive personal data to be protected to the fullest extent possible. That dichotomy has created an attractive opportunity for start-ups that can ensure privacy as data moves from a lockdown environment to an analytical environment where data scientists can access it. One firm doing interesting work in that area is Privitar, a London-based fintech that recently raised $16 billion in a Series A, in part to expand across the Atlantic. Although the US doesn’t provide the same regulatory tailwind as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which is set to take effect next year, the American market should prove receptive to Privitar’s solutions. That’s because, regulation or not, data privacy will be increasingly viewed as a way for US banks to obtain a competitive advantage when trying to woo new customers and keep existing ones.

This article was published as part of Weekly Briefing No. 93