A Forbes article on new business models and not new banks being the real competition in the fintech industry cited Research Associate at the SMU Centre for AI and Data Governance and Adjunct Faculty Nydia Remolina's research titled Towards a Data-Driven Financial System: The Impact of COVID-19, which said that "financial institutions have access to enormous amounts of data, but due to multiple constraints this data is not yet sufficiently converted into useful insights" and putting forward a "data operating model" to link open banking, cloud computing, machine learning and AI to support digital transformation. David G.W. Birch who is an author, advisor and global commentator on digital financial services thinks the model is valuable because the ability for machines obtain insight and take action makes for a very different kind of fully-digital financial services sector based on the movement of data, not money.