Fintech, Digital Payments, and the Risks of Outsourcing Payroll Accounting: The Case of MyPayRollHR

Payroll accounting requires specialized knowledge and expertise that many small businesses lack. Employee recruitment, retention and satisfaction are highly dependent on the employer’s ability to efficiently process payroll in a timely and dependable fashion. Firms outsource payroll to devote more time and resources on their primary business and strategic goals which may have a bigger impact than processing payroll does, on the firm’s triple bottom line – people, profit, and the planet. While the decision to outsource payroll can help ensure employees are paid and taxes are withheld in a timely fashion, there are inherent risks in handing off this important function to a third-party processor. The ultimate responsibility for accurate and timely processing of payroll remains with the employer. So, firms seeking to outsource payroll need to perform adequate due diligence to ensure there are proper financial controls at third party payroll processors to prevent fraud and misappropriation. This paper presents a recent real life case study that explains the potential pitfalls of outsourcing the payroll function especially when digital payments are used

Trans-ethnic Meta-analysis and Functional Annotation Illuminates the Genetic Architecture of Fasting Glucose and Insulin

Knowledge of the genetic basis of the type 2 diabetes (T2D)-related quantitative traits fasting glucose (FG) and insulin (FI) in African ancestry (AA) individuals has been limited. In non-diabetic subjects of AA (n = 20,209) and European ancestry (EA; n = 57,292), we performed trans-ethnic (AA+EA) fine-mapping of 54 established EA FG or FI loci with detailed functional annotation, assessed their relevance in AA individuals, and sought previously undescribed loci through trans-ethnic (AA+EA) meta-analysis. We narrowed credible sets of variants driving association signals for 22/54 EA-associated loci; 18/22 credible sets overlapped with active islet-specific enhancers or transcription factor (TF) binding sites, and 21/22 contained at least one TF motif. Of the 54 EA-associated loci, 23 were shared between EA and AA. Replication with an additional 10,096 AA individuals identified two previously undescribed FI loci, chrX FAM133A (rs213676) and chr5 PELO (rs6450057). Trans-ethnic analyses with regulatory annotation illuminate the genetic architecture of glycemic traits and suggest gene regulation as a target to advance precision medicine for T2D. Our approach to utilize state-of-the-art functional annotation and implement trans-ethnic association analysis for discovery and fine-mapping offers a framework for further follow-up and characterization of GWAS signals of complex trait loc

Fintech: Digital Tokens

Since the world’s first virtual currency was issued on the Bitcoin blockchain network in 2009, there has been a proliferation of various other private digital token offerings on blockchain networks—in particular, on the Ethereum blockchain. Milkau and Bott (2018) report that several governments are considering implementing digital currencies as a “complement to cash.” Blockchain technology holds great promise for innovative applications capable of facilitating any number of business operations, and several large companies including IBM, American Express, Toyota, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Walt Disney, Oracle, and Facebook have already invested heavily in the emerging technology. Crowdfunding is also a popular application of blockchain technology. Tech entrepreneurs have issued digital tokens for virtual currency as a means of circumventing the tedious regulations of the SEC governing the raising of capital. The regulatory status of these digital tokens and their associated trading platforms has been approached with a certain degree of ambiguity and controversy. This paper explores and explains the regulatory issues of fintech regarding digital tokens, making a valuable addition to the scarce literature on this topic

Trans-ethnic Meta-analysis and Functional Annotation Illuminates the Genetic Architecture of Fasting Glucose and Insulin

Knowledge of the genetic basis of the type 2 diabetes (T2D)-related quantitative traits fasting glucose (FG) and insulin (FI) in African ancestry (AA) individuals has been limited. In non-diabetic subjects of AA (n = 20,209) and European ancestry (EA; n = 57,292), we performed trans-ethnic (AA+EA) fine-mapping of 54 established EA FG or FI loci with detailed functional annotation, assessed their relevance in AA individuals, and sought previously undescribed loci through trans-ethnic (AA+EA) meta-analysis. We narrowed credible sets of variants driving association signals for 22/54 EA-associated loci; 18/22 credible sets overlapped with active islet-specific enhancers or transcription factor (TF) binding sites, and 21/22 contained at least one TF motif. Of the 54 EA-associated loci, 23 were shared between EA and AA. Replication with an additional 10,096 AA individuals identified two previously undescribed FI loci, chrX FAM133A (rs213676) and chr5 PELO (rs6450057). Trans-ethnic analyses with regulatory annotation illuminate the genetic architecture of glycemic traits and suggest gene regulation as a target to advance precision medicine for T2D. Our approach to utilize state-of-the-art functional annotation and implement trans-ethnic association analysis for discovery and fine-mapping offers a framework for further follow-up and characterization of GWAS signals of complex trait loci