eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher hosts principal analyst Karin von Abrams, senior analyst Paul Briggs, and research analyst at Insider Intelligence Man-Chung Cheung to discuss internet regulations worldwide: how Brexit will change UK internet rules, major EU antitrust cases, Canada's Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA), why the Chinese government has turned its attention to homegrown tech giants, and more.

The emergence of new companies selling direct online has been a big story for some time. Mattress brands Casper and Emma, luggage maker Away, beauty company Glossier, and garment retailer Happy Socks were among the first highly successful direct-to-consumer (D2C) firms, many of them based in Europe.

Consumers’ growing willingness to get their financial services from non-FI providers is spurring consumer brands to embed financial elements in their products and services. But this new form of finance will mean dramatic changes for incumbent and startup FIs.

Retail ecommerce sales in Western Europe rose by 26.3% in 2020, to €481.54 billion ($539.18 billion). The pandemic is fueling other shifts in the retail landscape, too, such as a greater focus on buying local.

Incumbent insurers have accelerated their use of mature AI deployments in the past year to meet changing customer expectations and better compete with insurtechs. They’ll now need to infuse the tech across their business segments to unlock the full potential—including enhanced personalization, cost cutting, and stronger risk management—of AI-driven digital transformation.

We predict reasonable Snapchat user growth of 6.8% in Western Europe this year, resulting in 76.2 million new users on the platform, or nearly 22% of internet users. However, this growth is up only slightly from our November 2019 prediction of 6.3%.

eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Karin von Abrams discuss what they're paying attention to in 2021 and why: How Brexit will impact online shopping, Amazon's European rivals, and new EU tech regulations.

This inaugural scorecard, weighted based on responses to a primary consumer survey, ranks the four largest US neobanks by user count according to their advanced mobile banking capabilities. The report presents detailed benchmarking data on the availability of 47 mobile features, selected by analysts based on the features’ propensity to help neobanks differentiate themselves from competitors. It is a companion to the 2020 US Mobile Banking Competitive Edge Report, which ranks the 25 largest US financial institutions by assets.

With a hard Brexit looming, 2020 will be the peak of cross-border ecommerce penetration in the UK, according to the latest forecast from eMarketer, an Insider Intelligence company. This year, 22.8 million people in the UK will have made a cross-border ecommerce purchase, representing 46.0% of internet users and 50.2% of digital buyers.

The number of monthly Instagram users in Western Europe will rise by 17.0% in 2020 to 132.8 million. That’s more than three times higher than the growth rate we had predicted before the pandemic (5.2%) and equates to 19.3 million new users from 2019.