European neobank bunq has joined forces with insurtech firm Qover, to give its users across seven markets access to worldwide, one-time activation travel insurance. The neobank has also successfully upgraded its user-facing assistant ‘Finn’, making it fully conversational.

Qover’s agility and expertise in embedded insurance solutions enabled this onboarding. Insurance features such as a fast claims process and easily accessible travel certificates have been integrated to enhance the user experience through bunq’s app.

Quentin Colmant, CEO and co-founder at Qover, commented: “Collaborative spirit is the cornerstone of our successful partnership. Together with bunq, we prioritised delivering an exceptional user experience for Eva, bunq’s model user. This commitment extends beyond the insurance product itself, encompassing outstanding AI-powered customer care and a streamlined claims process.”

A crucial aspect of this partnership is embedded insurance orchestration, available on bunq’s ‘Easy Bank Pro XL’ plan. Qover’s extensive claims data dashboard, which analyses clauses that typically lead to rejections, empowers bunq users to easily make claims when they need to.

Ali Niknam, founder and CEO of bunq, also said: “We’re making travel insurance effortless together. It’s exactly the peace of mind we want our users to have, whether they spend, save or travel with bunq.”

Qover has invested heavily in improving its customer support and claims capabilities through automation and AI-powered processes, which will further enhance the support that its team provides to bunq’s users in ensuring a seamless user experience throughout the travel journey.

Backing AI-driven banking

bunq has also made moves to bolster its AI-driven banking experience, by upgrading its AI money assistant. ‘Finn’, which has already answered over 100,000 questions since December 2023, can now answer back-to-back questions and provide deeper insights into users’ finances twice as fast as previously.

Finn will tackle users’ questions regarding their bank accounts and spending habits, as well as recommended places to visit in new cities including cafes, restaurants and bars, based on reviews by other bunq users.

The upgrade also unlocks conversational capabilities that look to set Finn apart from other chatbots. Besides engaging in natural conversations and storing the history of users’ interactions with Finn, the AI assistant will serve as an extension of the bunq app, providing personalised, context-rich answers.

“At bunq, we use the latest tech to make our users’ lives easy,” Niknam explained. “We’re thrilled to see so many of our users embrace Finn in their daily lives and can’t wait for them to have a chat with the all-new Finn.”

As well as effectively replacing the search function in the app, bunq uses AI to handle user support questions. Finn is currently independently solving up to 40 per cent of user support questions, and assisting with 75 per cent, every day, helping users tackle any issues they might have while using bunq.

OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT large language model, GPT4.5, could be launching sooner than expected.

A purportedly “leaked” screenshot, which has been making the rounds on social media including X (formerly Twitter), shows a description of “GPT 4.5” which reads: 

“Our most advanced model brings multi-model capabilities across language, audio, vision, video and 3D, alongside complex reasoning and cross-model understanding.”

However, there is growing suspicion that the purported “leaked” screenshot could be a hoax. In a Reddit thread posted around Dec. 14 at 10:30 am UTC, the possible initial source of the leak, the post has been removed by the moderators of r/OpenAI.

Found circulating on X – Leaked GPT 4.5 pricing screenshot!

So the rumors about 4.5 dropping anytime soon seems to be true pic.twitter.com/3p0QO0H105

— Bindu Reddy (@bindureddy) December 14, 2023

Another X user going by the nam

GPT4.5 would be the successor to OpenAI’s GPT-4, which was released on March 14, 2023. 

The draft also shows the potential pricing of GPT-4.5, which is set to cost $0.06 per 1K tokens for input and $0.18 per 1K tokens for output. 

The screenshot could not be independently verified.

Cointelegraph has reached out to OpenAI for comment but did not receive an immediate response. 

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

The decentralized exchange (DEX) of the cryptocurrency exchange OKX (a.k.a OKX DEX) suffered a $2.7 million hack on Dec. 13 after the private key of the proxy admin owner was reported to be leaked. 

On Dec. 13, the blockchain security firm SlowMist Zone posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that OKX DEX “encountered an issue.” According to the report, the issue began on Dec. 12, 2023, at approximately 22:23:47 after the proxy admin owner upgraded the DEX proxy contract to a new implementation contract and the user began to steal tokens.

SlowMist Security Alert: OKX DEX Proxy Admin Owner’s Private Key Suspected to be Leaked

According to information from SlowMist Zone, the OKX DEX contract appears to have encountered an issue. After SlowMist’s analysis, it was found that when users exchange, they authorize…

— SlowMist (@SlowMist_Team) December 13, 2023

Then, at approximately 23:53:59, the proxy admin owner made another upgrade to the contract, and the user continued to exploit tokens. SlowMist’s analysis at the time said the attack “may be” the result of the key of the proxy admin owner being leaked.

The DEX Proxy was subsequently removed from the platform’s trusted list.

Scopescan, an on-chain analysis firm, also reported the attack saying users were reporting the event. It reported that after contacting the DEX, it was told that an old “abandoned” contract was attacked but has been located and stopped. 

Additionally the OKX DEX said any user losses affected by the hack will be “fully borne.”

Users reported an exploit event on the #OKX DEX contract.

We have contacted them and got the following response:

“The old abandoned MM contract was attacked, and the attack has been located and stopped.

The losses of the users involved will be fully borne.”

Exploiters… pic.twitter.com/GrKUdrnGVk

— Scopescan (@0xScopescan) December 13, 2023

Related: Aerodrome and Velodrome DeFi platforms experience front-end hacks

According to a post from the blockchain security company PeckShield, the total loss of the OKX DEX attack was around $2.7 million worth of various cryptos. PeckShield advised users to “please revoke allowances” if there are any. 

In light of the hack one X user posted a reminder that just because something is “decentralized” doesn’t mean that assets are necessarily safe: 

People say they want decentralization, so builders give them DEXs.

Just because its decentralized, folks think we won’t lose our assets. No you are wrong, you can still get hacked, and today’s unfort episode with OKX DEX is a reminder of “be careful of what you wish for”.

— Eugene Ng (I’m Hiring) (@Eug_Ng) December 13, 2023

Prior to September 2023, research shows that this year the industry has suffered $1.5 billion in losses at the hands of crypto hacks, exploits and scams. 

In the following fourth quarter, Poloniex faced an exploit that saw more than $100 million in digital asset losses, along with more than $80 million in losses on the HECO Chain bridge hack.

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