The UK fintech market saw $2.8bn invested across 182 deals through three quarters, which surpassed all of 2016; the third quarter alone saw a record of $1.6bn in invesment; the number of deals closing was down when compared to 2016, though bigger deals have made the amount invested significantly higher; the figures can be attributed to Fintech Global, a UK based consulting firm. Source.
JoinedNov. 30, 2016
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Todd is the host of PitchIt: the fintech startups podcast, a weekly interview show featuring emerging fintech founders and leading venture capitalists. He is responsible for leading the content team which covers fintech through daily & weekly email newsletters, editorial, virtual events, and in-person conferences. He has been covering fintech, banking, and venture capital for more than 15 years, including speaking regularly at industry events.
French based DreamQuark is looking to provide an AI solution to banks, asset management firms and insurance companies; the product, Brain, helps financial services companies to make smarter decisions in fraud detection, anti-money laundering and credit scoring; they can also help to better organize data so firms can offer customers tailored products and cut down on false positives so consumers don’t need to call for verification purposes. Source.
After considerable outcry the Cleveland Fed has removed their study about online lending; “In light of the comments received, the authors are currently revising their paper to further clarify the data sample they used in the study,” Cleveland Fed spokesman Tim Dewald said in an email to American Banker; they plan to post a new version of the paper after completing significant revisions. Lend Academy also covered the removal of the report after posting about the release last week. Source.
UK based Digital Bank Monzo is planning a crowdfunding round to give customers a greater share of ownership; the round will look to raise between $13mn and $40mn; while they will use the round for hiring it is meant to provide customers “a genuine sense of ownership”; the crowdfunding round follows the recent $94mn private equity backed fundraising. Source.
China’s central bank announced new regulations to curb risk in the asset management space; the new rules are an attempt to unify regulatory areas, prohibit asset managers from guaranteeing returns and have them set aside 10 percent for provisioning; “The central bank is trying to thread a very fine needle,” said Andrew Polk at Trivium China, a Beijing consultancy. Source.
The weekly WieyangX Fintech Review, as reported by Crowdfund Insider, covers recent fintech updates from China; the People’s Bank of China has made plans for a unified credit platform by end of 2017; Chinese fintech Rong360 had their subsidiary Jianpu Technology listed on the NYSE, becoming the sixth IPO recently; JD Finance, through their subsidiary Jing Dong Xu Hang Online Lending Information & Intermediary Service Ltd., is finally getting into the P2P Lending market. Source.
Intrinio CEO Rachel Carpenter said the mission of her company is to make raw data fields available; they recently partnered with Nasdaq to include their real-time data feeds within the marketplace; they offer over 150 different data APIs and have built the company to bring Warren Buffet’s investment ideas to life in software; individuals can access the data for $75 a month and companies pay a custom rate. Source.
News of CFPB Director Cordray’s departure could see regulations on payday lenders lessened; one of Director Corday’s main missions was to crack down on predatory lenders; Director Cordray plans to leave at the end of the months and no long term successor has been chosen yet. Source.
The report will be released on a quarterly basis going forward and will look to cover credit performance trends; highlights of the report include continued credit re-normalization across all major lending groups and consumer installment lenders are not anticipating an increase in loss rates; they also cover the shift in the competitive landscape where more banks are investing heavily in tech and that the US consumer is quite healthy right now. Source.
Innovate Finance published their annual list of women in fintech and while progress has been made, more work is needed; Innovate Finance CEO Charlotte Crosswell said "We’ve still got work to be done. When you look at statistics of women in fintech — it’s not there yet.”; other leaders like Anne Boden of Starling Bank said we all need to try harder; studies also show that the more diverse a team the better they perform. Source.