FT Alphaville takes a close look at some of the findings from the Financial Conduct Authority report on their regulatory sandbox; the positives include weeding out the more risky ideas and that 41 of 146 applicants were able to make it through the testing phase; the negatives include distributed ledger technology that shows some of the testing is on too small a scale to really understand whether or not it would actually work. 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.
Personal credit and financial management firm Credit Sesame raised $42mn in equity and venture debt; investors include Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital and SF Capital; the capital will be used for growth, hiring, customer acquisition and to build out their machine learning technologies. Source.
Since launching BankMobile as a digital only bank in 2015 Customers Bancorp has seen the venture have some success but not yet reach profitability; after a deal with Flagship Community Bank for BankMobile fell through they are now looking to spin the business off; American Banker interviewed Luvleen Sidhu, BankMobiles’ President, about the spinoff deal and the future of the firm; topics discussed include why they chose a spinoff strategy, the future of the leadership, profitability and potential future ventures. Source.
After more than a year of research focused on how millennials bank JP Morgan announced the launch of Finn by Chase; the app includes checking & savings accounts, a debit card, personal financial management tools and other features that would appeal to a younger user base; the thinking behind the app is to give customers another option and grow their customer base in regions that don’t include many branches. Source.
After a successful IPO the Chinese online lender has seen shares drop as much as 20 percent after concerns about their business; Chinese media reports surfaced related to the high lending charges that exploit the poor and whether or nor they can handle increased defaults should the economy as a whole slow down; Qudian said the reports are “baseless attacks.” Source.
In an address to the 19th CPC National Congress Xi called for bigger efforts to increase growth in internet based companies, big data and artificial intelligence; “We will make sure that our payment, wealth management and credit services can improve the welfare of the unbanked and underbanked population,” said Ant Financial CEO Eric Jing who was responding to another section of Xi’s speech which looks for the economy to better serve everyone. Source.
Business Insider takes a look at a growing trend in fintech as companies look to offer blockchain technology as a service; companies offering this already include Amazon AWS, IBM, Microsoft Azure and R3 Corda; this trend is seen as something that will only increase in the coming years as more adoption of this technology occurs in financial services and beyond. Source.
UK digital banks Monzo and Starling Bank announced payments integrations; Monzo plans to integrate Android Pay into the user interface for current account users; Starling Bank says it will be the first bank to partner with Fitbit Pay; while this is the first partnership of its kind for Monzo, Starling Bank integrated with Android pay a few months ago. Source.
While banks might have initially been slow to act when it came to embracing digital strategies they are now able...
Fintech companies have found it increasingly hard to work with tier one banks; while most talk openly in private some companies have begun talking publicly about the frustrations; issues the commonly deal with include sense of entitlement, questions about intellectual property, failure to pay and long lead times. Source.