Invoice financing platform, BillFront, has secured $35 million in financing from a Series A funding round which included 4Finance, NIBC Bank and FinLeap; BillFront offers a working capital solution to media companies; uses advanced technology to evaluate a company's invoices for financing approval; the firm will use the new capital for company expansion and continued development of its technology. Source
Aviva purchased a majority stake in robo-advisor Wealthify only 18 months after their head of retirement solutions criticized automated advice; Wealthify will sit alongside other Aviva products and services through the insurer’s digital hub, MyAviva; the insurer sees this as another important step in their digital strategy. Source
Author and fintech expert Chris Skinner discusses the impact of fintech companies on banking services; the idea of free banking will essentially be gone as fintech companies are able to focus on transactional services the banks once dominated; he calls this the democratization of finance and it will help to bring more transparency to banking overall. Source.
LendIt Europe 2017 is just one week away and we've compiled a list of the speakers to follow. Source
RBS plans to launch a next generation mobile only bank by third quarter 2018; the project is expected to launch with more than one million users from the bank; reports also point to the bank pursuing a marketplace business model which values partnerships over lending as a revenue model; while it looks like it is rumors right now the bank is clearly moving more digital. Source.
