Abe Smith, founder and CEO of UK based Dealflo tells Banking Technology about the big opportunity for UK fintechs in China; China and the UK have recently formed as closer partnership with Teresa May signing s number of deals and partnerships; three key areas for UK fintechs to focus on include approaching China for the unique market it is, work with a local group or team of advisors and understand the complex data residency programs. Source.
Chris Skinner’s new book called Digital Human will be launching this month; he sat down with Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays Bank UK, and Li Wang, Head of Alipay and Ant Financial for EMEA at his London book launch; in this blog post he shares video of the panel which took place; some of the highlights include Ashok sharing how Barclays has been able to adapt over the 300 years it has been in business and the certainty he has that they will be able to adapt going forward; Li shares how each employee at Ant generates RMB100 million or over £10 million in revenue per year, a stark contrast to efficiency at banks. Source
Banks have begun to implement new technologies to help verify who the customer is, though the new GDPR rules in Europe could complicate usage; the General Data Protection Regulation, which will restrict how companies collect and store data, allows for customers to ask for their data to be removed and non compliance results in huge fines; banks have started to slowly add new technology but they are still figuring out where to limit storage; new companies are trying to sell services into bank that allow them to collect information but store it in a certain way to be compliant; with new technology being developed so rapidly, governments need to ensure they keep up with innovation and clearly tell the market how to comply. Source.
Rishi Khosla, chief executive and co-founder of OakNorth, told CNBC that eventually the company plans to make the move into China; "It is going to be a market that we will go into. It's just a question of when and how rather than if," Khosla explained at a fintech event last week.; talk of a move comes after China’s new central bank head said he is willing to open the market to foreign companies; OakNorth has said they are in discussions with a variety of countries across the globe about expansion plan. Source.
Penta is a German based fintech company that is looking to improve business banking with their Compass platform; Penta is streamlining the process to allow founders the ability to open up an account in less than 15 minutes; further features will be added in the coming months to assist founders with other registration and legal issues related to starting a small business. Source
Raisin has over 100,000 customers and launched investment products for their customers in Germany; customers will be able to choose from index or exchange traded funds from Vanguard or DAB BNP Paribas that cost less than .5%; Germany is a newer market for Vanguard which listed its ETFs on the German stock exchange last year. Source
Banco BNI Europa and Varengold Bank AG have committed £90 million and £45 million respectively to MarketInvoice; MarketInvoice offers business loans and invoice finance through their platform and already has a variety of investors participating on the platform; Banco BNI Europa previously invested £28 million in 2016 and another £45 million in 2017; Varengold previously committed £45 million in September of 2017; MarketInvoice recently crossed the £2 billion mark. Source
Lloyds CEO António Horta Osório told a conference that his bank is the largest digital bank in the UK with more than 30 million digital customers; the bank plans to spend about $1.5bn annually on their digital strategy for the next three years; he also stated he thought partnerships between banks and fintech companies will become even more important and wants to work with them in a symbiotic relationship. Source.
U.S. based growth investor, Motive Partners, recently opened their European hub in Canary Wharf, London as they see the market as one of the epicenters of financial services; this is the latest sign that London has not lost their attractiveness since Brexit; a few additional reasons for being a destination include experience with the new open banking regulations and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been very supportive of fintech. Source.
UK based digital bank Revolut launched disposable card numbers form within the app; the disposable nature of the number can help to reduce card fraud, one of the main areas of financial fraud; the move is part of a wider trend in banking to make the online shopping experience more secure and tailored to millennial customers; Revolut also allows users to freeze/unfreeze cards and disable functions like contactless and swipe payments. Source.