The digital push at BBVA has helped the company to a 20 percent rise in profits; the changes have helped the company to lower costs while boosting profits; “The strength of recurring revenues and the improvement in efficiency show that we are advancing decisively in our transformation strategy,” said Francisco González, the group’s executive group chairman to the Financial Times. “2017 was a good year and 2018 will be an even better one.” Source.
The new initiative will promote engagement with those involved in blockchain; it will also monitor new developments to help inform policy making; the European Commission allocated a budget last year and sought out bids for a services contract to set up the observatory; the contract was won by ConsenSys. Source
The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance released their 3rd annual European Alternative Finance Industry Benchmarking Report showing the market grew by 41 percent in 2016; the report uses 344 financing platforms across 45 European countries; the UK’s market share dropped from 81 percent to 73 percent and the rest of Europe grew by 101 percent; consumer lending led the way with 34 percent, followed by business, invoice trading, equity crowdfunding and rewards crowdfunding; institutional funding comprised 45 percent of consumer lending and 29 percent of business lending. Source.
Ireland has become a hub of technological innovation as big tech, fintech and big financial services companies set up shop in country as an alternative to the UK; “Ireland has always been quite an innovative country; it has to be because it is such a small market, you can’t just lean on the Irish market to produce a decent fintech business.” says Sinead Fitzmaurice, co-founder of TransferMate, to the FT; talent from Google and Facebook have not only started their own companies but have also moved into finance giants like Deutsche Bank; low corporate tax rates combined with the tech talent has help the country become an emerging fintech market. Source.
SBI Group, owner of SoftBank is investing into the mobile-first bank; SBI Group will also get a seat on Moven's board and the companies plan to form a joint venture in Japan; Moven is also splitting its business in two; one side is the software provider that powers digital banking software and the other is the neobank, MovenBank; Moven also announced that it is in the process of purchasing a US bank. Source
Augmentum Capital, venture group backed by Lord Rothschild, is looking to raise more than $175mn for a closed end fund to invest in fintech startups; the company plans to take positions in p2p lending platform Zopa and crowdfunding platform Seedrs, both of whom are in the UK; “There are very few places you can go to right now to invest in fintech at the moment on the public markets,” said George O’Connor, analyst at Stifel, to the FT. “So [this] taps into the zeitgeist.” Source.
ABN Amro, ING and Rabobank were the victims of DDoS cyber attacks this past weekend; all the banks saw their websites become unavailable or would run extremely slow; the companies have released statements that their services are now fully restored and that clients’ details were not compromised. Source.
UK listed information and analytics group Relx bought online ID verification company ThreatMetrix for more than $800mn; the move will help to beef up Relx’s LexisNexis Risk Solutions unit; ThreatMetrix has built a database of 1.4bn unique online digital identities in more than 180 countries; Mark Kelsey, the head of Relx’s risk and business analytics division, tell the FT, “Bringing ThreatMetrix together with our own strengths in physical identity attributes will give our clients across all forms of commerce and geographies a more reliable, comprehensive approach to fraud and identity risk management.” Source.
According to The Times, sources say Funding Circle is in no hurry to do an IPO, but if the markets continue to be favorable they may go public in the second half of the year; article also shares the potential in their US business where they have much less brand awareness compared to the UK; there are some concerns from clients and investors that the company has not yet been through a recession as they look at an IPO; Funding Circle currently has 850 employees and last raised £82 million at a £990 million valuation. Source
European deposit marketplace Raisin has passed $6mn in brokered savings deposits; deposits grew by more than $3.5mn in 2017 and they saw their international customer base grow by 20 percent; the company acquired PBF Solutions, passed 100,000 customers, added 12 new partner banks and received more than $49mn in interest income last year; “We are pleased to be able to offer savers throughout Europe an attractive alternative.” said Tamaz Georgadze, CEO and founding member, to AltFi. Source.