Lloyd’s Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland announce the closure of more than 100 branches; this is part of a wider trend for both banks who will now have closed more than 1,000 in the last few years; reasons for the closings include more UK consumers using mobile banking and the branch closures help to save significant costs. Source.
Open banking platform Deposit Solutions raised $20mn from existing shareholders e.ventures and Greycroft; they will use the funds to continue building the platform out and expand to more markets around the globe; “This investment round is a strong vote of confidence from our shareholders and allows us to further focus on our core mission, establishing Open Banking as the new industry standard for the deposit market,” Deposit Solutions founder and CEO Dr. Tim Sievers said to Bankless Times. Source.
Writing a guest post on FT Alphaville Victor Basta, the managing director of Magister Advisors talks bout the struggle digital banks face in making a profit; digital banks have certainly made a name for themselves and offer a better product to the consumer; rising customer acquisition costs and the tough scaling of affiliate agreements are just two of the reasons these banking startups will find it a challenge to reach profitability; the future looks like potential acquisition of digital banks for technology or merging with other fintechs to form a stronger conglomerate. Source.
The fund expects to provide a dividend of 15p per quarter by the end of the second quarter of 2018; this would represent a yield of 7.8%; the fund shared that it had a pipeline of attractive yielding assets of £400m and will increase share buybacks. Source
Credit Suisse has taken a majority stake in the startup TradePlus24 in a Series A-1 financing round; TradePlus24 is based in Zurich and helps SMEs increase their working capital by leveraging their domestic and export receivables; Credit Suisse recently announced a $200 million revolving credit facility with Kabbage. Source
While publishing the results of the latest stress tests on the UK’s biggest banks the Bank of England warned that fintechs could take significant market share; the Bank of England identified three main areas of concern for banks: competition from fintechs, cost reduction while delivering services and low interest rates; these key areas could hurt profitability at banks in the coming years and app based disrupters could be the beneficiaries. Source.
The blockchain insurance consortium B3i has secured 38 members worldwide including Allianz, Swiss Re and AIG; the project would help these insurers move away from their paper based processes and secure contracts on distributed ledgers; right now blockchain is not widely used in insurance and the project is hoping to bring along the change; B3i estimates the changes could help the industry to save over 30 percent of costs. Source.
Digital banking app Revolut is looking to embrace the cryptocurrency wave and incorporate features into the app; the new features would let users exchange and use bitcoin as well as other digital currencies; there is no set plan for the new features but Head of Mobile, Edward Cooper, tweeted that potential changes were coming on cryptocurrencies as Crowdfund Insider reports. Source.
UK based Lendable raised $400mn to continue lending to UK consumers amid concerns over growing household debt; the capital infusion comes from Castle Trust who is backed by the US private equity shop JC Flowers; this is the second big deal for Lendable in 2017 as they were able to secure over $130mn from Waterfall Asset management in March. Source.
Balderton Capital is best known for their fintech investments in Nutmeg, Revolut, Crowdcuve and Prodigy Finance; the firm has now launched their sixth fund totaling $375 million from investors in Europe, Asia and the US; they have made 10 investments across five countries since March. Source