Traditionally, the transferring of funds across borders has been complex, burdensome and costly for both the individual and the financial institution.
Alkami’s white label technology has helped to provide mobile banking apps for credit unions and banks; they just raised a $70mn series D round led by General Atlantic, with participation from MissionOG, S3 Ventures and Argonaut Private Equity; the company has a SaaS model where they charge banks on the number of users per month; they plan to use the new infusion of capital to grow their sales and invest in innovation. Source.
HSBC is planning to hire 1,000 new Asian wealth management operations employees; the announcement is part of a cost cutting initiative which has closed 60 branches in the UK and moved 200 IT-related jobs to Asia; the newly added employees will primarily be focused on Chinese retail banking and wealth management, adding to a team of 2,400 employees. Source
The Alabama company continues to explore buyouts of add-on businesses, part of a strategy that has already helped recoup dollars lost as a result of reforms to its overdraft practices.
Last year, Latin America was the fastest-growing region for VC investment. This year, it may be on track to be the fastest-shrinking one.
Zopa plans to reopen to new investors by end of the year after stopping investor on boarding earlier this year; they stopped taking new money because they were finding it harder to get good quality borrowers; they also saw a big jump in demand for their Innovative Finance Isa; while the plan for opening to new investors is targeted at year end it could be delayed by existing investor's Isa demand. Source.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Goldman Sachs is planning to share more information about their different business units. The...
Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and others have launched or will launch their own robo products to compete with slicker startups; after seeing the success of startups in the space the banks realized they needed to improve their offerings to keep customers and attract newer, younger ones; the trend to move away from white labeling technology to building their own is a recent one as some traditional players like UBS, State Street and John Hancock are still using services from SigFig, Motif or NextCapital. Source.
Accurate data access is critical for fintech development in climate change, yet access to this data is met with barriers. Connect Earth aims to open source data and enable integration into any fintech app.
Fintechs have established themselves at the forefront of providing the more than 10 million SMBs in Latin America with implementation of digital strategies and processes that accelerate growth.