PayPal founder Peter Thiel, and his fund Valar Ventures, led a $10 million seed round in German insurtech startup Coya; other investors in the round include e.ventures and La Famiglia; Dr. Peter Hagen, one of the founders of Coya, tells Business Insider, "This investment will allow Coya to further extend our team and build up an exceptional product for our customers."; the company is planning to build a digital insurance provider and is in the process of trying to get full authorization from German regulators; founders of Coya include two former Kreditech employees and ex-CEO of Vienna Insurance Group. Source
UK-based Redwood Bank has launched digital banking services after obtaining a banking license for business in the UK; Redwood Bank is the first bank with a 100% cloud-based infrastructure and will offer SME mortgages for business owners and professional landlords as well as a 35-day business savings account; Redwood Bank is wholly-owned by Redwood Financial Partners Ltd. which is controlled primarily by Warrington Borough Council with a 33% ownership stake; the newly launched bank is covered by the UK's Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) which protects customers' eligible deposits of up to a total of GBP85,000 ($109,846). Source
CB Insights held a webinar discussing fintech trends in Europe; top trends included insurtech expansion, blockchain, open banking and the changing financial services infrastructure; reports that European fintech has raised $2.637 billion in 2017 from 300 deals with record financing in the first quarter of $1.1 billion. Source
PitchIt @ LendIt Europe is one of the industry's most popular startup competitions providing eight finalists with unparalleled access to industry expertise and funding opportunities as well as invaluable exposure, branding and more at the event; hosted in partnership with Startupbootcamp, the event also offers fast-track status to the finalist round for Startupbootcamp Fintech Accelerator as one of its prizes; interested startup companies must submit their application by September 4 and finalists will be announced on September 10; more details about the competition can be found here. Source
Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission has entered into a cooperation agreement with the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) to establish a framework to help each other develop the fintech industry; the two regulators will work together on information sharing, innovation projects and referrals of fintech firms seeking to enter one another's markets. Source
Dianrong and FinEX Asia have launched Asia's first fintech asset management platform; established in 2017, FinEX Asia connects Asian investors with US consumer lending assets, such as credit card loans, giving Asian investors access to a diverse portfolio of US consumer credit investments; FinEX Asia's fintech solutions offer risk modeling capabilities, blockchain data security, performance monitoring and secondary marketplace liquidity. Source
Robo advice platforms have commoditized personal investing providing greater automation at lower price points; however AltFi reports that despite increasing innovation in the market, investors are still demanding a human element; specifically, investors are favoring hybrid advice with a survey from Accenture showing two-thirds of high income investors wanting the combined services of robots and humans; mid-scale wealth managers are well positioned to meet this demand and firms such as Charles Schwab and Betterment have already incorporated hybrid services to support customers. Source
Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) has announced the first members of its new regulatory sandbox: NOW Money and Tramonex; H.E. Khalid Al Rumaihi, chief executive of the Economic Development Board of Bahrain (EDB) explains to AltFi, "In addition to the development of the regulatory sandbox, we have a number of further initiatives we expect to be launched in the coming months including a venture capital fund-of-funds."; NOW Money offers users in the Gulf region mobile banking and Tramonex helps companies process and transfer funds online. Source
Amazon is fast becoming the financial services company of the future; they now have their hands in payments, cash, small business lending, consumer credit and more; partnerships with companies like USAA and Capital One who use Amazon's Alexa digital assistant have emerged; this all shows the threat Amazon poses to traditional banking giants, though there has been no indication they want to become a bank themselves; JPMorgan Chase has started using Amazon's cloud-based AWS service to build a hybrid private-public cloud strategy; AWS sales increased 42% on a year-over-year basis to $4.1 billion for the second quarter; banks are starting to become technology firms and technology firms are helping to change the way banks operate. Source
Banks of all stripes have recently shown that a slowdown to the recovery might be coming; total loans and leases by banks and other insured institutions rose by just 3.7% from a year earlier at the end of June; this compared to 6.7% growth in total loans and leases last year; credit-card charge-offs, grew by 24.5% in the second quarter, marking the seventh straight quarterly increase; with the recovery being in its ninth year it isn't too surprising to see, FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in a statement; the 5,800 banks that the FDIC monitors are doing quite well though, their combined net profits in the second quarter were up 10.7% from a year earlier. Source