Research from TransUnion suggests that the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) move to a bi-merge system could significantly impact both consumers and lenders while providing little benefit.
Robo 1.0 success Personal Capital was acquired for nearly $1 billion by Empower, a major retirement savings manager. Softbank-backed insurtech darling Lemonade IPOed at less than $2 billion, in a successful fundraise and listing, and has since seen its market cap rise to over $4 billion. The IPO is a landmark for an insurtech industry in desperate need of successes. And PayPal announces the impending launch of crypto trading to its 325 million users. The move isn’t overly interesting in its own right, but the implications for the crypto space are worth exploring.
This week, we look at:
TikTok has become a platform with billions of views for investing and stock recommendations to teens. This emotional and persuasive labor can be traced from Jim Cramer to Roaring Kitty.
78% of Millennials (vs. 31% of Boomers) plan to use more digital tools in wealth management and 81% of them think that technology has made investing more efficient (vs. 61% Boomers)
This generational change has implications for investing technology, digital wallets, and the role of people in the financial advice process
This week, we put on the Goldman hat and go shopping for companies. We buy a little bit of Folio and sell some Motif. We look at Personal Capital and the $1 billion it wants for its $12 billion of assets. We examine the private markets with Addepar / iCapital and SharesPost / Forge, and then move over to the banking sector. Should we buy Wells Fargo, as rumored, or some digital wallet apps? Read on for how to acquire a best-in-class Fintech.
Capstack Technologies’ founder and CEO Michal Cieplinski believes he has the antidote to the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, and Citi Ventures agrees.
Looking into the statistics of gambling is illuminating and depressing. The UK, where gambling is more widely accepted than in the US, sees rates of 40-60% across all adults according to 2016 research. Revenues for casinos are over $100 billion annually, and global gambling revenues, including sports betting and the national lotteries, amount to over $400 billion. That's like the equivalent of the entire software cloud industry. And it asymmetrically addicts and disadvantages the already disadvantaged (see academic research here, here, and here).
This week, we look at:
Chime, eToro, and Wise targeting the public markets through IPO and SPACs, and their operating performance
The overall growth in fintech mobile apps, their install rates and market penetration (from 2.5 to 3.5 per person), and whether that growth is sustainable
The implications for incumbents from this competition, and in particular the impact on money in motion vs. money at rest
Broader financial product penetration and an anchoring in how the technology industry was able to get more attention that we had to give
In this conversation, we chat with Jason Wenk, who is the Founder & CEO at Altruist. Apart from this Jason is a writer, self-proclaimed math geek, and investment systems developer. He began his career at Morgan Stanley in NYC at age 20, working on investment research and asset management systems development. After this Jason founded FormulaFolios: quantitative, computer-driven investment models based on academic research to help remove emotion from investing. FormulaFolios would later develop into a standalone asset manager and go on to rank as a fastest-growing private company by Inc. magazine 4 years in a row, reaching as high as #10 in 2017.
More specifically, we discuss all things wealth tech, as well as, serving people with financial planning, financial advice, and generally improving their financial health.
In this conversation, we talk with Will Beeson of Bella and Rebank, about how the Internet/Reddit/Gamestop broke out financial market structure, the social contract, and what the new American finance structure will look like.
More specifically, we give some thought to which FinTech and Crypto companies win or lose from the GameStop adventure, the actual market structure issues that led to the suspension of Robinhood’s trading, and what’s next for the mobile broker, and finally, the social meaning of the war against hedge funds by Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets. Check out our conversation on these exciting new developments.
We are syndicating a deep conversation across roboadvice, high tech and payments, and fintech bundling that we had with Craig Iskowitz of Ezra Group Consulting.
Check out Ezra Group Consulting here to learn more about digital wealth and Craig’s consulting practice. He is one of the sharpest software consultants in the RIA space, and his firm works with wealth management firms and fintech vendors to provide technology strategy and market research.
We had a lot of fun in this conversation and cover TD & Schwab, Wealthsimple, M1 Finance, Ant & Tencent, and Robinhood, among others. The full transcript is provided along with the recording — worth a read for the illustrations alone.