Some of the industry's top fintech banking strategists are leaving the corporate world to support fintech startups; three of Deutsche Bank's top executives have left the bank for broadened fintech advisory roles; "Everything from M&A advisory to research to money transfer is being disrupted," says Kerim Derhalli, former Deutsche Bank executive who now leads fintech startup Invstr; as the industry evolves it's likely the market will see more corporate fintech experts involved with new fintech ventures in the private markets. Source
News Roundup
This page contains an archive of the Global Newsletter summaries and the weekly fintech news roundups.
Every day the Fintech Nexus news team scours the globe for the most important stories of the day to include in our daily newsletter.
Then every Saturday we bring you our weekly news roundup of the top 10 fintech stories of the week with commentary from Peter Renton.
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LendingRobot is launching a new fund for accredited high net worth investors and using a basket of new technologies to automate management of the fund; LendingRobot plans to use automated portfolio algorithms and automated platform investing to manage the fund; it will also use blockchain for fund reporting and fund auditing; Kadhim Shubber of Financial Times shares information on recent Lending Club performance as well as thoughts from UK-based fund P2PGI. Source
LendingRobot has announced the launch of a new alternative lending hedge fund; Lend Academy provides details in their article; the new fund will add to the service offerings at LendingRobot which currently include aggregated marketplace lending investment accounts for both retail investors and financial advisors; the new LendingRobot Series fund will invest in online loan origination platforms and offer multiple strategies for investors with expected net returns ranging from 6.86% to 9.66%; the fund is only open to accredited investors and requires a minimum investment of $100,000; it has a 1% management fee with fund expenses of up to 0.59%. Source
Hans Morris of Nyca Partners has launched a new venture capital fund; Morris is the founder of Nyca Partners and a former Lending Club chairman; Morris has raised new capital of $125 million for the fund which will invest in fintech startups. Source
Savings rates are low and markets have always been volatile, P2P platforms in the UK have consistently returned 4.5% to 6.5% according to the AltFi Data returns index and so the question remains why aren't financial advisors recommending the P2P asset class; there has been some movement on this front as firms like LendingWell and Octopus offer solutions to better help P2P firms become more attractive to financial advisors; obstacles remain as many financial advisors do not know much about P2P platforms and it will take time for this asset class to be more widely known to the broader advisor. Source
Coverager provides insight on the insurtech investment market with a list of 11 insurtech deals announced in January; Practo in India tops the list with a $55 million investment; firm provides a platform for patients to book appointments and also offers a software as a service solution for doctors. Source
Acuity Market Intelligence has released the 2017 "Ten Top Trends for Biometrics and Digital Identity"; the market intelligence firm says 2017 will be an important year for biometrics and digital identity; topping the list of trends for the year is behavioral biometrics on smartphones and their associated privacy issues. Source
Orchard has released a comprehensive report analyzing platform data attributes across the marketplace lending industry; the white paper is titled, "Making Loan Data Actionable"; provides insight on varying data management strategies across the industry and explores an accounting standard for alternative marketplace loans; Orchard has taken the lead on marketplace lending data standardization due to its association with the majority of the industry's lending network. Source
Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial has announced the acquisition of US payments company MoneyGram; Ant Financial plans to leverage and integrate MoneyGram's payments network to provide enhanced servicing for its digital clients; the acquisition represents a significant expansion of services both globally and into the US for Ant Financial; MoneyGram offers global money transfer services from over 350,000 global locations with over 40,000 payment processing locations in the Unites States; with MoneyGram Ant Financial will now have a broader payments network which currently includes its affiliate Alipay, a partnership with Paytm in India and a partnership with Ascend Money in Thailand; the acquisition also helps to support Ant Financial's mission to bring inclusive financial services to users globally. Source