Fintech companies have found it increasingly hard to work with tier one banks; while most talk openly in private some companies have begun talking publicly about the frustrations; issues the commonly deal with include sense of entitlement, questions about intellectual property, failure to pay and long lead times. 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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Oakam has originated more than 420,000 loans and over $275mn to customers with little or bad credit; the UK based lender uses credit bureau data and alternative data including network associations, behavioral data and chat data between potential customers and their agents; the combination of the data sources has allowed them to better asses risk to a client base mostly ignored by traditional financial firms. Source.
Goldman Sachs is estimating a 500% return on its initial investment of $550 million in credit data provider TransUnion; the investment began in 2012 when Goldman Sachs bought TransUnion; since then TransUnion has gone public with shares opening at $22.50 on June 25, 2015 and currently trading at $38.23; Goldman Sachs has also earned $50 million from TransUnion's IPO and debt underwriting; additionally, Goldman Sachs is reporting a number of other advantages from the investment including support for its newly launched consumer lending platform Marcus which is a client of TransUnion. Source
Sentient Technologies has been developing an AI powered hedge fund for over a decade; Co-Founder Babak Hodjat has played a significant part in developing the company's AI powered system; Hodjat has 21 patents and his experience also includes development support for Apple's virtual assistant Siri; while many firms in the hedge fund space have been utilizing AI, Sentient is one of the only firms to build their entire business around it; the firm's AI system can analyze billions of data points, spot trends and adapt as it learns; in addition to developing investment decisions the AI system also facilitates trades which helps investment opportunities to be identified and acted upon faster; according to Hodjat, the vast amounts of publicly available data in the financial industry make AI ideal for investment management; the Sentient portfolio is highly diversified with a wide range of US stocks and trades hundreds of times per day; while the firm is becoming more well known for its AI focus it has yet to publicly disclose its performance; the company has received approximately $143 million and is owned by Li Ka-shing, and the Tata Group. Source
Mastercard is already working with names like Brex, Revolut and TransferWise; they...
Consumer lending Platform Affirm is looking to move beyond lending and into the financial advice space; currently Affirm works with retails to offer consumers a credit option when making a purchase; they are exploring ways to help customers better understand their debt and offer a way to help them reduce interest payments; Affirm has lent over $1bn to date Source.
N26’s head of product is building a better bank Podcast How robo-adviser...
The Financial Conduct Authority's Director of Strategy and Competition Christopher Woolard has reported some concerns over fintech regulations globally; in a speech at the Innovate Finance Global Summit in London, Woolard specifically discusses fintech sandboxes noting concerns about establishing them before any government regulatory standards are in place and suggesting that countries institute some guidance before introducing sandbox initiatives; the UK has been a leader in sandbox innovation and the country plans to publish a full report in May on its first sandbox initiative. Source
Borrowell, a marketplace lender focused on consumer loans, has been in business for approximately two years in Canada with a lot of growth in the small, developing Canadian P2P industry; Lend Academy interviews Borrowell's CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Graham in their podcast; discussion focuses primarily on Borrowell's business model and the company's announcement of the country's first marketplace lending partnership with a major bank; Borrowell has partnered with CIBC in a co-branded partnership that offers consumer loans to CIBC's customers. Source
SoftBank’s Vision Fund is planning to invest in the British banking startup...