The Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and JPMorgan Chase have announced the launch of their third annual Financial Solutions Lab (FinLab); the FinLab challenge provides support for fintech companies developing innovative solutions targeting the financial health of overlooked populations; the FinLab is currently taking applications and will announce its winners at the EMERGE Forum 2017; FinLab winners receive $250,000 and support from FinLab advisers and partners. 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.
To join our newsletter community please subscribe here.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority and Ontario Securities Commission will now partner on fintech innovation; an agreement between the two agencies will help facilitate expansion for financial technology companies; both agencies will support cross-border business growth and will also share information on trends and regulatory proceedings. Source
Corporate loan trading has historically been a manual process involving millions of emails annually between buyers, sellers and borrowers making it difficult to automate; however new technologies, including blockchain, have been advancing with potential solutions for automation; a new rule which went into effect last September has helped to increase transaction and settlement times; the new rule provides a compensation incentive for faster loan settlement and has improved the average settlement time by four days; the faster settlement has caused many fintech innovators to change their focus from settlement automation to process efficiency. Source
Lend Academy provides details on the emergence of online auto lending and the market opportunity for both lenders and technology providers in their article; Lending Club is the largest marketplace lender to begin offering auto loans; Finova Financial has launched a new title loan product; AutoFi and AutoGravity are two companies offering innovative online services for the car buying process; in the used car market, Blinker has also been successful in developing a marketplace for car buyers and sellers; LendIt USA 2017 will be featuring a panel on the future of buying and selling vehicles including insight from many of these companies. Source
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter...
PeerIQ's Weekly Industry Update notes this week's SFIG Vegas 2017 conference on structured finance; PeerIQ's Ram Ahluwalia will be moderating a panel titled, "The Outlook for Securitization and Marketplace Lending"; on February 26, PeerIQ also released an industry white paper titled, "Data Standards and Best Practices" which details industry standardization of data and discusses the importance of data transparency; at the SFIG 2017 event on Monday the firm announced a new data partnership with 1010data. Source
Sunlight Financial has gained a $130 million investment from Route 66 Ventures for expansion of its residential solar systems lending business; the firm plans to develop new financing products, expand its Charlotte business center and partner with more solar installers; the firm is currently a trusted provider for a network of solar installation companies and offers its credit products through an easy to use online platform. Source
Wealth advisor Snowden Lane has partnered with Artivest to offer investors easier access to private equity and hedge fund investments; Snowden Lane is an independent wealth advisor with no proprietary product offerings; through the partnership, Artivest will now be the firm's main provider of private equity and hedge fund investments; Artivest provides a curated platform of hedge funds and private equity investments. Source
Andy Rachleff, CEO of Wealthfront, makes the case for automated advice and technology powered software; reports that Wealthfront's new system, Path, can analyze a client's spending and savings preferences through access to their accounts, creating financial plans in minutes; Wealthfront also has plans for adding artificial intelligence solutions to improve its services. Source
Fintech firm Quovo launched its bank API in November 2016 with 18 financial institutions; it has now expanded to 215; the API technology allows fintech firms to verify accounts and offer ACH payments and transfers; Quovo's recent partnership expansion has also included credit unions and regional banks. Source