Elevate's Center for the New Middle Class has released a study showing subprime consumers are limited in their ability to utilize credit balances or borrow from their social networks; the Center's study reports 70% of nonprime Americans couldn't cover an urgent expense of $500 or more with their savings and 64% wouldn't be able to borrow from friends and family; the Center's study amplifies the need for solutions targeting nonprime borrowers; Elevate's Center for the New Middle Class is currently undergoing research efforts to support nonprime credit access and personal financial management efficiencies. 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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Democratic Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren released her plan for student loans this...
Digital wealth management startup Ellevest raised $33mn led by Rethink Impact and...
Ellevest is an investment platform focused on women; the firm is led by Sallie Krawcheck and recently raised $34.6 mn in a Series A round; the round was led by Rethink Impact with participation from a wide variety of investors including PSP Growth, Salesforce Ventures, CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund, LH Holdings, SK Impact Fund, Morningstar, Khosla Ventures, Mellody Hobson, Ulu Ventures, Contour Venture Partners and Astia Angels. Source
Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are emerging in the wealth management space as a rival for robo advice; AI solutions are providing more sophisticated investment portfolio options than robo advisors using machine learning data optimization capabilities; there are a number of AI solutions supporting investment management that are already being used broadly within wealth management including Watson, Alladin, Kensho and Sqreem; these artificial intelligence systems and others under development have the capability to develop investing portfolios based on a range of technological data inputs while also using machine learning to analyze, interpret and act on information obtained from various sources such as news articles and social media; it's predicted that these AI solutions could evolve into offering more robust portfolio advice directly for retail investors. Source
OnDeck is one of the market's leading small business online lenders and they have taken an active role in industry self-regulation specifically around improved transparency for business borrowers; in their featured blog post they discuss the market's landscape and their lending technology partnership integration efforts; they also provide details on their involvement in developing industry best practices through development of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity and the Innovation Lending Platform Association; this involvement has resulted in the creation of the SMART Box which they also detail in their blog post. Sponsored Blog Post
In a deal that will rock the fintech space Enova announced this...
The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) launched earlier this year and now has 150 global members; the consortium provided details on its most recent "town hall" meeting last month which focused on information from leaders of the individual working groups; also discussed and under development is the group's governance operating structure which is expected to support interoperability among the EEA's working groups. Source
A new consortium for blockchain solutions in financial services has been announced called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance; the consortium includes JPMorgan, Microsoft, Bank of New York Mellon, Intel and Banco Santander S.A.; it will focus on building out an open-source platform started by JPMorgan called Quorum; the platform will seek to develop solutions for realizing cost savings in financial transactions with blockchain technology; the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance plans to launch a working version of its protocol later this year. Source
Envestnet is an analytics company, Backbase a digital banking platform; their partnership is building upon an existing relationship and will feature a collaboration on the Open Banking Marketplace; the partnership will focus on Backbase customers being offered the suite of tools offered by Envestnet | Yodlee like know-your-customer, cash management, budgeting and a simple overview of multiple accounts from different financial institutions; according to Jouk Pleiter, CEO and Co-Founder of Backbase, “With companies like Envestnet | Yodlee on our Open Banking Marketplace, banks are able to give banking clients the user experience they deserve.” Source