Source reports on robo advice services at Vanguard; the firm's Personal Advice Services is a hybrid robo advice offering with $83 billion in assets under management; it is anticipated that it will be the first digital platform to cross $100 billion; firm is adding certified financial planners to its call centers for clients in Scottsdale, Arizona and Charlotte, North Carolina as an enhanced hybrid offering. 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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Lawmakers have long been arguing that the regulations enacted after the financial crisis have hurt the bank's lending business; Greg Lyons, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton law firm, tells American Banker: "It's not the kind of issue that lends itself to crisp, absolute answers, unfortunately, it's a more amorphous and an ideological view as much as anything else. There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer. It depends on what your objectives are."; in a recent survey of small businesses by the New York Fed only 8% said credit was too expensive/hard to find and 47% said there is sufficient credit in the market; the area most affected by regulations is that of borrowers with less than perfect credit, this market has been hampered by the capital ratio requirements; while certain areas of the market have felt the regulatory burden, overall businesses are able to find the credit they need; the argument will surely continue as policymakers look to ease the most stringent rules. Source
PayPal will offer loans to larger businesses that process payments with its platform and have access to new firms as a result of the acquisition; Swift Financial was founded in 2006 and extends credit with loans and advances; term loans of up to $500,000 will now be available to businesses; Darrel Esch, vice president and commercial officer of global credit at PayPal, stated, "This is an area where customers have been asking for more."; terms of the deal were not disclosed. Source
Crowd Valley compiles a list of some of the most interesting fintech reports through the first half of 2017; the reports cover a wide range of research from consumer adoption of fintech worldwide to venture capital investment trends across the globe; there are four particular areas of focus they point out: insurtech, banking, payments, and artificial intelligence and blockchain; for newcomers and industry veterans these offer a good understanding of where fintech is today. Source
Through the partnership the two companies will provide services for fraud protection; a key service from the partnership will be risk scores through the LexisNexis Risk Defense Platform which provide companies with a risk measure based on behavioral biometrics analyzed during the application process; BioCatch has been actively developing new solutions involving behavioral biometrics and has secured over 23 patents related to fraud protection. Source

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) raised $550 million in June, surpassing the angel and early stage venture capital fundraising for internet businesses globally; several factors could potentially slow the fundraising trend including security issues and a report from the Securities and Exchange Commission; despite some new challenges, ICO fundraising data shows the offerings also ahead of angel and early stage funding in July. Source
Banks are starting to experiment with different customer service chatbots like Facebook Messenger and Twitter; with this move comes potential security risks and the question of risks for the customer; The Conversation points out that a research report by The Centre for Communications Interface Research (CCIR) shows that customers are willing to give up some security for convenience; chatbots will need to provide a sense of convenience and a sense of trust to ultimately be widely accepted by the broad consumer; additional research by the World Retail Banking Report shows that while consumers are accepting their banking life being digital they are still looking for face to face interaction with more complex problems; finding the right balance is the key as more banks move into fuller digital offerings. Source
JD Finance has announced the establishment of a venture capital fund, called ThousandTree Capital, to invest in early-stage companies (angel or A round) in the consumption field; JD Finance will hold minor shares in the startups; the investment decision will be to some extent driven by the data accumulated in the JD ecosystem. Source (Chinese)
51 Credit Card, in cooperation with Harvest Investment, has launched an investment fund with RMB1 billion ($150 million); 51 Credit Card in particular favors companies with good online lending users, big data and traffic acquisition capacity. Source (Chinese)
The firm recently launched in Ireland with a peer-to-peer platform lending model that integrates a borrower's social network in the lending process; it has received Financial Conduct Authority approval and says the additional funds will help it to launch in the UK; the firm is seeking GBP2 million ($2.60 million) in equity funding and will also potentially add more debt funding; Oli Cavanagh, founder of Flender, says he expects most of the funding to come from institutional investors. Source
