A new survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit and Crypto.com says that...
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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A report from marketplace lender Funding Options says UK SMEs owe $3.25 billion in value added taxes (VAT); a leading factor affecting tax payments is late B2B payments creating an even greater opportunity for alternative financing in the region; Funding Options is promoting alternative solutions to help SMEs better manage their business taxes. Source
After more than a year of research focused on how millennials bank JP Morgan announced the launch of Finn by Chase; the app includes checking & savings accounts, a debit card, personal financial management tools and other features that would appeal to a younger user base; the thinking behind the app is to give customers another option and grow their customer base in regions that don’t include many branches. Source.
The marketplace lending industry's first peer-to-peer lender has created a waiting list for new investors and is currently only accepting funds from existing investors; the investor waiting list began on March 9 and follows the previous halting of new money from all investors on its platform in December; the waiting list is another effort to keep processing times down; demand for loans on the platform was higher in February as more investors identified the loan investments for their high yields among other regional alternatives; Zopa has reported plans for expansion to secured car loans and is also continuing with its plans for launching a digital bank. Source
Northwestern Mutual has formed Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures which will invest in fintech firms; according to the press release, the commitment will focus on innovation to build greater digital relevance for clients, increase data-driven decision making and create back-end efficiencies with the goal of creating value for its more than four million clients; investments will range from $500,000 to $3 million; the company has already seen benefits from the acquisition of LearnVest in 2015 and is looking to invest more in similar companies. Source
Securitization has become increasingly utilized by marketplace lending platforms and in 2016 a record number of deals were done; Lend Academy provides details on securitization structuring, Lending Club's recent securitization and the importance of transparency in their article; in Lending Club's December securitization the total amount of loans in the portfolio was approximately $131.3 million and the portfolio was rated by Kroll Bond Rating Agency. Source
National Australia Bank's (NAB) venture capital business, NAB Ventures has joined in an investment round raising $24 million for Veem, a foreign exchange startup business; Veem provides business to business cross border payment services with blockchain technology; NAB and NAB Ventures have been actively involved in technology investments also investing in Data Republic, Medipass Solutions and Localz; Australia is also taking a lead role in developing blockchain standards globally; it is active in the development of blockchain standards through the ISO/TC 307 and will host the first international blockchain standards meeting for ISO/TC 307. Source
Fidor Bank saw in 2016 that incumbent banks were beginning to buy up and partner with fintechs because they needed to stay competitive; other digital banks do not share this view as Starling Bank issued a report back in September saying that collaboration with main street type banks will help to erode what fintechs are attempting to disrupt; 2017 looks to be a pivotal year for partnerships as big banks, regional banks and community banks are all moving in the direction of utilizing different aspects of new innovation. Source
As recently at 2017 there were still 1.7 billion people without access...
IBM is now moving into banking compliance, by purchasing Promontory Financial Group they hope they can use the compliance company's expertise to teach Watson about banking compliance; "Part of why we bought Promontory was, these systems (meaning Watson), they do have to be trained," explained IBM CEO Ginni Rometty; IBM believes artificial intelligence can help across the banking industry and ease the burden on specific firms. Source