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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As banks look to update legacy technology or partner with fintechs they have turned to consultants for advice; consulting firms like BCG, Accenture and the big four accounting firms, KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY have all been called upon to help structure deals or provide banks with advice on regulatory updates; financial institutions are relying on these consultants to help banks implement the technology changes and to adapt quicker as they can help bring knowledge from data scientists or app designers. Source.
Originators are beginning to look at launching their own captive funds; at LendIt USA 2017 we hosted a panel featuring Cross River Bank, Freedom Financial, Money360, Credibly, UBS and Clifford Chance to discuss this idea; the originators on the panel talked about their current funds, if they have launched one, size, structure and how they currently view the idea of this vehicle in the long term; the panelists focused on diversification of funding sources; in good times it is never hard to get loan purchasers but when markets tighten how can you make sure you are prepared; they also talked about when setting up this funding vehicle should you manage it yourself or should you find a third party fund manager; how do conflicts of interest come into play when the originating company is then investing in the loan and servicing the loan; there are still many questions when it comes to setting up a fund like this, as more firms look to this option we will better understand how to answer these questions in the future. Source
The main lobbying group for banks, the Consumer Bankers Association, is trying to get the government to add caps on how much graduate students and parents of undergraduates can borrow from the government; caps would force people to go to private lenders and would benefit those with better credit histories; there is also a group of investors trying to get clearer legislation passed for income sharing agreements; changes could result in billions of dollars worth of opportunities for banks and investors as the most recent academic year totaled $107bn. Source.
Investing startup Wealthfront is adding a new feature to their Path platform to help users with home buying; “With the introduction of Path’s home planning service, our clients can now easily plan for all of their major life milestones — from saving for their children’s future to one day retiring — with just a few taps on their phone,” said Andy Rachleff cofounder and CEO of Wealthfront to Business Insider; the new feature will use real estate dat from Redfin to help users explore the housing market and see whether or not they can afford a home. Source.
According to a report from Banking Technology, Amazon could potentially be acquiring Capital One; Capital One uses Amazon's AWS cloud services; its credit card business could complement Amazon's current offerings for payment processing and credit cards while also expanding its services for Amazon's merchant network; according to Neil O'Brien, former director of digital banking at Santander US, "There has been speculation for a long time about a tech giant (GAFA – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) buying a bank in the US, but the general sentiment was that banks were an undesirable target because of low margins and more importantly, high regulation."; the potential for a bank acquisition is now likely to increase given recent regulatory developments in the financial services industry. Source