Anthony Noto will serve as CEO and Director effective March 1; Interim CEO Hutton stated, “We are simply thrilled to have found someone of Anthony’s expertise and knowledge to lead SoFi. The SoFi board unanimously agrees that Anthony’s deep understanding of technology, consumer, and financial businesses make him the perfect fit to be SoFi’s CEO. We could not be more excited to have someone of his caliber on board.”; Noto has previous experience as COO of Twitter and also worked for Goldman Sachs. 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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- Japan's Orix invests $60 mln in Chinese P2P lender Dianrong -sources
- Juvo Receives Investment from Samsung to Boost Smartphone Usage Among Underbanked
- Why career ‘boomerangers’ are rare in banking
- UK fintech takes the lead in the Forbes 30 under 30
- The challenger bank Chime says it has 750,000 millennial customers
- Borrowell launches free Equifax® credit report monitoring, a Canadian first
A new survey by Bank of America found that 63 percent of millennials are saving money, that is on par with generation X and baby boomers; the survey shows that millennials are a lot more in tune with their financial lives then they are given credit for; the survey also found that millennials are more apt to ask for a raise and they also play into stereotypes by saying they spend too much and don’t save enough when asked by researchers. Source.
Today StreetShares announced a $23 million Series B round; it was led by a $20 million investment from Rotunda Capital Partners, LLC; $3 million came from existing investors; StreetShares offers small business loans and primarily focuses on veteran-owned businesses. Source
Anthony Noto will become SoFi's CEO effective March 1; American Banker outlines the five challenges that Noto will face as he enters his new role; list includes reforming SoFi’s culture, determining when to go public, deciding how to grow, whether to go forward with a bank charter and proving that he has the right background. Source
SoFi is partnering with WSFS financial to roll out free checking account and debit cards this spring; it is calling the new initiative “SoFi Money”; the product will include peer to peer transfers, mobile check deposits and high yield interest rates on deposits; SoFi members will be the first to have access to SoFi Money before a broader rollout. Source
The non-bank lender launched two new initiatives to expand their mello brand; the home improvement venture will launch later this year and will provide loans up to $75,000 at the point of sale.
According to the Financial Times 2018 Global Alumni Survey graduates explained they thought finance was taught the best but fintech was near the bottom of the 18 subjects; one of the main reasons for the bad scoring is that fintech is not offered at many schools; Schools are trying to grapple with how to cover the term fintech as it could mean many different things; Schools that do teach courses on fintech see that students want to learn about it and hopeful to see it offered more. Source.
Citing low usage numbers by customers and retailers the payments company says they will end all bitcoin related payments by April 23rd; "Empirically, there are fewer and fewer use cases for which accepting or paying with Bitcoin makes sense," Stripe product manager Tom Karlo wrote in the announcement reported by Business Insider; the volatility of price and mining fees also played into the decision by Stripe and has been cited by others as an issue that needs be be addressed. Source.
According to a paper by the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) blockchain technology should be adopted by China’s secondary loan market; as CoinDesk reports the paper came out of a trip made by the regulator to their counterparts in the UK and France; European banks are putting together a program to test blockchain technology for the issuance of syndicated loans; the CBRC also considers blockchain technology to potentially be helpful for automating compliance. Source.