Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and others have launched or will launch their own robo products to compete with slicker startups; after seeing the success of startups in the space the banks realized they needed to improve their offerings to keep customers and attract newer, younger ones; the trend to move away from white labeling technology to building their own is a recent one as some traditional players like UBS, State Street and John Hancock are still using services from SigFig, Motif or NextCapital. 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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Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck was hacked and saw the theft of $543mn worth of customer holdings; the Japanese regulator, FSA, said it was concerned that most of the funds were kept in hot wallets online, instead of cold wallets offline; seeing that this is not the first hack of a hot wallet model the regulators might start mandating customer funds be held offline; nothing has been passed yet but the more thefts we see the more regulators will look to try and mitigate future issues. Source.
Ping An Technology and SparkLabs Group will team up to form Ping An Fintech Accelerator; the program will encourage companies to apply from around the world and the first batch will target 10 companies; CEO of Ping An Technology, Ericson Chan, said to Crowdfund Insider, “We are excited to partner with SparkLabs to collaborate with FinTech companies from around the globe. Ping An Technology is the incubator of new technologies for Ping An Group. This accelerator forms a critical part of our incubation ecosystem.” Source.
Senmiao Technology plans to raise $14 million in a US IPO; the company was founded in 2014 and plans to list on the Nasdaq with symbol AIHS; if the company has a successful IPO, they may be worth around $100 million. Source
- BlueVine doubles invoice financing credit lines to up to $5 million
- BNI Europa makes €50m Funding Circle in Germany
- Banco Popular reboots Eloan for new era in online lending
- Santander Consumer USA And AutoFi Team Up To Provide Car Buyers And Dealers With Fast And Easy Online Sales And Financing
- SmartBiz Loans® Launches AI-powered Digital Advisor Tool for Small Business Owners
Goldman Sachs continues to show interest in consumer finance; CEO of Final, Aaron Frank announced that the startup would be closing in December 2017 but did not provide further details; a dozen engineers and product managers will be joining Goldman Sachs; Final was founded in 2014 and offered consumers a credit card; users were able to generate virtual cards unique to a merchant. Source
ABN Amro, ING and Rabobank were the victims of DDoS cyber attacks this past weekend; all the banks saw their websites become unavailable or would run extremely slow; the companies have released statements that their services are now fully restored and that clients’ details were not compromised. Source.
UK listed information and analytics group Relx bought online ID verification company ThreatMetrix for more than $800mn; the move will help to beef up Relx’s LexisNexis Risk Solutions unit; ThreatMetrix has built a database of 1.4bn unique online digital identities in more than 180 countries; Mark Kelsey, the head of Relx’s risk and business analytics division, tell the FT, “Bringing ThreatMetrix together with our own strengths in physical identity attributes will give our clients across all forms of commerce and geographies a more reliable, comprehensive approach to fraud and identity risk management.” 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.
In an interview with Tearsheet Bradley Leimer, managing director and head of fintech strategy at Explorer Advisor & Capital says companies are underestimating content; most VC’s focus on who can be the next Robinhood or TransferWise when there is plenty of opportunities in the market; companies can use customer data to better educate and better target consumers for a specific financial product; there are a lot of interesting companies in the market who can find their niche to perform and offer consumers more choose. Source.