The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has told asset managers that they need to focus more on customer interests and stop the bad behavior; the rules come after a more than 2 year investigation into the sector; Christopher Woolard, executive director of strategy and competition at the FCA, tells the FT, “Today’s announcements are an important part of a package of measures that, combined, aim to achieve a fair, transparent, open and accountable market.”; some of the new rules include hiring independent directors, profits from moving money from one fund to another will be mostly banned and they will need to switch investors to the cheapest version of their funds. 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.
To join our newsletter community please subscribe here.
According to Bloomberg, Ripple attempted to provide financial incentives to exchanges Gemini and Coinbase for its XRP cryptocurrency to be listed; Some believe that the exchanges are reluctant to include XRP because the token could be deemed securities because it is controlled by one single company; the article by Bloomberg shares that a Ripple executive offered a $1 million cash payment to Gemini which was followed by other incentive offerings; Ripple also offered lending Coinbase $100 million of XRP to let users trade the asset. Source
Credit bureaus have had a tough past year with the Equifax breach of customer data and new legislation in the U.S. looking to increase competition by allowing lenders to use different sources; changing the credit bureau system is not as easy as it may sound as they have been intertwined in the financial services system for a long time; lenders still use the bureaus for a large majority of lending decisions, even though some alternative bureaus have seen traction; the breach at Equifax could have a lasting effect because people did have a lot of trust in the company to secure their sensitive information like social security numbers; as data sharing in financial services becomes commonplace a premium will need to be placed on how that data is secured. Source.
In this post we share the process of opening up a new LendingClub account, the first in a new series we will be sharing over the coming quarters. Source
NEW! LendIt Fintech USA has expanded to a third day filled with six workshops running from 9:00AM - 1:00PM on April 11. Each workshop will be led by expert panelists and will provide training and case study discussions. ConsenSys Academy will be conducting the Blockchain workshop featuring intense learning on this headlining topic. Other workshop themes include Financial AI, Bank Technology, Success Through Diversity, RegTech, and Sales & Marketing. Workshops are available to all registered attendees. Three days away at Moscone in San Francisco. Register here
The list covers all industries, but includes the fastest growing financial services businesses in Europe; TransferWise came in at #24, reporting 3,392% revenue growth from 2013-2016; the company hired 670 people over the same time period. Source
Bloomberg reports on Goldman Sachs’ new San Francisco office culture which has no dress code and offers kombucha in the break room; Jeff Winner was hired this year to run the office which aims to employ 80 people; Winner leads the engineering team behind their successful consumer brand Marcus; with their new office location they will compete for talent from names like Google and Amazon. Source
Adam Fisher, head of macro investing at Soros Fund Management has received approval to trade cryptocurrencies but has not begun trading them according to sources; Soros recently spoke at the World Economic Forum in January stating that cryptocurrency is a typical bubble, but was more bullish on blockchain technology; his family office as of Q4 2017 had a significant stake in Overstock.com. Source
According to the bank statement, “In view of the associated risks, it has been decided that, with immediate effect, entities regulated by RBI shall not deal with or provide services to any individual or business entities dealing with or settling [virtual currencies].”; the government had previously issued warnings about risks around trading cryptocurrencies; the Reserve Bank of India is more open to the development of blockchain technology. Source