MiFID II legislation is likely to come into play on January 3, 2018; the legislation will regulate trading activities and further investor protections; article highlights the impact across financial services with robo advisory and high-frequency trading directly influenced. 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.
ISA statistics were released on Thursday by HMRC; last year two thousand Innovative Finance ISA accounts were subscribed with retail investors collectively investing GBP17 million (USD $22 million); this compares to GBP22.325 billion ($28.94 billion) into stocks and shares and GBP39.191 billion ($50.81 billion) into cash ISAs; about one third of money invested into IFISAs on P2P platforms last year was from transfers; while the accounts opened and amount invested were low it still shows appetite for such products. Source
The marketing initiative coincides with the firm's recent rebranding announcement and is part of the company's "Made to Do More" campaign; it is spending GBP12 million ($15.51 million) across media and specialist channels with a focus on business borrower and capital investor awareness; the firm has been a market leader in investment deals in 2017 recently announcing a partnership with Aegon and reporting a $100 million fundraising in January. Source
PitchIt @ LendIt Europe is one of the industry's most popular startup competitions providing eight finalists with unparalleled access to industry expertise and funding opportunities as well as invaluable exposure, branding and more at the event; hosted in partnership with Startupbootcamp, the event offers fast-track status to the finalist round for Startupbootcamp Fintech Accelerator as one of its prizes; LendIt also announced this week that it will partner with SeedInvest to crowdfund live from the PitchIt @ LendIt Europe competition; interested startup companies must submit their application by September 4 and finalists will be announced on September 10; more details about the competition can be found here. Source
On August 23 and 24, officials from the People's Bank of China and scholars from Peking University arrived in San Francisco and had in-depth discussions with delegates at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as well as some fintech companies including Coinbase, Prosper, Sofi, Circle and Ripple; discussion topics focused on digital currency, regtech, lending and inclusive finance; Sun Guofeng, the head of the Research Institute of PBoC, and Yao Qian, the head of Digital Currency Research Institute of PBoC, attended the tour; a report on the status quo of US fintech market, regulatory environment and its implications on China will be written after this visit. Source (Chinese)
Ant Financial has rolled out the world's first commercial application of a payment system that identifies payers using facial recognition technology; starting from September 1, a KFC restaurant in Hangzhou allows customers to authenticate their payments by having their faces scanned; the whole process, which takes about ten seconds, does not require users to take out their cell phones; the function is powered by Face ++ technology developed by Beijing startup Megvii. Source
Compares blockchain to a library cataloging system; explains public and private blockchain and the centralized way information is stored creating a distributed ledger; also reports on the blockchain solutions offered by Othera which include loan tokenization for secondary trading. Source
TechCrunch reports that OmiseGO (OMG) and Qtum both surpassed $1 billion in market cap; they became the first subtokens built on ethereum and subsequently sold to investors to pass the $1 billion mark; both companies have achieved this in staggeringly short amounts of time; OMG raised $25 million in July and now tokens are valued at over $11 compared to $0.27 at the time of the raise; Qtum raised $15.6 million in March with tokens now priced over $17; both companies do not have an actual product available in the market. Source
The Madden v. Midland case has been a closely followed case for over two years by the marketplace lending industry; bills are now being introduced to hopefully fix the ambiguity around the case; Lend Academy shares the history of the case and perspectives from Adam Levitin, professor of law at Georgetown University, Nat Hoopes, executive director of the Marketplace Lending Association, and Brian Korn, partner at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Source
Online lending appears to be driving increased personal loan borrowing from millennials; data from TransUnion says 4.33% of millennials obtained a personal loan in 2015 and online lenders accounted for approximately 30% of the personal loan market last year; TransUnion also reports that millennials are more conservative about credit card debt with two fewer cards on average than the previous generation. Source