There is a growing need all across the financial services landscape for...
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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There was a spate of negative fintech news this week. We had significant layoffs from two of the largest fintechs in the country, Stripe and Chime and Coinbase reported miserable Q3 results.
German-based marketplace lender Bitbond has partnered with African payments provider BitPesa to improve the lending experience for small and medium enterprise (SME) borrowers; Bitbond will enhance the blockchain lending services of its platform by incorporating cross-border payments through BitPesa; the BitPesa payments platform can make payments in 20 minutes and is now live in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania. Source
The Financial Conduct Authority released its interim update on crowdfunding rules last week; the update reported that the regulator would be scrutinizing numerous factors pertaining to P2P lending in the UK; one such factor, discussed by the Financial Times, includes the disclosure of loan performance; the introduction of provision funds has caused this disclosure to potentially be misleading for investors; in some cases platforms use provision funds to cover defaults for borrowers; this action could potentially lead to better than actual loan performance on the loans. Source
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Kabbage has reported it will open a new office in Ireland; the geographic expansion follows a 50 million euro ($54 million) investment from the Irish Strategic Investment Fund which is managed by the country's National Treasury Management Agency; the Kabbage lending platform is focused on lending to small businesses and the firm expects to help support the Irish small business sector while also creating many high-quality financial services jobs in Ireland. Source
Invesco's digital wealth platform for financial advisors, Jemstep, is partnering with the retail broker dealer and investment arm of American financial services company KeyBank; this is the second big piece of news for Jemstep, they recently signed a deal with a network of US financial advisors called Advisor Network; Jemstep is a white label platform for financial advisors to offer their clients; Simon Roy, president and CEO of Jemstep, told AltFi’s Robo Advice News, "Jemstep is proud to partner with Key Investment Services (KIS) to deliver both a quality digital solution to help clients meet their financial goals and an efficient service that integrates within KIS's existing middle and back-office processes." Source
The Bank of England kept its central bank borrowing rate at 0.25% and decided to continue with its $86 billion asset purchase program; while no changes were made to monetary policy, the BOE changed its guidance; with an increased focus on inflation in the region, the BOE said it would be prepared to raise rates in order to keep inflation at its 2% target rate. Source
BBVA is well known for being a leader when it comes to...
U.S. Bank plans to use the upcoming Super Bowl to build brand awareness; being based in Minneapolis, home to this year’s Super Bowl, will allow the company to utilize the game to increase local exposure; the company plans to run local ads during the game along with sponsored videos on social media channels; they also plan to use local Minneapolis space in coffee shops for example to have people interact with technology and compete for prizes; “We want to get people in the space, and help them get exposed to the brand and learn a little bit and get engaged in a fun activity,” said Chris Lee, head of sponsorships for U.S. Bank, to TearSheet. Source.