Overstock has been building out their FinanceHub for the past few months to include Overstock credit cards and insurance products, loans by LendingTree, Prosper and SoFi, a robo-adviser for automated investing and a discounted trading platform; Raj Karkara, Overstock VP of loyalty and financial services, tells TearSheet, “Consumers don’t want to sit and sign 50 documents, they just want to go online and get through the steps they need to take to move forward.”; the moves made are part of a broader strategy for the retailer to become a full service fintech firm that caters to their clients needs. Source.
Recent research shows that younger consumers are uncomfortable with carrying credit card balances; consumers are more comfortable with products like personal loans that are more transparent and easier to understand; there has been an increased interest in point of sale financing; one company driving this trend is GreenSky which partners with banks to fund loans; the proportion of consumer loans going to point of sale financing has increased significantly at banks that partner with GreenSky including Regions, Synovus and Fifth Third. Source
Radius Bank in Boston has been partnering with fintechs for the last few years in an effort to build relationships for the long term that benefit the bank and fintech company; “We’ve built a culture inside this company that believes in the future of virtual banking, and the demands clients are going to put on us to be an Amazon-like experience for them,” says Radius CEO Mike Butler to American Banker; the bank is looking to use fintech companies to build this experience as they are unable to build all of this in house. Source.
Goldman Sachs is currently in discussions to buy personal financial management app Clarity Money according to reporting by American Banker; they plan to roll the company in their Marcus brand; this is the latest move by the wall street titan to build out their consumer focus; Clarity Money uses AI to help consumers make better financial decisions by lowering bills, finding better credit cards and creating a savings account. Source.
P2P Lending Expert reviews The Worthy Bond which is a new investment option created under Reg A+; the investment pays 5% annually and has a $10 minimum investment; Worthy invests in asset-based loans. Source
Messaging app Symphony will be integrated into OpenFin’s platform in hopes of creating a competitor to Bloomberg; “By enabling Symphony to run on the OpenFin operating system, we are making it easy for our mutual customers to unify the Symphony desktop experience with their other OpenFin-based apps," Mazy Dar, chief executive of OpenFin, said as reported by Business Insider; with the integration they are hoping to create a lower cost product and eat into some of the dominance that Bloomberg has over the market. Source.
Zelle has quickly made a name for themselves in p2p payments, now BNY Mellon is looking to leverage the company for business payments; "There are rapid changes in the payments space," Carl Slabicki, director and product line manager for immediate payments at BNY Mellon, said to American Banker. "If you want to remain relevant and allow your clients access to new payment systems, you need to be quicker to market with a faster payment solution.”; b2b payments have no been easier to automate but BNY is hoping to help move the process in that direction. Source.
Banks like Capital One have been investing in creating a cafe style space where people can come to drink coffee and work while also having interaction with a bank but not in the traditional branch way; the idea is to have the bank maintain a presence, get deposits but not have a full branch; “If you can imagine people popping these things up — the competition for community banks would get overwhelming,” said Robert Mahoney, CEO of the $2.5 billion-asset Belmont Savings Bank in Massachusetts, to American Banker. Source.
A record number of Americans experienced identity fraud in 2017, that represents an 8 percent increase from 2016; according to a study by Javelin 16.7 million people were hit by identity fraud; the rate of increase for identity fraud has slowed from 2016 but Americans that were notified about a breach also went up 30 percent; fraud prevention has become one of the main topics in fintech and banking as companies look to leverage new technologies like AI and blockchain for solutions. Source.
Income sharing agreements aren’t new and there were some early fintechs who have attempted this type of model; however there are new companies looking at income sharing agreements to help those with student loans tackle their debt. Source