According to a new report by CB Insights global fintech funding reached $5.4bn across 323 deals in Q1 2018; deal activity was highest in the U.S. and Asia, Europe on the other hand fell to a five quarter low; early stage companies in Europe were not receiving investments, though later stage companies were still having success; regtech, wealth management and digital banking led the way, while online lenders lagged behind. Source.
Point72 Ventures led a $3 million round in a company called Extend which was announced today; it allows for business owners to share credit cards with employees and freelancers without giving them physical cards; Point72 also recently invested in Imperative Execution, a dark pool trading platform, “Say” which aims to improve the proxy voting process and DriveWealth. Source
Chase will soon allow credit card customers to use voice authentication when dialing the call center, which will help to cut down on additional security questions; Chase will join TD, HSBC, Barclays and ANZ Banking Group in using voice authentication; the voiceprint is securely stored as a mathematical equation, and only works for verification with the bank’s system according to reporting by TearSheet; representatives can ask further authentication questions if needed, almost 30 percent of calls are requests for account access and improving efficiency will cut down on costs as well as time. Source.
Speaking at LendIt Fintech 2018 Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein talked about building a brand in the online lending space; he explained most companies think boiler rooms equal brands, he went on to say you need to spend time and money on building your company’s brand; building relationships is the key, not just credit scores and data, you need to understand what your customer wants and needs by engaging with them on a regular basis. Source.
Zelle is seeing thousands of signups each day and last year saw $75bn in payments, but fraud has become a bigger problem for the company; fraudsters have used some weaknesses like inconsistent notifications when money is sent or received and the speed of transactions because the full posting happens later; they have also seen spoof emails or texts which trick customers into authorizing transactions to a fraudster, Zelle and the banks say they are working on improving the issues. Source.
In this week’s PeerIQ Weekly Industry Update they cover the cover a small rise in retail sales from Q4 to Q1; banks have had a strong earnings season, boosted in part by the cut in the corporate tax rate; Frank Rotman of QED provides insight on the path for the evolution of banking with his paper:The Copernican Revolution in Banking; they also provide highlights from their recent securitization tracker. Source.
BB&T suffered a technical glitch that knocked out their ATMs, online and mobile banking in February; during a recent earnings call BB&T Chief Executive Kelly King described how they handled the incident and how it effected revenues; there are many lessons other banks can take from BB&T as this will not be the last tech hiccup, ensuring technology is full tested and then tested again is one of the main lessons others can take away. Source.
Crunchbase shares the top seed, early and late-stage investors by total number investments since January 2017; topping the list in seed stage investments was Y Combinator with 28 total fintech investments followed by Plug and Play and 500 Startups; Plug and Play topped the list in the early-stage category; Bain Capital Ventures led in late stage investments with 6 followed by General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures who all completed 5 deals in the time frame. Source
The CEO and Founder of Juvo shares how he plans to bring billions of unbanked people into the financial system for the first time. Source
Barclays US is trying to ensure they use AI in a efficient yet non intrusive way so their customers can get the most out of the technology; Tearsheet spoke with Mona Jantzi, managing director of strategic analytics and customer experience at Barclays US, to learn more about how the bank uses AI; topics discussed include using data to shape customer experience, going beyond product offerings, the dangers of AI use with data and more. Source.