Bank of America says it will invest $1.5 million in a Charlotte fintech initiative over the next three years; the investment is the first for the city from a financial services company; regarding the investment, Cathy Bessant, Bank of America's chief operations and technology officer, said: "Charlotte has proven to be a place where a sustainable company can be founded, emerge and grow. Fintech is a significant, new opportunity for Charlotte that connects our strong finance and technology infrastructure with innovatively minded people, creating tech jobs and new paths to economic mobility."; Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts is expected to publicly announce more details on the initiative in the next few months. Source
Bank of America’s latest product, Life Plan, aims to make the bank the a central guiding force for their customers...
Person to person payments growth was about 67% and accounted for 13.6 million transactions; According to CEO Brian Moynihan the bank processed half a billion dollars in a single week; other banks including Wells Fargo are also reporting increases in person to person payments; Bank of America is also planning to release a mobile offering for auto and home loans along with its AI assistant; Bank of America spent $2.25 billion on tech initiatives in the first nine months of 2017. Source
Bank of America’s AI powered digital assistant Erica has now reached more than 7 million users with over 50 million...
Business Insider reports on the success of Bank of America’s investment in digital channels; reports that they added about 2 million users to digital channels, predominantly to mobile; mobile channel usage rose 34% year over year; article also compares active mobile users across competing banks Wells Fargo and JP Morgan. Source
The Bank of International Settlements released a new report on fintech, tokenized securities, central bank digital currencies, cross-border payments and...
Avant's new partnership with Regions bank is helping growth projections and business development plans for the firm in 2017; Avant says the Regions partnership which began in October is expected to generate 25% of the firm's loan volume in 2017; the partnership includes referrals from Regions for customers who are not approved for loans; the firm also has four other partnerships planned for 2017; it plans to hire 125 new employees and is targeting monthly loan volume for 2017 of $250 million; also says it's launching a credit card product in July; the credit card will be offered to customers not approved for loans on the platform. Source
There were many new regulations added in the wake of the financial crisis in an effort to prevent the next recession; with the new administration some of the regulations have been removed and now regulators are looking at lowering a key piece of regulation; the supplementary leverage ratio requires banks to maintain capital on their balance sheet as protection; bankers have pointed out that the regulation has been hurting their ability to lend and operate; some regulators agree but there are others still on from the previous administration who believe it should stay in place; there is a fear that too much deregulation will push banks to revert back to practices that contributed to the financial crisis, striking the right balance is where regulators are currently focused. Source.
In this week’s PeerIQ Industry Update they cover the continued growth in the jobs market with the unemployment rate dropping...
There was a powerful synergy built between banks and fintechs in 2018 that truly lifted the entire financial sector. All...