Content marketing has become a widely used trend among financial firms to build brand awareness about products; what most companies find is cutting through the noise is quite hard as most companies share content that can seem the same from the user perspective; some are trying different techniques like having users write content or testing different visuals; companies need to figure out the types of pieces that work best for their particular segment. Source.
Zelle is hoping to grow their B to C payments by more than 10 percent in 2018; the company already...
Working with fintechs has been a lengthy process for most banks with timing lasting about 12 to 18 months on...
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director, Kathy Kraninger, spoke in Washington on Thursday at a hearing held by the...
Robinhood has announced details of its latest funding round which raised $110 million for the firm giving it fintech unicorn status with a valuation of $1.3 billion; investors in the Series C funding round included DST Global, NEA, Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital and Greenoaks Capital; the firm also announced that it now has over two million users; the firm says: "Our two million users have transacted over $50 billion and saved nearly half a billion dollars in commission fees. Robinhood Gold, our margin and extended hours service, is also experiencing significant growth, with signups surging 17% month over month."; the firm plans to use funds from the Series C funding round for expansion of the platform's products and services. Source
Credit bureaus have had a tough past year with the Equifax breach of customer data and new legislation in the U.S. looking to increase competition by allowing lenders to use different sources; changing the credit bureau system is not as easy as it may sound as they have been intertwined in the financial services system for a long time; lenders still use the bureaus for a large majority of lending decisions, even though some alternative bureaus have seen traction; the breach at Equifax could have a lasting effect because people did have a lot of trust in the company to secure their sensitive information like social security numbers; as data sharing in financial services becomes commonplace a premium will need to be placed on how that data is secured. Source.
Square CEO Jack Dorsey tells Fast Company that they are moving full speed ahead with their banking license; Dorsey was recently in New York to unveil Square Register, a hardware device; the company has been lending to merchants since 2014; SoFi recently withdrew their banking application following the scandal surrounding Mike Cagney; a timeline for the application is not known. Source
In November 2016 the New York Fed reported on an increase in subprime auto loan delinquencies putting the sector on watch; a report from Fitch Ratings is now showing continued deterioration in the sector during the second half of 2016 and Mizuho is reporting subprime auto loan loss rates increased to 9.1% in January 2017 from 7.9% in January 2016; Fitch reports that 60+ day subprime auto delinquencies increased to nearly 6% in the fourth quarter of 2016. Source
Lightning Labs announced it had raised $2.5 million and at the same time released a beta version of their technology; one of the criticisms of bitcoin is that it can handle a limited number of transactions per second; some believe that bitcoin should increase its block size to process more transactions; Lightning Labs is working on the Lightning Network to add another layer of transactions to sit on top of the blockchain network which would allow for more transactions to take place. Source
The fintech world is awash in capital today and one of the places on the receiving end of this seemingly...