Lend Academy talks with Greg Gibb, CEO and co-chairman of Lufax; Greg Gibb talks about the founding of the business as a P2P platform, its relationship with Ping An and how it has evolved to become a broader provider of wealth management product offerings; the podcast interview also discusses Lufax's future plans for international expansion and a potential IPO. Source
Australian online lender SocietyOne is celebrating its fifth year in business with its first loan issued in August 2012; in June 2017 the platform reported cumulative originations of $300 million and since inception has helped over 13,000 customers; the firm says it has plans for expanding to new areas of lending over the long-term and will seek to obtain a 2% to 3% share of the $100 billion consumer finance market. Source
Open banking is facilitating innovation across the banking sector and ING has plans to use it for voice automated artificial intelligence services; the bank's vision includes voice automated banking services through devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, where digital assistants can pay bills and provide personalized advice through voice prompts; the bank is seeking to utilize new concepts being developed in Europe and has invested EUR800 million ($945 million) in a digital transformation. Source
Global Times recently comments on China's unregulated internet finance sector, stating that the online finance market requires cooling through tighter regulation after years of explosive but unruly growth; due to the lack of regulation, internet finance is often associated with financial irregularities, with many players operating without obtaining any license, for one; Global Times believes only a regulated internet finance industry can serve the real economy, and that chaotic development of internet finance will only pose risks to the country's financial stability. Source
EEO.com has exposed 13 board member candidates of Wanglian (or Nets Union), China's newly established centralized clearinghouse for third party payments: Lai Zhiming (Tencent VP), Wang Zuogang (Alipay Director) and Ma Ji (JD Finance VP) are on the list, among other executives from People's Bank of China and its affiliated organizations. Source (Chinese)
Fosun Group has invested in Shanghai Distributed Technologies (SDT); the amount was in the tens of millions of yuan; SDT works on blockchain with financial firms and has a joint venture with the Guiyang city government to develop blockchain-based systems for public services; SDT is a startup behind Onchain, which is founded by Da Hongfei, one of the earliest blockchain participants in China. Source
Indonesia-based mobile payments and micro-loan startup Pundi-Pundi raised $4 million in a pre-A round of funding; the company plans to use the funds for user and partner growth in Indonesia and expand into other Southeast Asian markets like Singapore; they have over 100,000 users and 500 merchants in Indonesia; Pundi-Pundi translates to "wallet" and they are looking to help create a cashless society in Southeast Asia. Source
Australian Fintech is broadening their industry census to better understand how companies can expand overseas, interact with regulators and handle gender diversity; Ernst & Young is partnering with Australian Fintech on the census and the deadline is set for September 3rd; "Last year's inaugural census - released as part of our 2016 Collab/Collide Summit - provided an extremely robust evidence base to help FinTech Australia advocate on behalf of the industry. This year's census will be even more important as it will for the first time give us trend-based information about the industry," FinTech Australia Vice-Chair Stuart Stoyan tells AltFi. Source
China ranks top among 20 world markets in terms of fintech adoption, with 69% of surveyed consumer respondents saying they are actively using fintech services, 33 percentage points higher than the global average, according to a report by consultancy services provider EY; the report is based on more than 22,000 online interviews in 2017; around 64% of fintech users said they prefer using digital channels to manage "all aspects of their life"; money transfer and payment services are major drivers of the fast growth, said the report. Source
Bitkan, a China-based bitcoin-focused data and trading services provider, has released the trailer of the first Chinese bitcoin documentary, "Shape the Future"; the documentary will provide a panoramic view of the development of the bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem in China, the country with the number one hashrate in the bitcoin realm. Source
