Author and fintech expert Chris Skinner discusses the impact of fintech companies on banking services; the idea of free banking will essentially be gone as fintech companies are able to focus on transactional services the banks once dominated; he calls this the democratization of finance and it will help to bring more transparency to banking overall. Source.
The Financial Times’ Lex column explains that the P2P market in the UK can learn a great deal from the 2016 experience in the US; as lenders continue growing and look to achieve scale they should be careful to not overdo it; while troubles have occurred in the UK they have not reached the same level and lenders need to be sure to preserve credit quality. Source.
Business Insider takes a look at the worldwide regulations surrounding the emerging Cryptocurrency market; in addition to cryptocurrencies they also take a deeper look at the regulatory structure beginning to be built around blockchain technology; regions covered include the US, Europe, China and more. Source.
N26 Founder and CEO Valentin Stalf told the Money 20/20 audience they plan to launch in the US by mid 2018; “We’ve looked at the products in the U.S. and we figured out that most of the banking products in the U.S. are even worse than in Europe,” Stalk told TechCrunch; their plans are to launch a debit card with a checking account and use a bank partner, similar to what they have done in Europe. Source.
More than $1 billion has been invested in UK fintech companies this year; the first half of the year brought $564 million of VC investments, up 37% from the prior year period; according to the article, fintech is worth $9.25 billion to the economy and employs 60,000 people. Source
While speaking on a panel at Money 20/20 former and current regulators talked about the different approaches to fintech regulations; the Financial Conduct Authority recently released a report showing the UK approach has helped get new ideas into the market and seen companies get access to much needed capital; the US on the other had has seen federal and state regulators argue over proposed charters; there could be a lot the US can learn from the current UK program. Source.
UK digital banks Monzo and Starling Bank announced payments integrations; Monzo plans to integrate Android Pay into the user interface for current account users; Starling Bank says it will be the first bank to partner with Fitbit Pay; while this is the first partnership of its kind for Monzo, Starling Bank integrated with Android pay a few months ago. Source.
Mambu provides a cloud based service for traditional finance and fintech firms; they operate in 45 countries and launched in 2009; Crowdfund Insider interviews Co-Founder and CEO Eugene Danilkis to talk about the platform's progress. Source
The latest securitization of Zopa loans priced tighter than last year’s; it was led by P2PGI and arranged by Deutsche Bank; the senior tranche was rated AA by Moody’s; Jaidev Janardana, Zopa’s CEO stated, “This is a further demonstration of investor and market confidence in our origination and underwriting capabilities. Our ability to originate high quality loans continues to make the Zopa investment asset a distinctive and attractive one to retail and institutional investors alike.” Source
FT Alphaville takes a close look at some of the findings from the Financial Conduct Authority report on their regulatory sandbox; the positives include weeding out the more risky ideas and that 41 of 146 applicants were able to make it through the testing phase; the negatives include distributed ledger technology that shows some of the testing is on too small a scale to really understand whether or not it would actually work. Source.