Cambridge Bancorp in Massachusetts formed an innovation group in 2016 and is now positioned to compete against bigger banks; head of the innovation Group Scott Chamberlin tells American Banker, “We spent a couple years proving … we could win business externally and, more importantly, internally from a credit standpoint. We’ve proven that out. This is year we start to add scale.”; the bank is looking to be an alternative to the likes of Silicon Valley Bank and Square 1; they see a differentiating characteristic being their local reputation and that they are in it for the long haul. Source.
News Roundup
This page contains an archive of the Global Newsletter summaries and the weekly fintech news roundups.
Every day the Fintech Nexus news team scours the globe for the most important stories of the day to include in our daily newsletter.
Then every Saturday we bring you our weekly news roundup of the top 10 fintech stories of the week with commentary from Peter Renton.
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Fiserv‘s acquisition of First Data points to the power of fintech and...
Alibaba-backed Ant Financial sold $578 million worth of securities backed against small loans granted to consumers on "Double 11" day, the festival to celebrate singlehood and the world's largest online shopping day; Chongqing Alibaba Small Loan provided the underlying loans for the asset-backed security through an online consumer credit portal, Ant Check Later ("Huabei" in Chinese); the Shanghai Stock Exchange approved the offering and allowed it to be privately placed last Monday to qualified institutional investors. Source
JPMorgan Chase and Barclays have joined IBM’s quantum computing network as they look to use the technology to assess risk and stay secure; Barclays is beginning to test potential uses and JPMorgan Chase is looking to leverage quantum computing for trading, portfolio optimization and risk analysis; there is a lot happening in quantum computing these days as big tech firms look to master the technology seen as potentially 100,000 times faster than classic computers; while there are clear benefits to quantum computing banks are also looking at protecting themselves from the cyber threat that hackers could exploit using the same technology. Source.
UK online lender WiseAlpha has added corporate bonds to its investment offerings on the platform; previously the firm primarily focused on offering corporate loan investments; the corporate bonds will expand the platform's institutional debt offerings and the firm will also allow for trading on its secondary market. Source
ING and Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking presented a blockchain test prototype for oil trading at IP Week in London; the platform they have developed is called Easy Trading Connect and the prototype tested a live oil trade by global commodity trading group, Mercuria; the blockchain test proved significant advantages in speed, cost and risk benefits; overall the test found blockchain helpful in improving trading inefficiencies, specifically the exchange of physical documents globally; it also helped to reduce the bank's transaction time in the trading process to 25 minutes from three hours. Source
Christophe Williams talks with Andy Rachleff, co-founder, president and CEO of Wealthfront; Rachleff is a fintech industry expert with extensive experience investing in and managing tech companies; he is also active in roles at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned his bachelor's degree and at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he earned his MBA; in the podcast he talks about a wide range of topics pertaining to fintech; he also discusses the creation of Wealthfront and its business strategy. Source
The fund, which was set up as storage for excess cash from online spending, has now reached $165.6 billion in assets under management; this now exceeds the amount of JP Morgan's largest money market fund which is $150 billion; since the fund is so big it allows Ant Financial, Alibaba affiliate, to negotiate better rates with banks for capital; while many believe the likes of Google and Facebook could enter the market they have yet to do so. Source
In an interview with CNBC, Ning Tang, CEO of CreditEase, provides insight on the China Banking Regulatory Commission’s regulation for China’s P2P lending industry; says the regulation will have positive long-term affects; focuses on the requirement of P2P lenders to work with banks as a custodian and says CreditEase has complied with this requirement for many years. Source
Recent data shows that startups raised $118 million in Q1 via ICOs...