Blockchain is here to stay
Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin, is the talk of the town at the moment. The financial services industry can’t get enough of it. The enthusiasm essentially boils down to the technology’s potential to reduce the financial transaction costs while ensuring robust security. While Bitcoin is unlikely to be make traditional currency extinct, blockchain has provided the impetus needed for new and innovative research into how the slow and often expensive centralised financial transaction systems that dominate banking, so what is this blockchain? Put simply, blockchain is a data structure that can be used to create digital ledgers of transactions shared among a distributed network of participating organisations. Financial institutions […]
DirectMoney unable to fully fund loan demand
Australia’s only listed P2P lender, DirectMoney, says it is unable to fully fund its loans and is asking borrowers if it can refer them to another lender. Chairman Stephen Porges said it is still looking for institutional funders beyond the one it has – Macquarie Bank – to fund the loan demand it has.Until it gets more institutional money he said it does not have enough cash to lend to all the borrowers applying for loans via its website. “The company remains intensely focused on progressing loan sales to institutions and development of a funding warehouse. At the same time we are rolling out a strong marketing program for [its […]
Rubik to Partner with MyState on Digital Banking Transformation
MEDIA RELEASE: Rubik Financial Limited (ASX: RFL), a leading technology company delivering innovative banking, wealth and lending solutions to the financial services industry, has been selected by MyState Limited (ASX: MYS), a diversified financial services group, to partner on the transformation of their digital channels and customer experience offering. Rubik’s technology solution, which will go live in August, will enable MyState to offer their customers a superior digital experience, including access to MyState’s products and services from the device of their choice (desktop, smartphone or tablet) via the operating system of their choice (iOS, Android, Windows), and at the time of their choice. Iain Dunstan, Chief Executive Officer of Rubik, […]
R3 to raise up to $US200m from 42 global banks for blockchain trials
R3 CEV, the consortium of 42 global banks – including some of Australia’s biggest institutions – that is investigating how to employ blockchain technology in financial services, is planning an equity capital raising of up to $US200 million this year. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank, Westpac Banking Corp and Macquarie are members of the R3 consortium that formed last year, so will be considering over the coming months the extent of their participation in the deal. Banks are investigating how to use blockchains, which could cut billions of dollars of costs from their organisations but also be disruptive given banks’ roles as trusted intermediaries and the fact that […]
Fintech specialists say ‘NextGen banking’ may replace Big Four
Banks of the future will be technology companies with a banking licence, and traditional finance options may give way to more digitally advanced methods and platforms, say fintech specialists. According to panellists speaking at the Fintech CEOs on the Future of Finance seminar in Sydney on Wednesday night, financial technology firms will soon attract market share and talent away from current banking incumbents, while new digital roles set to replace traditional finance jobs. Speaking at the event Jost Stollmann, CEO of Tyro Payments, predicted that ‘next generation banking’ would eventually take over, with at least one of the big four banks to disappear completely in the next few decades. “Can […]
Birch gets your credit card rewards in order
Credit card reward programs can be confusing, and each can be totally different from the next. So managing all your points and rewards can quickly become a headache. Enter Birch, a service that helps users manage their rewards programs and points across multiple credit cards and accounts. Birch plugs into a bank account, looks at a user’s spending habits and recommends what kinds of cards they should sign up for, or how they should spend their money in order to maximize their point returns. For example, Birch might recommend that a user buys products with a specific card at a store like Macy’s in order to get the most points. […]
New study finds smaller banks have more tech-savvy customers
As the Big Four pour money into fintech, smaller regional banks have the tech adopters and trendsetters on their books already. Recent research by Roy Morgan has looked at banks that have a high proportion of customers that can be classified as “technology early adopters”. The banks with the highest proportion of these customers are likely to be smaller or regional banks, with one of the Big Four not even falling above the population average. These results are surprising, with the major banks having such a strong focus on fintech, also known as financial technology, in recent months. The bank with the highest proportion of early technology adopters among its […]
How banks are running the economy
Alan Kohler, The Australian Two quite innocuous things happened on Tuesday: the federal budget and an RBA rate cut. Neither of these events will do much good, but nor will they do much harm, which is about as much can be hoped from both politics and monetary policy these days. Even RBA Governor Glenn Stevens has been constantly talking about impotence of monetary policy, so it’s likely to be true. Why won’t the budget or the rate cut have much impact? Because the RBA and the government don’t run the economy — the banks do, and there is something much more significant going on in banking land. There is always […]
