Xero announces HY17 results, Australian subscribers grow 45%
Xero Limited (NZX: XRO; ASX: XRO) today reported its half-yearly earnings to September 30, 2016, executing strongly on diversified global growth while making progress towards EBITDA break-even. Achieving milestones of annualised committed monthly revenue of $303.2 million and operating revenue of $137.2 million, a 48% year-on-year increase, Xero’s paying subscriber base reached 862,000, and reached a total lifetime value of $1.7 billion. Revenue growth rates, while strong, were adversely impacted by the strengthened New Zealand dollar. Xero remains focused on driving diversified global growth and executing on its business strategy, including building towards a high-margin business. “Our focus is to build a sustainable global business with high margins, while managing […]
Automated advice aims to fill the void
Automated financial advice isn’t getting the recognition it deserves in Australia as we steam towards the Robo 2.0 era, says Clover chief executive Harry Chemay. Speaking to The Australian ahead of today’s FinTech Collab/Collide Summit in Melbourne, Mr Chemay said robo-advice — online wealth management advice based on automated algorithms — was ultimately complementary to human financial advice and still largely a misunderstood technology. “Blockchain at the moment is taking the lion’s share of coverage and attention, but there are lots of developments in the robo advice space and it continues to be an evolving area that will provide value for Australians as we move to Robo 2.0.” He defines […]
LoanDolphin completes $1.1 million seed funding
LoanDolphin, Australia’s leading loan bidding platform, has successfully raised a total of $1.1 million from key investors to expand its presence in major capital cities in a bid to claim a stake in Australia’s $1.5 trillion home loan market. Strategic investor Barry Lambert provided $1 million, with the remainder from fintech investment firm H2 Ventures. Mr Lambert founded Count Financial in 1980 and sold the company to Commonwealth Bank in 2011 for $373 million. The seed funding values the Sydney-based fintech startup at $5 million post capital raising rounds. LoanDolphin is a free online platform for people to refinance or obtain new home loans at rates […]
EY FinTech Australia Census 2016
FinTech Australia and EY Sweeney release the most comprehensive analysis of Australia’s fintech ecosystem to date, the EY FinTech Australia Census 2016 FinTech Australia and EY Sweeney are today releasing the inaugural EY FinTech Australia Census 2016, the most comprehensive and detailed report on the Australian fintech industry to date. The research was formally launched in Melbourne today by EY’s Anita Kimber at FinTech Australia’s national summit, Collab/Collide 2016 in partnership with LaunchVic. This significant piece of research was commissioned by FinTech Australia as part of their efforts to foster a thriving fintech ecosystem in Australia. The report identifies important characteristics of the Australian fintech industry, and establishes a set […]
Five steps to get started with blockchain
Since its first implementation in 2009, we have seen Bitcoin adoption spread across different countries and become a serious competitor to traditional financial transactions methods, creating new business opportunities for both corporations and governments. As a tech savvy country and one of the earlier adopters of bitcoin and other e-currencies, Australia has seen considerable interest in blockchain technology that underpins bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. Just in the past few months, we have seen an Australian start-up claiming to have created the first local blockchain, and Australia Post has begun looking into the use of blockchain technology in the areas of identity, registries and e-voting. And a few days ago, Commonwealth […]
International share trading made easy for financial advisers by Macrovue
Macrovue, Australia’s first global thematic brokerage and trading platform, has taken the wraps off a new global share trading solution aimed at easing complexity, time, and costs for Australian financial advisers and their clients. Sid Sahgal, Macrovue CEO said: “We offer the flexibility to create, trade, and rebalance share-based portfolios built from scratch by advisers, choosing from 20,000 securities and ETFs listed on over 18 global exchanges.“ Mr Sahgal noted that a surprising number of advisers are still using manual trading systems (paper and telephones) to buy and sell global stocks. “Our platform features paperless client on-boarding, one integrated trading platform for global and domestic stocks, powerful […]
Avoka launches real-time analytics for bank customer acquisition
Avoka, the leader in digital customer acquisition for financial services, today announces Transact Insights, an analytics module designed for agile optimization of digital account opening. Transact Insights is available to institutions running the concurrently announced Avoka Transact 5, the most advanced version of the Avoka Transact platform. Today, digital account opening abandonment exceeds 85% for many financial institutions and there are limited ways to diagnose problems to improve results. Transact Insights changes this. By analysing points of friction in digital account opening forms, it provides intelligence to retail banks, wealth managers and insurers that enables them to achieve higher customer conversion rates and more successful onboarding over digital channels. Transact […]
Quantifeed makes key hires from leading banks as expansion in Asia Pacific continues
Quantifeed today announced the appointment of Audrey Wong in the combined role of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, alongside several other key senior hires in Hong Kong and Australia.
