Plum announces partnership with Ratesetter
Plum, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered Facebook chatbot which allows consumers to start saving and investing without any effort, today announces its partnership with RateSetter. Plum’s smart algorithm understands spending patterns and identifies income and bills to create a unique profile for its users. It calculates the amount to save or invest and automatically transfers it to a Plum account to put that money to work. Plum’s partnership with RateSetter means that people who are comfortable putting capital at risk can use the peer-to-peer lending platform to earn a higher rate of interest. The average return earned by RateSetter investors to date is 4.7 per cent. Victor Trokoudes, co-founder at […]
Zopa named Best Personal Loan Provider & Best Alternative Finance Provider at the 2017 British Bank Awards
Zopa, the UK’s very first peer to peer lending platform, announced on Monday it was named Best Personal Loan Provider & Best Alternative Finance Provider at the 2017 British Bank Awards. The online lender revealed in a blog post: “We’re excited to announce we’ve been named both the Best Personal Loan Provider and the Best Alternative Finance Provider at the British Bank Awards. These awards are special to us because they are voted for by you, our customers, in a survey at the start of the year. Our goal is to provide people with great value products and excellent service, so it’s fantastic to know our customers believe we’re achieving […]
Thousands use LV’s robo advice service
Almost 6,000 people have used LV’s full automated financial advice service since it was launched in summer 2015, in an early indication that there is a significant market for comprehensive robo advice. The friendly society also revealed that 24,000 people had used its less comprehensive “automated guidance” service. However, LV was “unable” to reveal how many of the 6,000 customers who paid the £199 for a full statement of advice went on to pay £499 to execute the statement of advice. A spokesperson added that “a number of clients” who initially engaged online had gone on to call LV’s telephone advice service. “[This] suggests that there is demand for online […]
Australia weathers fintech slump
Global investment in fintech companies almost halved last year as “froth” comes out of the burgeoning industry and investors wait to see if they can successfully disrupt incumbents such as banks and insurers, according to a new report. Fintech investment funding declined to $US24.7 billion ($32.17bn) last year from a bumper $US46.7bn in 2015, driven by fewer merger and acquisitions, and private equity investments, KPMG found. However, the less mature Australian fintech industry bucked the trend as investment soared to a record high of $626 million last year, up from $185m in 2015 and $461m in 2014. The increase was powered by Champ Private Equity’s acquisition of Pepperstone, Stirling Products’ […]
LandlordInvest’s Innovative Finance ISA is now flexible
LandlordInvest, having recently launched the first residential mortgage-backed IFISA, has made its IFISA flexible. Flexible ISA means that an investor can replace, in whole or in part, cash the investor has withdrawn, without the replacement counting towards the investor’s subscription limit for a tax year. The flexible ISA was only introduced in the current year and offers savers the ability to move cash between all types of ISAs (cash, stocks & shares and the IFISA). LandlordInvest’s property-backed flexible IFISA lets savers invest up to £15,240 in the current tax year (rising to £20,000 in the next tax year) in peer-to-peer loans secured by residential mortgages, and with the ability to […]
Ant Financial invests $200 million in Kakao Pay to expand into South Korea
Alibaba’s financial services affiliate Ant Financial is aggressively pushing to expand its presence across the globe. Today, the company is making their way into Korea by driving a massive $200 million investment in Kakao Pay, the soon-to-launch fin-tech subsidiary of widely popular messaging service Kakao Talk. This capital infusion, as rightly put in the blog post, is part of the company’s larger strategic partnership across the globe. Ant Financial leads digital payments wallet AliPay and Alibaba’s digital banking services and boasts of over 450 million users on its platform. Now, it plans to expand its digital banking services to South Korea by merging them with this upcoming fin-tech entity at […]
Funding Circle hits £2bn milestone
Funding Circle became the second UK peer-to-peer lender to hit the £2bn milestone yesterday, as research showed that the sector had a strong start to the year. Funding Circle’s UK division has now lent £2bn to small businesses, the platform said on its Twitter account on Monday. The platform, which also has operations in the US, Germany and the Netherlands, has experienced stratospheric growth over the past year, lending out £820m in the UK in 2016. Globally, its investors lent more than £1.1bn in 2016, with approximately £400m lent in the fourth quarter alone, a record amount for any small-and medium-sized enterprise (SME) direct lending platform. The platform announced in […]
This FinTech CEO is making money instantly available anywhere in the World
The consumer financial services industry currently boasts a $33.5 billion market cap globally, supplying consumers with various loans and lines of credit. For years, the most common and accurate way of indicating whether consumers qualify for an approved loan or credit line was by analyzing general online data and traditional credit intelligence metrics. Today, with real-time consumer data becoming easily accessible and more emphasis is placed on creating cutting edge banking solutions for a mobile generation, financial technology companies have risen and claimed a reputation for actively disrupting the traditional banking infrastructure. Consequently, the existing challenge for FinTech startups and their big bank counterparts is whether to continue operating independently, […]
