Trov continues to attract Silicon Valley’s most talented
Trov, the revolutionary on-demand insurance platform, continues to bolster its core team through the appointment in July 2016 of Neil Sands – previously Salesforce’s Ignite Chief Experience Officer (CXO) – as its Head of Global Partnerships. In his role at Trōv, Sands will be responsible for the expansion of the company’s non-insurance partner eco-system: creating engagement with points of sale (POS), as well as developing other types of retail and brand partnerships. Throughout his years at Salesforce, Sands oversaw the expansion of Salesforce’s enterprise innovation team Ignite, during which time Salesforce won Forbes’ Most Innovative Company four years running, working exclusively with Fortune 500 companies. Sands is the […]
Australia among first to introduce bitcoin regulations
Australia will be one of the first countries to impose regulations for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism laws. Australia’s financial intelligence agency, AUSTRAC, is co-hosting a counter-terrorism financing summit with in Bali and, ahead of this, has highlighted that ecurrency such as bitcoin enables terrorists to transfer money anonymously. Justice Minister Michael Keenan said: “The report recommends strengthening an already robust legal framework to respond to new and emerging threats.” “The government is committed to facilitating growth and innovation in this sector and appropriate anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulation will aid that development.” The AUSTRAC report, Terrorism Financing in Australia 2014, said: “Terrorist groups engaged […]
Two Australian FinTech startups have formed a data alliance
One of the 14 Australian fintechs chosen last month for KPMG’s new accelerator mLabs has formed a strategic alliance with another data-based startup it met through the program. DSYNC, a systems integration platform and part of the KPMG mLabs, and UniLibre, a data solution provider, say the alliance is a great channel potential opportunity. mLabs is an accelerator designed to connect credit unions and mutual banks with some of Australia’s most promising fintech startups. The program follows the successful Energise accelerator run for the energy and natural resources sector last year. Simon Church, DSYNC’s co-founder, says he’s collaborating with UniLibre on multiple projects. And the two companies are in talks […]
Apple says Australia’s banks pose a security threat to iPhones
Apple has launched a blistering attack on three of Australia’s big banks, saying their request to collectively negotiate over digital wallet access to the iPhone will compromise the handset’s security, reduce innovation and blunt Apple’s entry into the payments market in Australia. In a sign of growing acrimony between the world’s largest company and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac Banking Corp, Apple told the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that “allowing the banks to form a cartel to collectively dictate terms to new business models and services would set a troubling precedent and delay the introduction of new, potentially disruptive technologies”. The three large banks […]
Financial Leaders share their strategies to maintain their edge in the new era of Lending
Next Generation Lending 2016 16-18 August | Radisson Blu Hotel Sydney Australia is experiencing phenomenal growth in FinTech, with its alternative finance market growing by 320 per cent in 2015. With the industry’s wealth of talent and investment, it has successfully engaged the government and the regulator, ASIC to actively work together to promote innovation and digital disruption in financial services. So how is this evolving financial ‘revolution’ changing the traditional lending business model, who has the competitive edge and how is the industry benefitting as a whole? The 2nd annual Next Generation Lending conference, taking place in Sydney this August, will provide an in-depth look at how new […]
Fintech needs security baked in from the start
Fintech has been labelled a modern day gold rush fuelled by ambitious entrepreneurs and innovative technologies and consumer demand. KPMG and CB Insights’ “The Pulse of Fintech”report found that global investment in fintech currently sits at $13.8 billion with $4.5bn invested in the Asia-Pacific, across 140 deals. But as the relationship between new technologies, such as bitcoin and blockchain, and financial services deepens, so do the threats posed by increasingly sophisticated hackers. No market is more affected by cybercrime than financial services. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2016 Global Economic Crime Survey found that 48 per cent of financial sector respondents reported to have been affected by cybercrime, compared with 36 per cent across […]
VentureCrowd stakes its claim as alternative investment option
Local equity-based crowd-funding platform VentureCrowd and residential property developer Clearstate have closed a second funding round, giving more than 50 investors 49 per cent equity of a development site in western Sydney. VentureCrowd’s crowd-funding platform allows investors to buy equity of a property development before it’s subdivided and sold, and former Credit Suisse adviser Mitchell Hopwood said he invested through his self-managed superannuation portfolio as an alternative to a listed property fund. “The Austral opportunity provided a relatively high, short-term return in a bite-size, easily understandable transaction that is fairly de-risked from an investment perspective,” he said. Mr Hopwood said the crowd-funding platform, believed to be the first of its […]
Westpac puts another $50 million into Reinventure
Westpac Banking Corp has doubled its exposure to venture capital, investing a further $50 million into a second fund to be managed by Reinventure Group to invest in fintech start-ups including those which could potentially disrupt the bank. The closure of Reinventure’s $50 million Fund 2 reflects Westpac’s belief that technology is reshaping financial markets and that the bank should hold equity stakes in a selection of potential disrupters as a defence mechanism to potential disintermediation. It also shows how Westpac wants to improve the experiences of its customers by developing relationships with start-ups. The second fund will be managed by Simon Cant and Danny Gilligan, the co-founders of Reinventure […]
