Robo advisor Scalable reaches £100m of assets
Shortly before Christmas the start-up reached €100m of assets under management in 10 months, making it among the fastest growing robo advice companies. Wealth manager start-up Scalable Capital has past £100m AUM, with assets growing at nearly £5m a week, co-founder and CEO Adam French said in an interview. The firm, which uses automatic algorithms to manage the risk of portfolios on a daily basis, has over 2,500 customers and reached €100m AUM on Dec. 14, 2016. “Reaching this milestone so quickly underlines the trust our clients put into us,” said French. The Munich-based company has an office in London, which French overseas, and also passports into Austria through its […]
JPMorgan-backed InvestCloud buys London fintech Babel for $20 million
A London software company that helps process trades for wealth managers and stockbrokers has been snapped up by Californian fintech InvestCloud for $20 million (£16.4 million). Babel Systems, founded in 2008, helps with middle and back office processing of equities, bonds, and funds, and works with the likes of robo-advisor Nutmeg. The company’s founders and angel investors have spent around £6 million developing its product. Los Angeles-headquartered InvestCloud, founded in 2010, builds software for finance companies to help their interactions with clients online. JPMorgan is one of over 600 customers and the investment bank took and undisclosed stake in the business last September. It has raised over $100 million (£41.1 […]
China Rapid Finance to triple number of users on its consumer lending platform
China Rapid Finance (CRF), the mainland’s largest online consumer lending platform in terms of the number of loans transacted, is looking to triple the number of users this year as it looks to create a business on par with a major commercial bank’s credit-card division. Zane Wang Zhengyu, founder and chief executive of CRF, told the South China Morning Post that the company would be impervious to the challenges facing other peer-to-peer (P2P) operators on the mainland, and would continue to bolster its online consumer lending businesses in accordance with Beijing’s financial reforms. “We have been trying to nurture the growth of the online consumer lending business in China,” he […]
Canadian fintech companies shine as VC investment nears record
Venture capital-backed investment in Canadian financial-technology companies hit its highest level in almost two decades last year, even as the flow of funds into major fintech markets such as the United States declined, according to sector data. Fintechs, or companies that use innovative technology to revamp everything from banking to fraud security, globally draw billions in investment annually. In Canada, fintech is revitalizing the startup scene and has attracted a new crop of Canadian venture-capital funds looking to invest specifically in young fintech companies. According to PitchBook, used by the U.S.-based National Venture Capital Association, venture-capital financing in Canadian fintech was $137.7-million (U.S.) in 2016, up more than 35 per […]
China launches $1.5bn fintech fund
A consortium of Chinese state-owned companies and private enterprises has created a $1.44 billion investment fund dedicated to fintech mergers and acquisitions. The fund, Asia FinTech Merger and Acquisition Fund of Funds, is led by Hong Kong-listed Credit China FinTech Holdings along with a number of other Chinese companies such as Shanghai Xinhua Distribution Group, China Huarong International and eight other corporate partners. Investments will focus on fintech fields such as big data, artificial intelligence, mobile payments, supply chain financing, and blockchain technology. The investment fund is another signal of China’s growing status in the global fintech market. According to estimates from Credit China FinTech, China’s investment in fintech ventures […]
VentureCrowd completes first Israeli crowdfunding deal with Knowmail
VentureCrowd, Australia’s leading alternative assets investment platform, today announced the successful completion of a $155,000 crowdfunding round for Knowmail. The company is the first Israeli startup to be funded through VentureCrowd under a partnership with investment management firm Kentgrove Capital. VentureCrowd raised $155,000 in convertible notes, as part of a larger US$3 million funding round led by reputable venture capital firms CE Ventures, AfterDox, Plus Ventures and 2B Angels. The investment gave sophisticated investors on the VentureCrowd platform the opportunity to access convertible notes at an interest rate of 4.5 per cent per annum. Knowmail, one of few startups to participate in the Microsoft Accelerator Program, is creating an artificial […]
RateSetter poaches new man for risk team from PayPal after chief risk officer’s departure
Peer-to-peer lending platform RateSetter has appointed a new head of risk analytics and retail credit, just weeks after the surprise departure of the platform’s chief risk officer. Michael Hoare is joining RateSetter from PayPal UK where he was chief credit risk officer. In the absence of a chief risk officer at RateSetter, Hoare and the risk team will report to RateSetter’s risk committee, chaired by former HSBC executive Jim Gunner. Hoare’s appointment follows news earlier this month that chief risk officer Cyrille Salle de Chou has left the peer-to-peer lender after just six months. He joined RateSetter from Lloyds in June but left to become chief risk officer of HSBC’s […]
Citi backs foreign exchange blockchain startup Cobalt DL
Citi has made an undisclosed investment in Cobalt DL, a London startup aiming to use the technology behind bitcoin to simplify foreign exchange trading. Cobalt DL, founded by two veteran bankers, aims to apply distributed ledger technology, also known as blockchain, to the foreign exchange trading market. Currently, when banks trade currencies with each other there are multiple different records of the transaction held by the buyer, seller, broker, clearer, and other third parties, all of which have to be reconciled. This slows the process down and adds to costs. The company aims to create a single, shared view of each transaction by using blockchain technology, which uses complex cryptography […]
