An Australian fintech is letting ‘bankless’ Filipinos pay without handling cash
Australian fintech Peppermint Innovation has signed a partnership deal in the Philippines to provide mobile payment services to locals that don’t have bank accounts but do have a phone. The ASX-listed company announced its new partnership with SUNMar Express Global Services, which will see the Filipino company white-label Peppermint’s technologies, on Thursday. Peppermint chief executive Chris Kain told Business Insider many Australians wouldn’t realise there are “hundreds of millions” of people in neighbouring countries that don’t possess a bank account. “Because the country is spread over thousands of islands, the Philippines has one of the lowest rates of account ownership in the region. More than two thirds of Filipinos are […]
Stockspot CEO Chris Brycki says advisers will become financial ‘curators’
The financial adviser of the future will be a “curator of digital services”, with no alignment to any particular bank or wealth manager, says Chris Brycki, the founder of a disruptive robo-adviser that gives investors access to low-cost exchange traded funds. Financial Review Rich Lister Graham Tuckwell led a $3 million capital raising for Stockspot this month to help the robo-adviser expand its team of engineers, rather than build up financial advice expertise. “It’s going to be more about technology and less about teams of financial advisers, analysts and fund managers, who in our view don’t add the value that we can add,” Mr Brycki said. “Their [financial advisers’] role […]
ALI Group in lead generation agreement with fintech
Loan protection specialist ALI Group has partnered with HashChing to provide mortgage brokers with access to a consistent source of new leads. The partnership will now provide ALI authorised mortgage brokers the opportunity to use their ALI reward points to access HashChing leads and client tools. “We’re excited to partner with HashChing to help brokers build their business. We’re committed to supporting broker businesses and helping them access leads and new clients is a very direct way of doing this,” ALI Group CEO Huy Truong said. “We will continue to add similar products/services to the ALI Rewards Program over the coming month,” he said. HashChing is a lead generation platform […]
Millennials to drive huge passive funds management switch, threatening jobs
The massive generational group of Millennials will accelerate the seismic shift to passive fund management as they seek to grow and protect their wealth, costing the jobs of more stock-picking professionals, according to investment specialists. Jay Pelosky, principal of New York-based Pelosky Global Strategies, said the Millennials’ greater experience with technology compared with Baby Boomers, distrust of so-called “experts” since the 2008-09 financial crisis and debt burdens from university education, meant they were attracted to low-fee automated investing such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and robo advice. “There will be a much greater and sustained move towards passive investing in part because of the Millennials,” said Mr Pelosky, a former Morgan […]
Intuit believes it can steal market share from Xero and MYOB
The head of accounting for global accounting software giant Intuit has thrown down the gauntlet to local leaders MYOB and Xero, saying it will win market share from the major players and emerge to be the dominant force in the region. “We have internal projections where we think we’ll be at the same level of market share as Xero in the next few years,” Intuit global head of accounting Richard Preece told The Australian Financial Review. “Those companies had a significant head start in terms of time in the market… so we have to have the best product to drive market share. We believe the biggest opportunity is that the […]
VentureCrowd CEO Vivian Stewart slams lengthy crowdfunding legislation process
The newly appointed chief executive of crowd-sourced equity funding platform VentureCrowd, Vivian Stewart, has labelled the leisurely pace at which the government passed equity crowdfunding funding laws “embarrassing”. “Aussies are entrepreneurial and we’ve earned the right to stand on the world stage,” the renowned tech entrepreneur and investor told The Australian Financial Review. “But sometimes structural things around the way we do business have let us down. The delay in getting the crowd-sourced equity funding legislation up and running here is an example of an un-Australian way of not being innovative. It was embarrassing to see these other large first world countries moving faster than us.” The comments from Mr […]
Payout platform Hyperwallet expands into Sydney to target growth in APAC
Vancouver-founded, San Francisco-based payments startup Hyperwallet has expanded into Australia, looking to target growth across the Asia Pacific region from its new Sydney base. It will also have a number of staff on the ground in Melbourne. The company operates a global payout system, effectively allowing companies to easily pay out employees, contractors, or service providers in their local currency. With the gig economy a strong market for Hyperwallet, Australia and the wider APAC region are ripe for growth. The Australian office will be headed up by managing director and senior vice president of APAC, Simon Banks, a former PayPal executive. Appointed in March, Banks said the region is punching […]
Fintech to help consumers be their own broker
A new platform is soon to be launched that uses technology instead of a mortgage broker to help consumers find the right home loan. The fintech, Hero BroKer, aims to give back to the consumer by giving them access to the complete home loan application process. “By providing the right tools and technology to the borrower, we let them control their finances so they’re not reliant on a broker. They effectively become their own broker,” Clint Howen, founder of Hero BroKer told Australian Broker. The Hero BroKer model is similar to other tech players such as Airbnb, Howen said. “Airbnb looked at a sea of houses. They built a platform […]
