UK fintech delegation heads to Australasia
A trade delegation of eleven UK fintech companies will visit Australia and New Zealand in March. The UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT) will bring a trade delegation of eleven successful UK fintech companies to Australia and New Zealand in March. The trade mission will build on the success achieved by several UK companies in Australia, such as Ratesetter, ThinCats, TruRating and OTCX by promoting opportunities in Australian and New Zealand fintech, including in the emerging regtech, insurtech and blockchain sectors. It will provide a platform for UK and Australian counterparts to exchange ideas, best practice and discover potential areas for collaboration. The selected UK companies will participate in a […]
ATO signs up as first client for fintech start-up Mainframe Cloud
Fintech start-up Mainframe Cloud (“MfC”) has signed a contract with the Australian Taxation Office (“ATO”) to deliver a suite of mainframe modernisation solutions to the Australian Government’s major revenue collection agency. The contract follows an extensive and successful Beta testing exercise in 2016 and the achievement of a minimum viable product by MfC. Based at the Stone & Chalk fintech hub in Sydney, MfC simplifies mainframe operations by providing applications that focus on improving productivity and efficiency. The global application development market for mainframes is estimated to be US$23 billion per annum. Mainframes process approximately 80% of the world’s data and are at the core of most of the world’s […]
Ignition Wealth announces new XPLAN consultancy division assisting advisers to prepare for robo-scale
Ignition Wealth CEO Mark Fordree today announced a new division of Ignition Wealth which will offer full XPLAN support and consulting to help advisers get the most out their XPLAN solutions and prepare to add ‘robo’ services to their businesses. Ignition Wealth will deepen its existing digital advice integration with XPLAN, creating a seamless pathway between automating ‘robo-advice’ and full service advice. “XPLAN is the leading financial planning solution in the market and we are delighted to now offer our clients a range of XPLAN services to help them better leverage technology in their businesses. We believe the true scale of digital advice is best delivered by integrating […]
Record of Advice production time slashed from half an hour to just seconds
MA Operator, the Australian fintech for independent financial advisers, has a new tool that produces Records of Advice (ROAs) in a matter of seconds. MA Operator’s closest published competitor is only able to produce ROAs in 30 minutes. This was announced in 2016 and at the time was a significant reduction from the still widely-used overnight process. Richard McLean, CEO at Frontier Financial Group, said: “MA Operator’s ROA automated generation takes away days of effort and removes significant costs from our business. More importantly the clients are provided electronic signing of their ROAs, reducing the market lag and increasing the accuracy of the advice, as well as providing a full […]
Commonwealth Bank and QTC create first government bond using blockchain
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (Commonwealth Bank) has arranged a virtual cryptobond for Queensland Treasury Corporation using its capital markets blockchain platform, in the first blockchain bond issuance by a government entity both in Australia and in the world. The transaction marks the first trial of Commonwealth Bank’s private, permissioned blockchain platform for the end-to-end issuance of bonds. Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC) successfully used the blockchain to generate a bond tender, view investor bids in real time, finalise investment allocation and settle instantly with investors. QTC acted in both the issuer and investor role to test the end-to-end process for the issuance. The QTC bond was created in digital form using […]
SocietyOne appoints John Cummins as Chief Investment Officer
SocietyOne, Australia’s pioneering and leading lending marketplace, has appointed John Cummins to the new role of Chief Investment Officer, a position which reflects the critical importance of its investor funders to the company’s future growth. John will have responsibility for all of SocietyOne’s funding requirements to support demand from an expanding number of borrower customers. This will include building on SocietyOne’s existing network of investor funders who include large financial institutions, mutual banks, credit unions, high net worth individuals and SMSFs. John will also play a key role in helping the company to achieve its five-year goals of expanding and deepening its funding base to support growth in borrower customers […]
Top 5 Fintech and Banking Trends for 2017
FinTech Competition Will Drive Banking Transformation FinTech companies are competing with banks on a number of levels including peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, lending, saving, and investing. Banks should especially be worried about the fact that 33% of millennials don’t believe they’ll need a bank in the next 5 years, and almost 75% of millennials reported that they are more interested in financial offerings from Google and Amazon that from traditional nationwide banks. For banks to continue to compete, they’ll need to make sure they are providing better services and customer experiences than both their bank competitors, but also upstart FinTech companies. Continued Shift From In-Branch to Digital Channels Millennials are […]
Develop New Ways to Sell Online: Introducing Build with Square
When you’re growing your business, the thought of piecing together hardware, software and payments services from multiple vendors can be exhausting. Unfortunately, that’s the challenge many Australian business owners face. At Square, we believe that all business owners — big and small, online and offline — should have the tools to start, run and grow using one cohesive and fully integrated platform. Build with Square is a new set of new payment APIs which are now available to Australian sellers and developers, designed to empower offline businesses with payment solutions to service omni-channel needs. Our collection of APIs enable you to integrate your custom point of sale or e-commerce solutions […]
