Avenue Bank showcases the best of fintech at the 11th Annual FinTech Summit
The Annual FinTech Summit for 2024, now in it’s eleventh year, was yet again another hugely successful event, hosted by Glen Frost.
Starting with an opening keynote on the product launch of Avenue Bank, CEO Peita Piper set the scene for how financial technology is changing finance, and fast.
“We’re a digital bank that provides fast, fair, fuss-free banking solutions to Australian businesses, starting with disrupting the bank guarantee market,” said Piper.
Demonstrating how Avenue Bank are already injecting competition into the Australian banking sector, taking on the like of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac, NAB, ANZ and others, Piper showcased their unique selling proposition: a FULLY DIGITAL bank guarantee product for landlords and tenants to easily and quickly send a deposit to move into a leased office or factor that does not require the tenant to visit a bank branch.
Bank guarantees are the preferred form of security for commercial leases and can only be issued by an Australian bank.
Bank guarantees are an unconditional undertaking provided by a bank on behalf of its customer to pay a landlord the amount guaranteed upon receipt of a written demand. The bank guarantee is secured, in Avenue’s case, by an equivalent amount of cash deposited in a term deposit mitigating the credit risk associated with providing the guarantee.
There has been limited innovation by incumbents with bank guarantees resulting in cumbersome and time-consuming paper-based processes.
Avenue Bank has completely upended this process, turning the entire process fully digital. The tenant and the Landlord each have their own secure portal, meaning neither needs to go into a bank branch.
Impressive time to completion are a key feature:
- Initial application = under 10 minutes
- Credit checks, AML, KYC = under 6 hours
- Onboarding and portfolio management: fastest time to issue a bank guarantee = 36 hours
Avenue Bank are also using what they call a “Low Deposit Bank Guarantee” – this service allows tenants to nominate a level of collateral (e.g. 50%) to support a bank guarantee. This allows them to free up 50% of the funds that are currently deployed to support a BG with one of the legacy providers. Given some bank guarantee deposits require hundreds of thousands of dollars, this saves businesses a huge amount of working capital.
In a moment of pure coincidence during her speech, Piper noticed the CEO of Tank Stream Labs in the audience and pointing him out said, “I see Brad Delamare in the room. I’d like to thank Tank Stream Labs for being our very first customer!”
Piper also gave credit to other payers in the fintech and banking sectors, “New players such as Afterpay, Airwallex and now Avenue have been able to use technology to remove friction points across a range of legacy processes. Combing the strength of a traditional bank with innovative technology platforms has allowed UBank to successfully target the digital generation.”
Website: www.fintechsummit.com.au
Opening Keynote: Peita Piper, CEO – Avenue Bank
Other Speakers at the 11th Annual FinTech Summit 2024 included:
- Kate Gubbins, CEO & Founder – Simpology
- Melissa Christy, Head of Lending Origination – AMP Bank
- Yish Koh, Managing Director – Kit (CBA)
- David Hyman, Co-Founder & CEO – Lendi Group
- Michael Titshall, CEO APAC – R/GA
- Ben Thompson, CEO and Founder – Employment Hero
- Jason Maletic, Partner – Ashurst
- Chris Ferris, CEO – Coposit
- Mandeep Sodhi, Founder & CEO – Effie Technologies
- Stuart Dullard, Partner – Ashurst
- David Rowe, Investor – 1835i
- Tim Steer, CFO – Birchal
- Pierre De Villecourt, CIO & Head of FinTech – ICM
- Melanie Hayden, Managing Director – Truyu
