Apr
15
P2P borrowing up 45% year on year
Recent surveys conducted by ASIC have made it clear that the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending marketplace is continuing to grow in conjunction with the increasing demand for alternative funding sources. During the 2017-18 financial year, new P2P borrowing increased 45% to $433m, and outstanding loans were up 59% to $518m. While these numbers have “increased significantly” from the 2016-17 figures, the data did indicate a slight slowing in the rate of investor and borrower growth, according to ASIC. Respondents reported a total of 13,446 investors and 31,421 borrowers in the P2P space as of June 2018. In 2017-18, a total of $352m was invested in the platforms surveyed. To read […]
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Apr
12
Australian FinTech company profile #5 – SavR
Company Name: SavR Website: www.savr.online Key Staff & Titles: Tim O'Shea - CEO, Costas Aletrari - CTO, Kevin Lacey - COO Location(s): Brisbane, Australia and Kansas City, USA In one sentence, what does your fintech do?: An Automated savings App to help people Plan, Savr FOR and Save ON their next Vacation How / why did you start your fintech company?: My career in the Finance industry has centred around helping people improve their lives by better managing their money. Our app was originally designed to help people reduce debt faster, but our users constantly requested help with saving for a Vacation. With all the other financial noise most people […]
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Apr
12
Buy now, pay later apps turn focus to business owners
'Buy now, pay later' platforms have changed life for shoppers and now small businesses will be courted with the same model. "What we're seeing now is businesses getting really crunched around payment terms...it's like there's a freeze or a jolt in the system," Cloudfloat founder Aleem Habibullah says. Cloudfloat is preparing to soft launch its fintech product at the end of the month. The startup will pay business invoices directly and then small businesses will pay it back in instalments over periods up to 90 days. As the push for shorter payment times intensifies, Habibullah says some companies are struggling to keep up. Just as models like Afterpay let eager […]
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Apr
12
Bravura circles competitor
The wealth management software firm has made a proposal to acquire another ASX-listed fintech that could value the latter at up to $170 million. Bravura Solutions submitted a non-binding indicative proposal to acquire all shares of GBST Holdings for a $2.50 per share in cash minus a special dividend of 0.35 per share subject to approval. GBST provides administration services to life insurers, stock brokers, wealth management businesses and institutions. Its clients include the big four banks, Baillieu Holst, Bell Porter and Morgans. The $1.1 billion Bravura is more than eight times GBST's market cap. Bravura's offer of $2.50 per share represents a 30% premium to GBST's 30-day volume-weighted average […]
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Apr
12
The Bitcoin Times – Officially Launched
The Bitcoin Times was created to cut through all the bulls#*% you may have read or heard about Bitcoin…(there’s lots of it). It’s not about “blockchain”, nor is it about “crypto”. It’s about what matters. It’s dedicated to Bitcoin, as a concept, as a monetary phenomenon & as a new form of global, digital collaboration that is fair and robust in nature. The Bitcoin times is a distillation of a broadly complex concept into something digestible, so that more people know what the real innovation in this space is. Only publishing 2 of these per year. It’s 100% free and created by the team at Amber to help spread the right narrative.
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Apr
12
From devolution to revolution: re-bundling the banks
Glenn Hodgeman, owner of the AltFi Australasia Summit, suggests that re-bundling and white labelling may be the future of lending in Australia. As Bill Gates once famously stated, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten”. But given the current state of banking in a post-Hayne world, I personally suspect the next two years in financial services will be specifically characterised by rapid change. Traditional lenders are now facing more than just pressure from the growing wave of alternative and non-bank lenders: they are also now staring down the barrel of a regulator with […]
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Apr
12
Aussie fintech Volt Bank starts by asking consumers what they want
In January, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) gave fintech startup Volt Bank a licence to operate without restrictions as an authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI). The green light was given to the new player following APRA approval in May 2018 to act in the Australian finance market as a Restricted ADI. The APRA approval gave Volt the title as the first digital startup bank in Australia to receive a banking licence since the early 2000s. Funds up to AU$250,000 deposited into Volt are guaranteed by the Australian government as part of this arrangement. However, as Volt's senior digital marketing manager Kim Kooren told Salesforce World Tour in Sydney, the company […]
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Apr
12
Champion lender Jacaranda Finance sets a new pace for the fintech industry
Milton based lender Jacaranda Finance has been named the Champion of Financial Services at the Australian Small Business Champion Gala Dinner and Awards Ceremony on Saturday the 6th of April. Held at Sydney’s The Star Casino, with over 1,100 guests in attendance, Jacaranda was publically recognised as a champion small business, and an up and coming financial services provider. With over 2,000 outstanding applicants all round, an award like this is no easy feat. ‘We definitely did not expect to win!’ says Daniel Wessels, CEO of Jacaranda Finance. “The competition was fierce and all of the applicants should be extremely proud to have been nominated,” he continued. ‘With over 4,000 […]
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