Ease of use powers take-up of the Moneysoft Lite cash flow solution
Time poor advisers and their clients have embraced the streamlined version of Moneysoft’s personal financial management tool, with Moneysoft Lite growing to 20% of active users in less than two years. One in five Moneysoft subscribers now uses Lite, which was launched in late-2016. It caters to advisers and other finance professionals who want a simple, cost-effective way to introduce ‘cashflow as a service’ to their clients. The Lite platform enables advisers to build engagement with different types of clients at varied stages of the financial life cycle, said Neil De Beger, Moneysoft’s head of distribution and marketing for SME. “People want to have clear visibility of their finances without […]
HashChing puts its hand out to go it alone
Online mortgage marketplace HashChing is looking to raise up to $5 million by the end of June through the power of crowd-funding, in a bid to ensure that it is immunised from the influence of any big bank, says CEO Mandeep Sodhi. Instead, HashChing has partnered with equity crowd-funding platform Equitise to issue its first round of shares to interested investors. According to Mr Sodhi, the crowd-funding route will help HashChing remain an independent voice in the mortgage market. “Unlike many other online mortgage platforms who are backed by a lender, we are and will continue to stand separate from the banks,” he said. “We want our customers to become […]
Westpac puts another $50 million into VC fund Reinventure
Westpac Banking Corp has triple-downed on its corporate venture capital fund Reinventure Group, investing a further $50 million into a third fund to bring its total commitment to early stage fintechs to $150 million. A week after Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer described the 20 start-up investments made by Reinventure’s first two $50 million funds as a new “strategic asset” for the bank, Westpac is providing Reinventure co-founders Danny Gilligan and Simon Cant with an additional $50 million to be invested under a more flexible structure. The third fund will consist of a unit trust stapled to an early stage venture capital limited partnerships (ESVCLPs), a new structure that will allow […]
MYOB and BPAY join forces to offer a new payment option for Australian small businesses
MYOB has collaborated with BPAY to add a new payment option to its Invoice Payments solution. The collaboration will see MYOB, one of Australia’s leading providers of business management solutions, offer BPAY payments solutions to small businesses, in addition to the existing credit card payment option as part of its online business solutions. MYOB’s payment software helps small businesses get paid four times faster MYOB’s customer data shows that, on average, businesses take 42.6 days to get paid, while those who convert to MYOB merchants and accept electronic payments directly through the platform are paid in under 10 days. “We know cashflow is one of the big pain points […]
Three disruptive forces driving Aussie neobanks like volt, as fintech startups get serious
There are hundreds of fintechs offering financial services, from budgeting tools to financial advice to loans, but it wasn’t until last week that a start-up was authorised in Australia to offer the product sitting at the heart of banking – deposits. In a significant milestone for the local fintech scene, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority said last week volt bank would become the first recipient of a “restricted license” under its new regime, created after the federal government indicated it wants to see more competition in banking. In the UK, more than 30 “challenger” banks have been approved by its equivalent regulator since the licensing regime changed there in 2014. […]
Alibaba Cloud and TAS announce partnership to lead the way in cloud services for Financial Industry in Australia
TAS, a leading technology partner for the financial services sector and Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, have announced a partnership that marks a new era of cloud services to the financial services industry (FSI) in Australia. In this partnership, TAS and Alibaba Cloud will provide a managed, compliant and secure cloud system to further solidify TAS’s longstanding reputation of being a trusted technology partner for the financial services industry and help to further cement Alibaba’s entry into the Australian market. With TAS’s 30 years of deep industry experience and an excellent track record of delivering exceptional end-to-end outcomes for 60 financial institutions – together with Alibaba […]
Labor warns ASIC cuts threaten Australian fintech sector
Spokesman for the Digital Economy, Ed Husic, has slammed the Coalition’s budget cuts to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, saying it would hamper the regulator’s ability to keep on top of technology-led disruption occurring in the financial services sector. Mr Husic told The Australian Financial Review it would also likely slowdown the process of reforming crowdsourced equity funding laws to open it up to unlisted public companies, and mean that it would be ill-equipped to properly monitor initial coin offerings. “At a time when the banking royal commission is exposing massive shortcomings in the way banks are behaving with customers, cutting budget of the watchdog is a big concern […]
NAB looks to challenge fintech space
The big four bank has launched an unsecured, short-term small business loan and overdraft facility through the broker channel, in a bid to go “head to head” with the growing fintech market. Launched this week, NAB QuickBiz for Broker enables brokers to digitally apply for unsecured business finance for their small business clients. Brokers will be able to offer small business clients (which have been operating for 12 months or more and make at least $100,000 per year), unsecured loans of between $5,000 and $100,000 on 12-, 24- and 36-month terms. The product comes with a 12.95 per cent fixed rate for the term of the loan, on a principal […]