Australian FinTech Opens up Vast Opportunities for ICT Companies
Sydney, Australia, 23 May 2016 – Australia’s development as a leader in Fintech innovation will require concerted effort from government agencies and established financial institutions and will involve partnerships and research collaboration between banks and startups. It will also present many diverse and lucrative growth and development opportunities for ICT companies that will help form the necessary ecosystem for a leading Fintech market. Data and connection security will be the most significant challenge for Fintech companies in Australia; largely because mobile payments make up the majority of the revenues of all the Fintech segments. Reliable security will be a key issue and an important selling point to ensure success as […]
Blockchain is here to stay
Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin, is the talk of the town at the moment. The financial services industry can’t get enough of it. The enthusiasm essentially boils down to the technology’s potential to reduce the financial transaction costs while ensuring robust security. While Bitcoin is unlikely to be make traditional currency extinct, blockchain has provided the impetus needed for new and innovative research into how the slow and often expensive centralised financial transaction systems that dominate banking, so what is this blockchain? Put simply, blockchain is a data structure that can be used to create digital ledgers of transactions shared among a distributed network of participating organisations. Financial institutions […]
Fintech specialists say ‘NextGen banking’ may replace Big Four
Banks of the future will be technology companies with a banking licence, and traditional finance options may give way to more digitally advanced methods and platforms, say fintech specialists. According to panellists speaking at the Fintech CEOs on the Future of Finance seminar in Sydney on Wednesday night, financial technology firms will soon attract market share and talent away from current banking incumbents, while new digital roles set to replace traditional finance jobs. Speaking at the event Jost Stollmann, CEO of Tyro Payments, predicted that ‘next generation banking’ would eventually take over, with at least one of the big four banks to disappear completely in the next few decades. “Can […]
How banks are running the economy
Alan Kohler, The Australian Two quite innocuous things happened on Tuesday: the federal budget and an RBA rate cut. Neither of these events will do much good, but nor will they do much harm, which is about as much can be hoped from both politics and monetary policy these days. Even RBA Governor Glenn Stevens has been constantly talking about impotence of monetary policy, so it’s likely to be true. Why won’t the budget or the rate cut have much impact? Because the RBA and the government don’t run the economy — the banks do, and there is something much more significant going on in banking land. There is always […]
Fintech a $US1 trillion fight
Consultants Oliver Wyman has been talking to banking clients all around the world over the past few months about the concept of “modular financial services”. It’s the coverline adorning one of the firm’s latest research pieces on the impact of information technology on the future of banking. Even as the equity prices of US fintech poster children like Lending Club and OnDeck are pummelled as capital markets reassess valuations, incumbent banks around the world show no sign of losing interest in fintech. Indeed, if the interim results of three of Australia’s big four banks last week were any guide, thinking about fintech in the C-suite is only accelerating. The earnings […]
New fintech player CreditSME is helping both banks and borrowers in SME lending space
CreditSME has recently launched in the Australian market and is working with both lenders and borrowers to create a streamlined process for small and medium sized businesses to obtain finance. CreditSME has developed a new credit scoring system for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) based on the financial and operating position of the company. This credit score, along with the financing requirements of the company, are then used to match the company to the most suitable financier. “There have been a number of new lenders entering the SME space over recent times which provides more options for borrowers, however it’s important for borrowers to understand what is being offered […]
Meet eight fintechs changing financial services
When you have just seven minutes to sell your idea as the next big thing to change banking and investment, every moment counts. Thirty of the country’s best fintechs are pitching to a room full of 160-plus bankers, brokers and venture capitalists at the Grand Hyatt ballroom in Melbourne, where their story, business plan and even looks are all being judged. From payments to wealth management, peer-to-peer lending and crowd funding, fintech start-ups are taking aim at the heart of the financial services industry and a pot of revenues that Goldman Sachs estimates at $4.7 trillion. The banks are all vying for a stake in these disrupters before they join […]
Fintech challenges Veda, Dun & Bradstreet
CreditSME – founded by Adam Welsh, a former M&A and debt at Origin Capital Group and Goldman Sachs – is offering a sort of broker role, giving them a credit rating and then advising them on which lenders would be the best for them – be it traditional bank or online unsecured lenders. CreditSME, launching on Wednesday, is the latest in an explosion of ex investment banker-led fintechs targeting the small businesses traditionally treated with disdain by the banks. But it’s not lending them money, rather it wants to give SMEs (and their lenders) easy access to a credit rating, just like a big business. There are various operators that […]
