Growing pains: Peer to peer lending hits puberty
The eye-popping climb in the number of people attending the LendIt USA conference over the past four years reflects a real coming of age for peer-to-peer lending. The first, in 2013, attracted 300 delegates. The second lured in just under 1000, while 2500 attended in 2015. Last week, the number swarming the Marriott Marquis hotel in San Francisco was nudging 4000. Peer-to-peer lending (also known as “marketplace lending” to reflect the large proportion of funds that come from institutions rather than retail investors) matches borrowers with yield-hungry investors on an internet platform. A decade since it was born in the United States, marketplace lending is now mainstream. In the past […]
Fintech hub Stone & Chalk aims to become regional ‘glue’
The nation’s newest fintech hub, Stone & Chalk, has identified five key Asian cities for the first stage of its FinTech Asia program as it ramps up plans to become the “glue” that connects the fintech ecosystem in the region. Stone & Chalk this week held its first meetings with the Hong Kong government’s investment promotion department, Invest Hong Kong, before moving to mainland China as part of the giant Australian trade delegation spearheaded by Malcolm Turnbull. It also hosted a panel session at the Hong Kong offices of HSBC on Monday evening that brought together Hong Kong’s key financial regulators — the Securities and Future Commission, the Office of […]
Waddle Integration With Xero Transforms Invoice Financing
Media Release Waddle Loans Pty Ltd (Waddle) has today announced a first-of-its-kind invoice financing product that integrates with Xero’s cloud accounting software. The solution is available through Xero’s Australian add-on marketplace giving small business owners a simple way to fix their cash flow by establishing a revolving line of credit based on the businesses unpaid invoices within Xero. This new financing solution enables small businesses to use their Xero data to boost cash flow by drawing funds against unpaid invoices the instant they are created, automating every aspect of the financing through a two-way real-time data exchange made possible by the connection. The new offering transforms the traditional “factoring” system, whereby small businesses sell outstanding invoices to a third party financier in […]
Fintech Market Growth to Add A$1 Billion New Value to Australian Economy by 2020
The global Fintech sector exhibited robust growth in 2014 when investment activity tripled to US$12.21 billion from US$4.05 billion in 2013. This activity continued in 2015 with an increase in global funding into Venture Capital (VC) backed Fintech startups. Fintech growth in 2015 was international, and Frost & Sullivan anticipates this international dispersion, as well as the global growth trend to continue with more Fintech companies successfully reaching the exit stage of funding in 2016. In the Asia-Pacific region, Fintech investments were concentrated in Australia, China and Singapore, and in 2015, skyrocketed to reach US$3.46b – a four-fold increase from 2014 to 2015. Asian Fintechs garnered strong support, with funding […]
Blockchain is not just for Bitcoin – it is a digital ledger of transactions
Blockchain sounds like a solution to a 19th-century railway problem, but lately it’s on the lips of every executive who wants to solve the problem of 21st-century digital transactions. As innovator Tim Lea, of Veredictum, says: “It’s a great space we’re in — but getting hotter by the day.” Lea is building a blockchain for identifying videos and he’s running hard to keep up with the express train. The evolution of blockchain is exponential. It may have begun as a system for dealing with (often dodgy) digital transactions six years ago and it may have captured the imagination and budgets of banks last year, but in the months since it […]
UK fund to back ThinCats Australia
ThinCats Australia has announced that UK-based alternative finance fund ESF Capital will acquire a 30 per cent stake in the peer-to-peer (P2P) business lending platform. ESF Capital will also provide $10 million in funding for loans on the platform in the first year, joining another 300 lenders on ThinCats’ panel. ThinCats Australia CEO Sunil Aranha said the injection of capital and funding by ESF will provide a significant boost to the platform as well as the many SMEs seeking loans. “The injection of capital by ESF will allow us to ramp up our operations and technology platform, lift our market presence and hire more staff to tap into the largely […]
Peer-to-peer SocietyOne completes $25m raising
Peer-to-peer lender SocietyOne has completed a $25 million round of funding, which was supported by its leading shareholders. SocietyOne, now led by former senior Westpac executive Jason Yetton, announced yesterday that its loan book had shot through the symbolically important $100m barrier in the first week of April. This came after strong growth from the beginning of the year, with personal loans and agribusiness finance jumping by $30m. While the funding round has been under way for several months, its completion is a show of faith in SocietyOne’s direction under Yetton, who was appointed early last month, and the lender’s growth trajectory. The company took six quarters until the second […]
QuietGrowth adds multi-risk portfolio feature
Investors using robo-adviser QuietGrowth’s online platform will now be able to allocate portions of their savings towards different objectives, thanks to a new feature. QuietGrowth chief executive Dilip Sankarreddy said investors and advisers have access to a goals-based investment portfolio, allowing them to tailor the portfolio to their specific needs. “[Investors can now] allocate their savings towards different goals or objectives, with different risk-return expectations,” he said. “Saving for retirement, your child’s education, a house or a holiday are all very different objectives. It makes sense, therefore, that investors should be able to choose portfolios for different levels of risk,” said Mr Sankarreddy. According to the robo-advice firm, investors can […]
