SME lender expands equipment finance
An online lender has expanded its offering of equipment finance, saying it is providing a solution for the “underserved” market of small business owners. OnDeck Capital Australia said it had received feedback from small businesses and brokers about the length of the loans. The lender found that a lot of equipment had useful lives longer than the length of repayments. Small businesses can also find it difficult to get funding from mainstream lenders. Cameron Poolman, Chief Executive Officer of OnDeck Australia, said brokers often speak to OnDeck about the challenges they encounter obtaining traditional finance solutions for nonprimary assets. He said, “These include assets such as catering equipment, gym equipment, […]
BitTorrent’s creator wants to build a better Bitcoin
In 2001, a 25-year-old unemployed college dropout named Bram Cohen crafted an elegant protocol for moving data around the internet. Titanic numbers of pirated songs and movies, and countless lawsuits, later, he’s putting the finishing touches on what he hopes will be another world-changing protocol—this time for moving around money. Cohen’s earlier invention was BitTorrent, a specification for peer-to-peer file sharing that delighted millions but angered entertainment moguls, and at one point consumed more than a third of global internet traffic. His latest creation is a digital currency and startup called Chia, aimed at making cryptocurrency acceptable to the financial industry. “I like hard technical problems,” says Cohen, with a […]
Accenture launches Innovation Centre for Risk and Compliance in Australia
Accenture has launched a new Innovation Centre for Risk and Compliance in Sydney to help financial services clients quickly develop and scale advanced data, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. With financial services organisations facing an increasingly complex and challenging operating environment, the new innovation centre will help these institutions cost effectively improve the quality and consistency of compliance and enhance transparency with customers and regulators. Offering an alternative to the traditional manual and labour-intensive approaches to regulatory compliance, the innovation centre will help clients better target problem areas and accelerate remediation efforts using a new generation of data management, intelligent automation and advanced analytics capabilities, powered by big data, cloud […]
New SMSF admin offering hits market from fintech firm
A fintech firm has developed a new platform which provides SMSF establishment and ongoing administration services. The financial technology platform, called Selfmade, was developed by former Macquarie investment banker Robin Huender and MoneyMe Financial Group chief executive Clayton Howes. Selfmade is an online platform allowing users to establish and monitor the performance of their SMSF while admin and tax returns are taken care of in the background. “Selfmade has built its platform with integrations to Class and Macquarie. The platform targets SMSF trustees and members that might otherwise be handled by less tech-enabled accountants and administrators,” said the fintech firm. To read more, please click on the link below… […]
Bank Of Queensland backs solar panel lender Brighte
Brighte, a buy-now-pay-later platform for home energy backed by Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, has secured a $15 million debt facility with Bank Of Queensland that takes its total facilities to $45 million. Of the 11,000 payment plans worth $90 million approved by Brighte since it started lending in October 2016, 94 per cent have been for renewable home energy equipment such as solar panels and batteries. The facility with BOQ’s finance division adds to a facility with National Australia Bank, which has just been extended from $20 million to $30 million. It would allow Brighte to expand its interest-free lending into associated areas such as air conditioning […]
Ripple signs up three cross-border payment services
Three companies that provide cross-border payment services plan to use technology developed by startup Ripple that employs cryptocurrency XRP to speed transactions. Ripple, a large holder and promoter of XRP, said its platform for cross border payments, called xRapid, is now commercially available and that it had signed up firms Cuallix, MercuryFX and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union as clients. XRapid uses XRP, a virtual currency powered by distributed database technology called blockchain, to make international payments faster, according to Ripple. Mercury FX and Cuallix are money transfer companies, while Catalyst is a wholesale cooperative financial institution that provides a range of services to 1,400 credit unions throughout the United […]
Social Enterprises making the most of Equity Crowdfunding
Equity crowdfunding has been labelled the way of the future for social enterprise, with one community-owned renewable energy retailer raising over $300,000 to expand across Australia. Enova Community Energy’s equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowd88 has raised $348,649 two days before it’s due to wrap up on 4 October. While it has fallen short of its target of $600,000 to $3 million, Enova chair Alison Crook AO said this was not surprising, adding that the board would consider extending the campaign. “As with all campaigns it’s dependent on publicity and it’s taken us a while to ramp this up,” Crook told Pro Bono News. “So this is actually par for the […]
Recent political turmoil causing millennials to spend less
New research by Raiz Invest, the mobile-first micro-investing platform, shows the recent political climate has made millennials more financially risk averse, with almost half (44%) spending less than six months ago. An even greater proportion (48%) considering changes to their investment strategy. More than 1,000 young Australians were asked about changes in spending and savings habits, as well as trust in major institutions around personal finances – including superannuation, savings and investment funds – to uncover the impact of these major events on their behaviour. Australians are feeling disillusioned No surprise that nearly one in three (29%) mistrust their financial institutions with their superannuation, with a third (34%) remaining neutral. […]
