Aussie-founded fintech Banked secures $2.7 million in seed funding, to launch open banking data solution
An Aussie-founded fintech, based in London, has secured £1.5 million ($2.66 million) in seed funding, while it’s still pre-product, pre-revenue, and less than a year old. Founded in early-2018 by Australian native and chief executive Brad Goodall, along with co-founders Neil Ambler, Patrick Cox and Ellen Fernandes, Banked aims to open up the possibilities of financial data by providing a trustworthy channel of communication between banks, businesses and individuals. The entirety of the seed funding has come from London-based venture capital firm Backed VC, although Goodall tells StartupSmart he is in talks with other investors regarding a potential secondary seed raise. Open banking came into effect in the UK earlier […]
Fintech currency wars heat up as Pelikin prepares to launch
A travel cash mishap in Croatia was Sam Brown’s inspiration to launch startup Pelikin into the competitive space of travel money and foreign exchange. “I was in Croatia, I went to get money out, put my travel card into the ATM and then cancelled my transaction because I changed my mind. My travel provider thought that was suspicious and blocked my funds. What that led to was having to borrow money, from the people I was travelling with,” Brown says. Brown has just closed out a crowdfunding raise for Pelikin of close to a quarter of a million dollars that has been “essentially a marketing campaign” for a the company’s […]
Home loan fintech raises $25m
A fintech start-up is celebrating a $25million raise as it continues on its pathway to becoming Australia’s “most innovative home loan provider”. Athena Home Loans, which is still in its pilot phase, has closed its most recent Series B raise led by Square Peg Capital. Industry super fund Hostplus and venture firm AirTree also joined the round, taking the group’s total capital raised to date to $45m. The Series B raise comes six months after the company announced a Series A fund raise led by Macquarie Bank and Square Peg Capital and three months after announcing a strategic partnership with Resimac Group. Powered by Australia’s first cloud native digital mortgage […]
Competition in SMSF market tipped to turn as robots enter
A panel of financial experts have staked their bets on robo-advice as the future of SMSF investment. The panel, which was hosted by the SMSF Association and included representatives from the Australian Taxation Office, ASIC, Investment Trends, SuperConcepts and OpenInvest, emphasised the need for SMSF members to keep up with technological advancements in order to continue investing wisely and maximising their assets. In the aftermath of the royal commission’s findings, trust in advisers in Australia is at an all-time low. As a result of such sentiment and the current advancements in technology and AI (artificial intelligence), the expert panel suggested the way forward for SMSF investors will likely be engagement with […]
New era for equity crowdfunding
The Australian Government’s long-awaited equity crowdfunding reforms have finally been passed, almost a year after they were introduced to federal parliament. The Corporations Amendment (Crowd-sourced funding for Proprietary Companies) Bill 2017 is the government’s third attempt at legislating equity crowdfunding. Its first bill was left stranded by the July 2016 election, and its second bill – which took effect in October 2017 – was criticised by the industry for requiring companies to become unlisted public companies before they could have access to equity crowdfunding. That was the basis under which seven equity crowdfunding platforms were licensed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in January 2018. However, the public […]
OpenInvest platform gives SMSF trustees direct access to quality investment managers
An online marketplace and platform offering investors access to a diverse range of Australian and international investment managers launched last night in Sydney with self-managed super fund (SMSF) trustees the primary market. The OpenInvest platform will give SMSF trustees and other investors the means and ability to choose from a range of highly credible and experienced managers, with Schroders, Shaw and Partners, SG Hiscock, JBWere, InvestSense (in collaboration with Magellan and Pimco) and Clime Investment Management among the foundation partners. Other managers will follow in the New Year. These investment managers will provide content, information and regular updates explaining their thinking on key issues that influence their investment decisions. This […]
Fintech should make advice ‘enjoyable’
A software integration firm has highlighted how technology should be about making the client experience of advice more “enjoyable” as well being agile to constantly changing adviser needs. At a media roundtable in Sydney yesterday, YTML director Terri Ho said a lot of emotion is attached to financial advice, however it tends to become really dry and go down to the numbers. Further, she said that a lot of the time, trust is more important for the client and that it’s those emotional aspects that clients are looking for. “We have to make advice enjoyable. We have to make the experience of receiving advice enjoyable. And it’s certainly not enjoyable,” […]
Technology helping SMSF trustees to deal with uncertainty
An array of emerging tools is available to help SMSF trustees better manage their assets, crucial in times of stockmarket volatility. These new, largely digital technologies are giving trustees and members quality information about how to optimise the performance of their funds. Increasingly, self-directed SMSFs are able to access more asset classes via a joint online broker and online admin solution. For trustees this means increased simplicity – one sign-up process and one account holding all the fund’s investments, feeding data directly to all necessary parties. “For an SMSF, time is your most valuable asset – so don’t waste it on admin, paperwork or reporting,” says Arnie Selvarajah, CEO of […]
