Mike Cannon-Brookes leads $4m round in home energy fintech start-up Brighte
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes has made his latest move in his ongoing effort to move the dial on Australia’s energy crisis, becoming the lead backer in a capital raising for home energy funding platform Brighte. The company, which was founded by former Macquarie Group senior manager Katherine McConnell in 2015, provides on-the-spot finance online for home energy improvements such as solar panels and home batteries. It promises to dramatically increase the number of homes installing renewable, clean energy equipment by taking away the often hefty upfront cost and making it easier and more affordable. Brighte raised an initial seed round of $3.5 million from high net worth investors and family […]
Westpac creates data accelerator
Westpac Banking Corp has created a “data accelerator” to build new technology businesses from anonymised data sets, and will offer access to it to institutional banking clients seeking to turn data into assets. FUELD, which has been set up in partnership with Stone & Chalk, will provide early-stage start-ups access to the Data Republic data-sharing platform. Westpac’s venture capital fund, Reinventure Group, is an investor in Data Republic. The accelerator will be run by the former CEO of Fishburners, Murray Hurps. Macgregor Duncan, Westpac’s co-head of business development, said start-ups which could emerge from the program may examine new credit models and applications for algorithmic real-time property valuations. Start-ups will […]
Picturewealth app that lets you take a ‘welfie’ pic of your finances raises $1.2m
A Perth start-up that claims to offer a snapshot of your finances – dubbed a “welfie” – has raised $1.2 million, led by the financial planning group that will distribute its app first. The funding for PictureWealth shows the excitement around personal budgeting fintechs created by the likes of Acorns and Pocketbook – both of which have raised millions in Australia – continues to spread. PictureWealth claims to allow users to aggregate information on all their assets, debts, expenses and insurance policies, viewable on one PC or smartphone screen at one time. “Until now, there hasn’t been a single space where people can view a picture of their personal wealth. […]
P2P lender reaches 2,000 brokers
Peer-to-peer lender RateSetter has accredited 2,000 brokers on its lending platform, amidst a rise in P2P popularity within the general public. Lending volumes through the broker channel, especially in auto and home improvement loans, are doubling every six months, according to the lender’s most recent settlement figures. Across the direct and broker channels, RateSetter has also passed $150m in lending facilitated since 2014. In the last five months alone, lending grew 50% across both channels, passing the $100m milestone in March. “Our brokers tell us that having access to RateSetter’s low-rate personal and business loans gives them a great way to help their clients achieve their goals, whether that is […]
PowerLedger’s Bitcoin IPO powers towards $30m
Perth energy trading platform PowerLedger has raised $17 million in the first two stages of its Australia-first virtual currency IPO and looks set to raise more than $30 million by the time its public offer closes. Demand has exceeded Powerledger’s initial expectations and the success of the “initial coin offering” or “ICO” shows there can be a strong appetite for fundraising offers from Australian firms using this novel form of fundraising and virtual currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Chair Jemma Green said the $17 million came from a discounted private presale of 90 million Powerledger tokens or POWRs to members of the company’s community, and a public presale of 100 […]
A beginner’s guide to behavioural fintech for super funds
Advancements in technology, notably artificial intelligence and big data, and an increasingly sophisticated appreciation of how behavioural strategies affect funds’ understanding of, and influence on, their members are two mega-trends set to reshape the superannuation industry over the next decade. In short, there will be a synergistic collision of behavioural finance and technology to create ‘behavioural fintech’. Technology may be part of the solution, but it is also part of the problem. It is enabling a flood of information to permeate our daily lives, much more than our brains were designed to handle. Our cognitive capacity reaches its limits quickly and throws up defense mechanisms to filter information and avoid […]
Leading startup investment insiders told us what they’re looking for in the perfect fintech
Rajeev Gupta knows about startups and what’s needed to attract funding for them. The former investment banker and technology investor has had his own startup, Geckolife, and has also worked at Goldman Sachs and Tribeca. Now he’s a partner at Alium Capital, a technology-focused crossover investment fund looking after sophisticated investors wanting to get in on smaller, high potential projects overlooked by the big players. He’s recently closed a couple of key investments in local Sydney fintech startups. In Australia, fintech is mostly driven by local companies, with 512 Australian and 67 offshore companies operating locally, according to analysis by KPMG. One of Gupta’s investments is Stockspot, a robo-adviser fund […]
Australia’s CommBank arms combine to launch robo-advice service
Two units of Australia’s largest bank have teamed up to launch a ‘robo-for-adviser’ portal aimed at financial advisers servicing high net worth clients. CommSec Adviser Services, the adviser support arm of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA / CommBank), and Colonial First State, part of the CBA’s global asset management business, will jointly provide the new system, named Portfolio Service. The service will offer a ‘one-stop-shop’ online that aims to enable advisers to manage their clients’ investments by automating administration and reporting requirements. Designed for the fee-for-service business models, the system can be customised to support specific advice fee structures and is offered by both firms. Better service CommSec Adviser […]
