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 […]
H2 Ventures eyes global expansion and data and AI start-ups after fresh intake
Sydney-based fintech accelerator H2 Ventures is preparing to take its program international and expand into artificial intelligence and big data after doubling its intake of startups. The accelerator brings on startups, which receive $100,000 in return for a 10 per cent stake in their company, and in exchange they partake in a program that runs for 20 weeks, based out of Stone & Chalk in Sydney. H2 has just set up an office in San Francisco, designed to support its rapidly-growing portfolio of startups when they expand to the US and take on a fresh intake of 16 startups, after it received 300 applications following a roadshow across major cities […]
How Fintech is shaping the future of Wealth Management
A new report from the World Economic Forum and Deloitte confirmed what many advisors, technology vendors and industry analysts have long insisted: it is established wealth management firms, not startups, best positioned to capitalize on disruptive technology. Robo advisors have proven to be an effective tool for customer engagement, but they’ve also proven relatively inexpensive and easy to replicate. By offering their own robo, firms increase customer stickiness while also avoiding the high client acquisition costs that plague startups. But the future is far from certain. Robos have set a new standard for the kind of personalized digital experience clients expect from financial services, and business-to-business fintechs—the so-called wealthtech companies—continue to automate more middle and […]
