SocietyOne appoints John Cummins as Chief Investment Officer
SocietyOne, Australia’s pioneering and leading lending marketplace, has appointed John Cummins to the new role of Chief Investment Officer, a position which reflects the critical importance of its investor funders to the company’s future growth. John will have responsibility for all of SocietyOne’s funding requirements to support demand from an expanding number of borrower customers. This will include building on SocietyOne’s existing network of investor funders who include large financial institutions, mutual banks, credit unions, high net worth individuals and SMSFs. John will also play a key role in helping the company to achieve its five-year goals of expanding and deepening its funding base to support growth in borrower customers […]
Top 5 Fintech and Banking Trends for 2017
FinTech Competition Will Drive Banking Transformation FinTech companies are competing with banks on a number of levels including peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, lending, saving, and investing. Banks should especially be worried about the fact that 33% of millennials don’t believe they’ll need a bank in the next 5 years, and almost 75% of millennials reported that they are more interested in financial offerings from Google and Amazon that from traditional nationwide banks. For banks to continue to compete, they’ll need to make sure they are providing better services and customer experiences than both their bank competitors, but also upstart FinTech companies. Continued Shift From In-Branch to Digital Channels Millennials are […]
Bitcoin tipped to replace gold as portfolio staple
Digital currency is increasingly being seen as serious asset class, but investors need to get in soon to mine the opportunity, says a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur. Speaking to InvestorDaily from San Francisco, Australian-born entrepreneur Michael Dunworth, CEO of Wyre and a former staffer at Midwinter Financial Services, said professional investors and advisers are waking up to the bitcoin opportunity following strong market performance. “Bank of America, hedge funds and high-net-worth individuals – they’re all getting into digital currencies as part of their diversified portfolio,” Mr Dunworth said. “There’s no getting away from it. It has been one of the best performing assets for the past five years, with no serious […]
Robo advice start-up Six Park closes $1.5m capital raise
Melbourne-based robo-adviser Six Park has closed a $1.5 million capital raise from a powerful group of investors that includes a former finance minister.
China is behind the latest Bitcoin craze
Bitcoin had a great 2016. The cryptocurrency rallied 120% to $952, and is threatening to break the $1,000 mark for the first time. While Bitcoin has seen a consistent bid throughout the year, its 57% gain (in US dollar terms) over the past three months has been particularly impressive. So what’s behind the move? China. In his latest edition of “Greed & Fear,” CLSA’s Christopher Wood notes, “Daily turnover in Shanghai-based BTC China, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange by volume, has risen from around Rmb1bn in late September to a peak of Rmb27.8bn on 22 December and Rmb16.4bn on Wednesday (see Figure 11) while the Bitcoin price has risen by […]
The price of bitcoin is at a 2016 high
The price of cryptocurrency bitcoin has passed its 2016 peak in recent days, with some market commentators taking it as a sign of fears about global growth in 2017. Bitcoin has hit $807 on Wednesday at just after 11.13 a.m. GMT (6.13 a.m. ET). It is the first time bitcoin has been above $800 this year and represents a fresh peak from June’s high of $775: The June high came after a spike in the price of the cryptocurrency following Britain’s shock vote to leave the European Union on June 28th. However, within a month of the $775 high, the price of bitcoin fell bellow $600 again. It began steadily […]
Why we need to change how we talk about Superannuation
Mike Goodall, Corporate and Industry Fund Sales Manager at Ignition Wealth has over 30 years experience working with retail and industry superannuation. Mike has a real passion for helping the industry super funds to connect more meaningfully with their clients. With record levels of disengagement the industry is ripe for disruption and Mike is committed to helping the superfunds revolutionise from inside, through the utilisation of the best emerging technologies. It’s no secret member engagement is the biggest challenge facing the superannuation industry in Australia. Despite collectively having more than $2.1 trillion invested in super, the majority of people don’t view superannuation as an investment or nest egg – at best they […]
Upstart fintechs learn to live with industry ‘elders’
As 2016 closes, the relationship between legacy institutions and fintech companies has reached another turning point. Fintech, the brash upstart, was initially intent on dominance through total disruption, but it now has a grudging respect for the scale, if not the agility, of the industry’s decades-old incumbents. If phase one was all-out disruption, the dominant feature of phase two has been collaboration, with phase three likely to be some kind of hybrid model. The hype that lasted several years has been diluted by a recognition that most fintech companies operate in a small, targeted niche of the financial services value chain, with very few aiming to take over the entire […]
