Crowdfunding success for Australian brewers
Gold Coast brewery Black Hops has hit its fundraising target of $400,000 just six days after opening its offer to the public. Matt Vitale from equity crowdfunding platform Birchal said he was delighted with the result. “Black Hops offer was fully subscribed last night, reaching its maximum target in just six days,” Vitale said. “We are thrilled with the result, as is the Black Hops team.” The $400,000 is earmarked for finishing Black Hops’ second brewery and taproom located 30 minutes north of its current site in Burleigh Heads. Investors could invest for as little as $50 to receive ordinary shares in the company. Depending on the value of their […]
Temenos acquires Australian banking fintech Avoka for US$245m
Temenos, the banking software company, today announces it has agreed to acquire Avoka, a leader in digital customer acquisition and onboarding, subject to regulatory approvals. The acquisition further strengthens the Temenos Digital Front Office product, which has over 300 banking clients and has been recognized as a leader by top analyst houses such as Forrester and Ovum. The Avoka platform will be integrated with the Temenos Digital Front Office product, providing banks with a comprehensive single solution for their omni-channel digital banking needs. Temenos has agreed to purchase Avoka for USD 245 million. Through this acquisition, Temenos continues to bring innovative capabilities to its Digital Front Office product that includes […]
Australian fintech Ignition forms multi year multi million dollar partnership with tier one bank
Bank of Ireland’s Seán Ó Murchú joined Manish Prasad and Alan Quinlan from Ignition Advice in today launching a new digital advice platform for Irish consumers. Seán Ó Murchú, Director, Wealth Advice and Distribution at Bank of Ireland, said, “Creating a single, digital advice platform will have a transformational impact on the Irish market,”. Ignition Advice technology will support Bank of Ireland customers across all areas of their financial lives, from financial wellness and saving, to investment and insurance. Scalable solutions allow the bank to offer digital financial advice to all of their customers, while the Ignition Advice hybrid model allows the bank to fully integrate digital advice with telephone […]
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 […]
GBST and Eagle Investment Systems establish strategic alliance to address Australia tax reporting capabilities
GBST and Eagle Investment Systems announce a strategic alliance that will enable Eagle’s clients to utilise GBST’s best-in-class tax reporting capabilities.
How one financial planner’s cultural change is helping tackle Australia’s debt problem
Financial planners are helping to tackle Australia’s escalating debt problem as the industry shifts from selling products to providing holistic advice with money management at its core. Australia’s household debt-to-income ratio has risen sharply in recent years and now ranks as one of the highest in the world at about 190 per cent, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. Meanwhile, more than one in six (18.5 per cent) consumers are struggling under a mountain of credit card debt, according to a report by the corporate regulator, ASIC. Yet only a minority of financial planners offer money management or budgeting advice, citing concerns about the time it takes to offer […]
Can flawed credit rating systems be rebuilt on the blockchain?
Credit scores control people’s lives, and something that powerful needs to be decentralised. On 2 October 2018, Mastercard filed a patent for connecting an individual’s cryptocurrency and fiat accounts. It’s described as a “behavioural profiling method and system to authenticate a user.” This verification might be an important security element in the process where credit cards or accounts will be automatically frozen when a strange transaction is detected. Strange, in this case, is defined as a deviation from the user’s typical behaviour according to their established profile, such as a transaction taking place outside their usual country of residence. “Variations between the behavioural characteristics of the user interactions observed during […]
Equity crowdfunding extended to private companies
Businesses wishing to raise money from retail investors will no longer have to convert to an unlisted public company structure, after an amendment to 2017’s equity crowdfunding legislation passed federal Parliament. The legislation, which takes effect in 28 days from Wednesday, allows proprietary companies or unlisted public companies with annual turnover or gross assets of up to $25 million to advertise their business plans on ASIC-licensed crowdfunding portals, and raise up to $5 million a year to carry them out. Investors can put up to $10,000 a year each into an unlimited number of ideas. Australian private companies are typically limited to a maximum of 50 non-employee shareholders. However, under these […]
