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 […]
SendGold platform brings real assets to digital currency
SendGold, a Sydney based fintech company with an asset-based peer-to-peer digital money platform, has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise $2 million. SendGold is hyper-liquid, hyper-accessible, and based on physical gold, one of history’s most reliable assets. SendGold is an alternative to bank money as it allows its customers to save, invest, gift and pay using gold. The SendGold technology platform is highly scalable and its business model addresses some of the largest markets in the world, including not only gold, but payments, gaming and rewards, targeting Asia’s fast-growing and increasingly wealthy middle class. SendGold CEO and co-founder Jodi Stanton said, “We believe the world’s current money systems are […]
Financial business management platform PractiFI raises $3 million to establish North American headquarters and take on US
PractiFI, a revolutionary business growth management platform for forward-thinking financial advice firm announced a AUD$3 million investment led by Microequities Venture Capital Fund. The financing will be used to rapidly accelerate PractiFI’s global strategy, establishing a North American headquarters in Chicago, expanding the US customer success team and building a range of new product integrations with other financial apps and tools. Since winning its first US client earlier this year, the Sydney-based company has gone from strength to strength and this international investment marks a significant milestone in its exponential growth. Following the investment, Howard Leibman of Microequities and Equity Venture Partners will join the PractiFI board. Mr Leibman says, […]
A long-secret Bitcoin key is about to be revealed
A long-held bitcoin secret is about to be revealed. No, it’s not the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, it’s a private key the cryptocurrency’s creator entrusted to several bitcoin developers that activates the protocol’s so-called “alert system,” once used to flash a text warning to those running the software in case something happened that could impact the security of their funds. If you didn’t know bitcoin had a warning system like this, that’s because it was retired in 2016 due to security concerns and frequent confusion about its use. “The alert system was a frequent source of misunderstanding about the security model and ‘effective governance,’” well-known Bitcoin Core contributor Greg Maxwell wrote […]
Wisr announces limit increases to personal loan product
Borrower demand, institutional backing and continued operational improvements support this change Neo lender Wisr announced it will increase its personal loan limits following increased borrower demand, strong institutional lender support and continued improvement to loan evaluation. As of today the company will increase its personal loan limit from $35,000 up to $50,000(1), with a comparative interest rate up to 5% p.a. lower than the Big Four Banks(2). Loans will be available for any worthwhile purpose over three or five years, with a comparison rate of 9.36% p.a.(2, 3, 4) for borrowers with strong credit rating and with a Wisr personal loan there are no early repayment or exit fees. Anthony […]
Advice documents still not clear, concise and effective
Many clients are simply not understanding the advice being presented in Statement of Advice (SoA) documents, because they are still not clear, concise and effective, according to leading fintech, YTML. Over the past three years YTML, which provides a number of advice technology solutions, including a paraplanning service, has seen over 50 different SoA templates. “Over 80 per cent of these were over 40 pages long,” said Terri Ho, YTML’s GM of Advice. “The longest I have seen is 130 pages.” Ms Ho said the advice in many SoA documents isn’t being presented in a succinct way to clients – the information lacks clarity, there is too much jargon […]
