Image #credit: Cafe Credit In March 2014 the Australian Parliament rubber stamped new Credit #reporting & Privacy Laws that enabled Credit Providers (CPs) and Credit Reporting Bureaus (CRBs) to commence voluntary #Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR). Australian lenders are well behind on CCR, much to the detriment of Australian borrowers, argue many #fintech startups.Read More
Bank Innovation
The Swiss investment #Fintech platform for start-ups, investiere.ch, has successfully closed another #financing #round. With a substantial participation in the capital increase, Zürcher Kantonalbank has become a new #minority #shareholder of investiere.ch. The financing round represents the largest fintech investment in Switzerland this year to date.
investiere.ch announced that it has successfully closed a Series B financing round totalling CHF 3.5 million. This capital increase will enable investiere.ch to further develop its investment platform with services and tools related to start-up financing and to drive the platform’s growth. At the same time, investiere.ch has gained an important shareholder in #Zürcher #Kantonalbank, which is a leading provider of start-up financing and has many years of experience in this field. Existing shareholders and other experienced business angels also participated in this financing round.
Image from Zürcher Kantonalbank Facebook
“With Zürcher Kantonalbank, we have acquired an ideal partner as an investor,” Steffen Wagner, co-founder and CEO of investiere.ch, explains. “Zürcher Kantonalbank has repeatedly demonstrated its innovative strength and its expertise in the area of venture capital and has for many years shared our mission of providing professional financing for start-ups.”
Martin Scholl, CEO of Zürcher Kantonalbank, commented: “We decided to invest in investiere.ch based on the team and #technology behind the platform. The digitalisation of the venture capital market offers attractive growth potential and also creates opportunities for the further development of our own financing activities in areas such as SME financing.”
investiere.ch and Zürcher Kantonalbank are among the most active venture capital providers in the Swiss market. Zürcher Kantonalbank has long been investing in young companies. More than a decade ago, it launched its ‘Pioneer’ initiative and since then the bank has invested more than CHF 100 million in start-ups with new and innovative business ideas. This has resulted in the creation of almost 1,000 jobs. #investiere.ch has already provided over CHF 17 million in funding for start-ups in more than 40 financing rounds. There will be no changes to the activities conducted by Zürcher Kantonalbank as part of its ‘Pioneer’ initiative. At the same time, investiere.ch will retain full independence with regard to the development of its business.
Featured image: Pixabay
The post investiere.ch Closes Financing Round: Zürcher Kantonalbank Becomes a Significant Minority Shareholder appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
#Bank of America, a financial institution with 3.2 million small business customers, announced today it has partnered with #fintech startup Viewpost to open the wider world of fintech, specifically the modernization of #payments, to small businesses. “It’s important to move the dialogue beyond the transactional friction,” said Mark Eliscu, CEO of Viewpost. HeRead More
Bank Innovation
#Author Don Tapscott recently helped kick off the TED Summit in Banff, Alberta with a #talk about #blockchain #technology.
CoinDesk
UBS, Deutsche Bank, Santander and BNY Mellon announced their “utility #settlement coin,” a new digital asset they hope will become the industry standard for #blockchain settlements. They expect #banks will initially use the coin for post-trade settlement and clearing by early 2018, after they secure blessing from regulators and central banks.
While this development signals significant market traction for an institutional use of digital assets, I have to say it’s deeply misguided. A bank-issued digital asset can only really efficiently settle between the banks who issued it. Then, two scenarios can play out.
Scenario one: all banks around the world put aside competitive and geopolitical differences, adopt the same digital asset, agree on its rules, and harmoniously govern its usage. Fat chance.
Scenario two (the more likely scenario): banks not in the issuing group issue their own digital assets with their own sets of rules and governance.
We’re kinda seeing this already, as the FT points out, with Citi’s Citicoin and Goldman Sachs’ SETLcoin. The result would be an even more fragmented currency landscape than what we have today. If banks of different digital asset groups want to settle trades with one another, they’ll have to make markets between their unique digital assets or trade between their digital assets and a common fiat currency. What a mess!
The second big problem with the “utility settlement coin” is it seems it’ll be backed by a basket of currencies. Once backed by cash, it’s no longer an asset; it’s a liability. Trading liabilities then ultimately requires moving cash across borders, re-creating today’s system but adding more friction!
We strongly believe banks need an independent digital asset to enable truly efficient settlement and we believe XRP is best positioned for that role. It goes back to the fundamentals of what makes digital assets unique and special – they’re universal currencies, meaning anyone can use them as units of value anywhere in the world. That universality gives digital assets global reach and the ability to settle much faster than traditional assets.
Compared head to head with other independent digital assets (like #bitcoin or ether), XRP settles the most efficiently cross-border, in just seconds. In fact, we’ve run tests with global banks to prove XRP can lower liquidity costs for cross-border trades. More to come on that front.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradgarlinghouse” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”President and COO at #Ripple“]
Finally a very smart #integration of Mobile Payment:
#easyJet has announced that its customers shall from now on be able to use Apple Pay to pay for their tickets in Switzerland via an iOS App.
• #Book and pay for #flights and extras using just your #fingerprint
• One of the first European airlines to introduce #Apple Pay
• It’s quick and convenient
• Secure with Touch ID
Using Apple Pay passengers booking flights through the airline’s app on selected iOS devices (see deatils below) will be able to process their booking in just a matter of seconds thanks to Apple Pay’s secure quick one-touch payment function.
• Phone requirements: easyJet mobile app iOS version 3.7 and above, iOS 9 and above required
• Card types supported: VISA, MasterCard, American Express
• iOS devices supported: iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4 and iPad mini 3
• Currencies supported: GBP – British Pounds, EUR – Euro, USD – US Dollars, CHF – Swiss Franc
This allows passengers to select the card of their choice and authorise a secure payment via fingerprint recognition on their device.
“We’re delighted that from today we’re one of the first European airlines to introduce Apple Pay. Gone are the days of scrambling around searching for a bank card to book a flight. Checking out on our app is as easy as selecting Apple Pay and placing your finger on Touch ID. Booking flights or adding extras has never been so easy!” – James Millett, easyJet’s Head of #Digital
Since the launch of easyJet’s iPhone app in 2011 the app has evolved from easy booking and check-in functionality to include features like passport scanning, live flight tracking, mobile boarding passes and Touch ID. It is also complimented by the easyJet Apple Watch app and real-time airport push notifications for go-to-gate and bag reclaim information.
The easyJet app is available for download now from the App Store.
The post easyJet Launches Apple Pay Integration: Book &038; Pay For Flights in CHF With a Digital Fingerprint appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Image source In 1954, Fortune 500 companies accounted for around 1/3 of GDP in America. By 2000, that share had doubled to 2/3. Hidden in those numbers are the countless family farms that could not withstand the onslaught of Agribusiness and the mom & pop shops that closed when WalmartRead More
Bank Innovation
According to BusinessInsider.de Bank app users in the U.S. may become more willing to pay a small monthly subscription fee to use their #mobile banking app. This conclusion is based in a recent study by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Though the majority of survey respondents, which included 3,897 US bank app users, said they’re unwilling to pay, 21% of respondents said they’d pay $3 a month, and 40% said they’d be willing to pay $1 a month. The survey results suggest a concerted shift in consumer behavior in regards to subscriptions for #apps.
The same survey suggests interest in using subscription fees for mobile apps is gaining traction for a number of reasons:
An advice to businesses is made to be careful when considering shifting from a free service to a paid service, lest they risk alienating users. Customers unwilling to pay for an app could easily move to a competitor offering the service for free. One workaround to this problem could be the implementation of a tiered or freemium service, in which users get the basic app for free, and can pay a small subscription to receive a premium service.
Nevertheless, S&P’s survey shows how implementing a subscription model to an app has the potential to add a sizeable revenue stream to a previously free service. Other apps, such as gaming platforms or virtual assistants, could find similar interest should they investigate a subscription model.
The shift toward mobile bank apps is particularly pronounced among millennials, as more of them are moving toward digital banking. And as a result, they’re walking into their #banks‘ traditional brick-and-mortar branches less often than ever before.
This generation accounts for the greatest share of the U.S. population at 26% and the employed population at 34%, so it’s easy to see why their behaviors and preferences will have a profound effect on the future of the banking industry, particularly with regard to the way banks interact with their customers.
Third parties are expanding their role in providing services that consumers use to manage their money. And the more that role grows, the more it will disrupt the relationship between banks and their customers.
To paint a clearer picture of the future of the banking industry, John Heggestuen, managing research analyst at BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, surveyed 1,500 banked millennials (ages 18-34) on their banking behaviors and preferences — from their preferred banking devices, to what banking actions they perform on those devices, to how often they perform them. That rigorous research led to a report entitled The Digital Disruption of Retail Banking that according to Businessinsider.de dives deep into the industry by: An analysis on how millennials use bank branches and why – even though there are a large share of millennials who still use branches, making significant investments in these channels isn’t a good move for banks. Explaining how mobile payments and mobile point-of-sale adoption by small retailers will make the ATM obsolete. Describing how digital channels, particularly the smartphone, will become the foundation of the bank-customer relationship.
BusinessInsider.de points in the article some take aways from the report:
Images: businessinsider.de / bi intelligence Digital Banking Survey Q3 2015
Source: businessinsider.de
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/armindom” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Bruno Macedo”] is Corporate Senior Executive #Fintech Technologist | Researcher, Lecturer and Speaker and this article was originally published on linkedin.
Much has been written about the #future of #banking. In the end, it all seems to come down to one question: will #banks become platforms or #pipes?
In reality, there’s no question at all. Platforms are the winning business model of the 21st century and the banking industry is well aware. In fact, banks have been platforms for decades — #fintech is merely creating the latest set of bank #platform extensions. Earlier incarnations include ATMs and online bill pay for consumers.
That said, what’s happening today is forcing banks to rethink how fast they extend their platform to avoid becoming just the pipes. The advent of the cloud and the software revolution in Fintech with billions of capital being invested every quarter has brought more innovation to banking in the past two years than it has seen in the past twenty. Still, the current David taking down Goliath narrative surrounding the future of banking and finance ultimately fails to account for the reality of the situation.
While it often goes unnoticed, a great many fintech startups today rely heavily on banks to enable their innovative services. The success of financial innovations like Apple Pay for instance is happening with a great deal of participation and cooperation between #technology companies and financial institutions.
This relationship between banks and fintech underscores the reality of the financial services industry’s future. Yes, finance is evolving alongside the accelerating curve of technology, and yes, fintech is driving much of this change, but banks are – and will remain – squarely at the center of the financial universe for quite some time to come.
For one, banks have been the backbone of the modern economy since its inception. They are far too ingrained in the financial system to be removed within any foreseeable time frame.
Banks also have deep pockets, infrastructure and experience. Large market caps and long track records are clear signals to customers that banks can weather the inevitable downturn. Startups, on the other hand, are more susceptible to turbulence and market volatility — things banking customers, especially business customers, would rather avoid.
Big data is yet another boon to banks’ staying power. Banks have been collecting data on customer transactions and behavior for decades. This creates major advantages for banks. When used in the right way, this data can be leveraged to do things like identify customers that are ripe for new payment services or to mitigate and underwrite risk in innovative ways.
But despite all this, there is one hazard currently menacing banks: disintermediation. Starting with the ATM, technology has been distancing consumers from banks for quite some time. Today, their relationship with the consumer is slimmer than ever.
Meanwhile, fintech is picking up the slack. While traditional banking experiences can feel clunky, fintech products and services are designed to work with people’s lives and deliver value in new and unexpected ways. These upstarts pride themselves on delivering superior customer experiences — banking that is intuitive, mobile, cloud-based, responsive, available 24/7, you name it.
Fintech companies are also agile and built for rapid iteration — skill sets banks don’t yet have internally. This allows fintech companies to focus heavily on usability and keeping their user interfaces modern. At Bill.com, for instance, we iterate our onboarding experience every two weeks. By comparison, most banks have outsourced many key functions to third-party service providers like Fiserv and Jack Henry, severely limiting their ability to make product changes outside of rigid, long-term release cycles.
The comparative lack of innovation by banks is no surprise. For decades, banks have spent most of their resources driving to meet quarterly earnings targets, delivering consistent results and ensuring compliance — the key objectives most highly-regulated, publicly-traded financial institutions must focus on to meet its obligations to shareholders — leaving fewer resources and funds for experimentation, learning and new product development. This makes it difficult for banks to keep up with shifts in customer preferences and behavior the way that fintech can. Banks know this and it is exactly why they are starting to shift their strategies to reflect being a platform and not just the pipes.
When banks become platforms for their customers and fintech partners, they increase the value of what they have built over the past several decades and disintermediation on the consumer front becomes irrelevant. Instead, as banks fuse their platforms with fintech, innovation will accelerate creating tremendous value for everyone in the food chain.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/renelacerte” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”René Lacerte”] is CEO/Founder Bill.com and this article was originally published on linkedin.
finovo ist ein neuer Service Provider für Schweizer #Pensionskassen. Das Jungunternehmen in Opfikon (Glattpark) wickelt die Direktvergabe von #Hypotheken an Versicherte ab. Diese Alternative zu Obligationen-Anlagen ist für Pensionskassen in der aktuellen Tiefzinsphase besonders lukrativ. Allerdings haben viele Respekt vor dem Aufwand, oder das Know-how fehlt. #finovo übernimmt für Pensionskassen den gesamten Prozess der Hypothekenvergabe.
«Anlagenotstand: Pensionskassen setzen zunehmend auf Vergabe von Hypotheken»: So überschrieb
die Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften 2015 ihre Mitteilung über eine Studie der
ZHAW School of Management and Law. Das aktuelle Tiefzinsumfeld, die zunehmenden regulatorischen
Anforderungen und die gesetzlich vorgeschriebene Mindestverzinsung würden einen hohen
Renditedruck für die Vorsorgeeinrichtungen bedeuten, so die Studienautoren.
Pensionskassen müssen also neue Investitionsmöglichkeiten finden, um ihren Verpflichtungen nachzukommen. Hypotheken sind eine hervorragende Alternative etwa zu Obligationen: Sie versprechen eine bessere Rendite. Sie sind grundpfandgedeckt und damit relativ risikoarm. Und sie bleiben bei einem Zinsanstieg wertstabil, weil sie zum Nennwert bilanziert werden. Einige Pensionskassen nutzen diese Möglichkeit bereits heute.
finovo, ein neues Dienstleistungsunternehmen in Opfikon, positioniert sich deshalb mit einer ganzheitlichen Hypothekenlösung für Pensionskassen.
Christian Stöckli, Mitgründer von finovo
«Wir sind die einzigen Anbieter im Markt, die den gesamten Prozess von der Vermarktung über die Abwicklung bis zur Risikobewirtschaftung von Hypotheken managen», sagt Christian Stöckli, Mitgründer von finovo.
Sämtliche operativen Schritte werden von der Pensionskasse ausgelagert, und die einzelnen Hypothekarnehmer werden von finovo direkt und persönlich betreut.
Die Resonanz bei den Pensionskassen ist gross. Das freut den finovo-Verwaltungsratspräsidenten
und ehemaligen CEO von Swisscanto Dr. Gérard Fischer: «Viele potenzielle Kunden haben gemerkt,
dass es bei der direkten Hypothekenvergabe nur Gewinner gibt: Die Pensionskasse erwirtschaftet
eine höhere Rendite, und die Hypothekarnehmer profitieren von günstigen Zinssätzen sowie – als
Versicherte – von einer besseren Verzinsung ihrer Altersguthaben.»
Die Finovo AG wurde von den Finanzierungsspezialisten Christian Stöckli und Roger Plüss gegründet, beides langjährige Direktionsmitglieder im Bankwesen. Zum finovo-Team gehören neben ihnen und Verwaltungsratspräsident Dr. Gérard Fischer (mit langjähriger Erfahrung im Vorsorge- und Anlagegeschäft) auch Matthias Zimmermann (Verwaltungsrat, Mitgründer von jobs.ch) und Martin Diethelm (Chief #Technology Officer). Weitere Informationen zu den involvierten Personen und Fotos auf Anfrage.
The post Finovo hilft Pensionskassen Hypotheken zu vergeben appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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