Banks are loosening up internally so they can work with startups

As banks and financial technology startups collaborate more closely, banks are beginning to pull apart the image of their institutions as segmented bureaucratic machines that can’t innovate quickly.

With public confidence in them in the U.S. below 50 percent across the political spectrum, banks have a branding problem — one that gets even more problematic when they have to work with those outside the industry.

Fail fast is not in their ethos,” said Jon Zanoff, founder of Empire Startups and managing director of the Barclays Techstars accelerator in New York — one of several panelists commenting on industry culture at the FinXTech Annual Summit Wednesday, part of New York Fintech Week. “If you’re not paying people to take chances and fail, you’re not going to innovate.”

Wells Fargo is one of the banks that has taken active interest in facilitating dialogues with startups. While most major banks have accelerator programs, Wells Fargo said one of the focuses of its startup program is helping banks understand startup culture and vice versa. Wells Fargo’s accelerator program mentors companies for six months and provides up to $500,000 of equity investments for selected companies. The companies may also work on proof of concepts across different business lines within the bank after the completing of the program.

“We’ve created an internal accelerator where we bring fintech companies in  — we can learn and they can learn,”  said Sherrie Littlejohn, Wells Fargo’s evp for internal innovation strategies. “It’s about our learning how they think what’s possible and also for them to understand what it’s like to work in a large corporation and how to work with regulators.”

How workspaces are organized is key, say experts. Zanoff said that what facilitates creativity in the Barclays Techstars accelerator program —  a 13-week development for startups run by Barclays Bank and Techstars — is the open design that encourages agile teams, which represents a shift for an industry synonymous with large boardrooms.

“Much of what Barclays is doing is hedging and understanding what a modern workplace may look like — what does it mean to have small agile teams of three to five people working on laptops in open working spaces,” he said. “How fast can they move, how can we integrate that technology?”

For smaller banks, a focused approach ensures that the relationship will be productive. Boston-based branchless virtual bank, Radius Bank, has a staff member dedicated to partnerships with startups who carefully vets each startup for compatibility.

“Are we aligned with what you’re trying to create? Are you going to solve a problem for me?” said Michael Butler, Radius Bank’s president and CEO, speaking about the startup vetting process.

A more thorough assessment process is important for smaller institutions, because a failing startup could have a much bigger impact on the bank’s operations, said Jay Tuli, svp of retail banking and residential lending at Leader Bank.

We’re going to vet how long and why they stay in business, and are they profitable, and if they went out of business, how would it affect us.”

Citi FinTech CEO Yolande Piazza: We’re not too big to change

Bankers like to say their organizations are actually technology companies with a banking license. At the end of the day, they’ve still got that large bank feel, but Citi’s fintech unit is dedicated to making its workplace feel like a startup.

Yolande Piazza has been at Citi for almost 30 years. Earlier this month, she was named chief executive officer of Citi FinTech, after acting as interim chief for seven months and serving as its chief operating officer before that.

Since Citi FinTech launched in 2015 it has been focusing on creating mobile-first banking experiences for its customers. In December it launched its first product, a mobile-first banking tailored to its Citigold customers that also includes wealth management services. A month before that it also opened many of its application programming interfaces to third-party developers through its API Developer Hub.

Tearsheet caught up with Piazza on her plans for the unit.

You’ve been at Citi almost 30 years and now you’re leading Citi FinTech. How has “fintech” evolved?
There’s a common misconception that large banking organizations aren’t able to operate like a startup, that they don’t have that mentality, that they’re too big to change. The word fintech without a doubt applies to startups in the space but a lot of that is how you pull in these startup-type organizations with the big banks to create a set of financial services that are orientated to the customer.

What’s an area of fintech you’re most passionate about?
Aggregation and insights. Looking at the future of banking, I believe we have a social obligation to the health, wealth and education for our customers; it’s about understanding their journey, what they want to do with their money and at what point in their lives they are. It’s also about helping someone understand where they fit within their demographic and helping them to meet their financial goals. If we can take out the legalese out of the messaging of banking and really help people understand the impact of the decisions they make — that will make a difference to people.

Many people dwell on technology when talking about digital overhaul. Can you talk about the importance of people?
We had the opportunity to pull a lot of very talented people from within Citi that had those experiences and blend them with a lot of external talent that didn’t necessarily come from the banking industry, from companies like PayPal, Amazon or IBM. We have people here who have started and run their own businesses. Bringing together that kind of talent to challenge different people’s experiences with money has made such a huge difference.

What has that blend of different talent and experience done for your work culture?
We’ve spent a lot of time creating a nontraditional banking culture. We operate in a very agile manner with the product, development, design teams working together in a completely integrated manner. They do their work through stand-up meetings on a daily basis, we don’t have offices – I do not have an office, I sit on the floor. We celebrate failure – if someone makes a mistake they actually win prizes for sharing that, all they have to do is demonstrate they learned something from it – to really create an environment of creativity and ambition for the product and how we serve our customers.

The Developer Hub also sort of brings those different talents together.
[The Developer Hub] actually covers 85 percent of the core services a customer performs. We wanted to expose many of our APIs to a much larger community, to be exposed to the services they’re working on and give them the opportunity to come to Citi to uncover and unveil where those hidden gems are, those additional opportunities. Instead of just focusing on ideas that target all things Citi and talking to our customers, we now have a whole new partner base of developers and tech organizations looking to integrate with us and can now use our APIs.

Do you ever run into problems being a bank and acting like a startup?
It doesn’t make sense with every project, especially when you’re dealing with backend legacy systems, so we identify where that process makes sense and get that deployed across Citi. It was also about changing that mindset. FinTech was set up to be able to prove we can operate at speed while protecting the customer and challenge our existing processes and protocols that makes it difficult to operate at speed.

 

Startups welcome new government charter for financial tech firms

The Department of the Treasury moved a step closer in its efforts to allow financial tech firms to apply for bank licenses yesterday. The department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a draft licensing manual that includes requirements that financial tech companies need to meet when applying for national banking charters. It’s a move welcomed by some startups, but at least one industry watcher warns that the process may give an unfair advantage to later-stage companies.

“This charter is really only going to viable for established fintech firms — those who have a pretty good understanding of what their bread and butter is,” said Brian Knight, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

The OCC is accepting comments on the document until April 14. Among its draft set of requirements, it’s asking for a detailed business plan, a commitment to financial inclusion and safeguards against unfair behavior towards consumers.

Knight said the business plan is one area where newer companies may be at a disadvantage.

“Any material deviation from the business plan has to get a non-objection letter from the OCC,” said Knight. “Given how quickly the newer firms find themselves pivoting, the concern is you’re going to put in the application and you’re going to go into the OCC black hole for a few months.” He added that an early-stage company may not last long enough to wait for OCC approval of the change of business plan.

Startup entrepreneurs, however, commended the OCC’s steps, particularly its emphasis on financial inclusion.

“The licensing efforts are going to increase the number of competitors in the financial services space generally,” said Adam Dell, CEO of personal finance app Clarity Money. “It’s our belief that competition is a good thing as it relates to regulated industries that have a history of taking advantage of consumers.”

Dell argues that its focus on financial inclusion is important, despite the segmentation in the field that offers services to a range of customer categories across the income spectrum.

Online lender SoFi, known to target higher-income customers, also welcomed the OCC’s direction, noting that the charter “could potentially lead to efficiencies and innovation in the online lending space.”

 

3 key pieces of advice to build a fintech startup from a leading investor

SenaHill's investing philosophy for investing in financial services

Building a financial services firm from the ground up is hard. There are all the vagaries of building a business from scratch: hiring the right people, finding the proper product/market fit, building a brand, and acquiring customers. But, for fintech startups, there are also the specific struggles of competing in the financial sector. Regulation requires firms to tightrope their growth and operations. Sure, there’s $1 trillion up for grabs in the financial services marketplace, but compared to other industries, it’s a long and expensive process to acquire new customers.

Around $12 billion of venture capital flowed into upstart financial services firms in 2015. The growing investing interest in early-stage fintech firms has compelled many generalist investment firms to dabble in the industry. But they’re only a handful of firms that live and breathe this stuff and are entirely focused on the sector. SenaHill is one of those firms.

The firm was founded by Neil DeSena (built Goldman Sachs’ industry-leading multi-asset trading system, REDI) and Justin Brownhill (founder and CEO of The Receivables Exchange, the first-to-market, real-time online institutional marketplace for the purchase and sale of working capital). SenaHill is a merchant bank which means it essentially provides 2 services: investment banking and principal investing. The firm doesn’t have outside limited partners, which means it invests its own partners’ capital.

Kyle Zasky, a partner at the firm, offers 3 tips to entrepreneurs making a go at building the next generation Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, or CNBC.

Find partners with real experience: Building a company in financial services comes with its own challenges. Zasky sees lots of entrepreneurs who have a sound product and strategy but just don’t quite understand how the finance industry works. “Founders need to do a lot of things right, including getting in front of the right partners,” Zasky told Tradestreaming. “In financial services, getting the right anchor clients is key.” Zasky should know — like all the partners at SenaHill, he’s an entrepreneur at heart. In 1995, at the age of 23, he launched his own electronic brokerage, EdgeTrade. 12 years later he sold his firm to Knight Capital.

So, Zasky and his SenaHill partners focus on their collective backgrounds when talking to young firms trying to make a dent in financial services. He encourages fintech startups to find investment partners who have large rolodexes and are willing to put in the hard work for their portfolio companies. “I almost feel like I have the same commitment to the 5 or 6 portfolio companies in my portfolio as I did to my own company when I was an entrepreneur,” he remarked.

Identify and hire the right people: Hiring people at early stage financial services firms is particularly hard: they’re in high demand and Zasky thinks most millennials would rather work at Facebook or Google than on Wall Street. Hiring is such an acute problem that SenaHill actually invested in a firm, untapt, that bills itself as something like an eHarmony for technologists and the finance companies looking to hire them. The firm’s platform takes programmers’ skills and via an algorithm, tries to match them to the skillsets required at hiring firms. When Zasky met the firm, he liked the business, liked the scalability, and because they were targeting fintech, he felt his firm had the connectivity to know the right people at banks and broker dealers. “You don’t have to work for Facebook to have a fulfilling career,” he remarked.

Work with a lifecycle investor: Every investor has his or her own model. Some are early stage and turn over the reins to a larger institutional investor later in a firm’s growth cycle. Others provide niche bridge financing. SenaHill’s Zasky says he gets in early and intends to continue supporting his portfolio companies down the road. That can come in the form of advising a portfolio company on a financing or putting more of his firm’s own money in. One SenaHill investment, Market Realist, appreciated this approach. The New York-based firm bills itself as the largest independent provider of ETF research along with comprehensive coverage of master limited partnerships, mutual funds, closed-end funds, real estate investment trusts, and 350 stocks of the S&P 500.

Michael Rodov, founder and CEO of the firm, said that he appreciated SenaHill’s MO. In his case, he looked to raise money from institutional investors shortly after completing a friends and family round for Market Realist. “When we had ups and downs, they’ve always been a great partner” he admitted. “When we had capital needs, SenaHill always stepped up to be a partner.”

For Rodov, this type of involvement was really important as he sought more investment as his firm grew. SenaHill also provided Market Realist with strategic partner introductions early on that helped launch the firm, which now services an audience of 800,000 investors. He’s been able to “lean heavily” on his investor, a firm he feels is respected widely. And that’s opened doors for him and Market Realist.

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The Startups: Who’s shaking things up (Week ending March 20, 2016)

fintech startups shaking things up

[alert type=yellow ]Every week, Tradestreaming highlights startups in the news, making things happen. The following is just part of this week’s news roundup. You can get these updates delivered direct to your inbox by signing up for the Tradestreaming newsletters.[/alert]

Startups raising/Investors investing

Future Finance raises $171m to grow its student loan platform in Europe (TechCrunch)
Future Finance — a startup based out of Dublin that provides loans to students — is today announcing a £119 million ($171 million) round of investment — £19 million in equity and £100 million towards future loans made through the platform.

Human capital investing platform, Cumulus Funding raises $36m (PYMNTS)
Cumulus Funding, a consumer finance company specializing in providing Income Share Agreements (“ISAs”) to individuals seeking a more flexible consumer finance alternative, has announced a major funding round today.

StanChart PE arm, Goldman invest $28 million in Vietnam mobile payments startup (Reuters)
A private-equity arm of Standard Chartered Plc and Goldman Sachs have invested a combined $28 million in Vietnamese startup M_Service, the operator of mobile e-wallet MoMo, the companies said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Online lending platform EZBob raises $28m (VentureBeat)
Online lending platform EZBob has raised £20m (about $28.3 million) in Series C funding in a round led by Leumi Partners and Oaktree Capital Management.

Next Insurance raises $13m to sell insurance to small businesses (VentureBeat)
Company founded by executives who sold Check to Intuit for $400m in 2014,Next Insurance announced a $13 million seed round led by Zeev Ventures.
The startup said that it plans to use the funds to launch its insurance sales platform for small businesses this spring — in a market in which “99 percent of small commercial insurance is sold offline through agents.”

Latin American P2P lender Afluenta banks $8m (Finextra)
Afluenta, the leading Latin America peer-to-peer lending network, announced an investment round from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector institution of the World Bank Group, and Elevar Equity, an impact venture capital firm.

InstaRem raises $5m to make overseas money transfers cheaper and faster in Asia (TechCrunch)
InstaRem, an international remittance payments startup headquartered in Singapore, has raised $5 million in a round led by Vertex Ventures.

Charting platform, ChartIQ raises $4m (Finextra)
ChartIQ, a leader in HTML5 financial charting for capital markets, announces that is has raised $4 million in a Series A investment, led by Illuminate Financial, with participation from existing investors ValueStream, Tribeca Angels and additional angel investors.

Real estate crowdfunding marketplace /software, CrowdStreet secures $3.5m (Crowdfund Insider)
Another real estate crowdfunding platform raises money. This time, it’s CrowdStreet.
“CrowdStreet has experienced incredible growth since launching its marketplace in 2014, which was complemented by our SaaS offering that debuted in May 2015. Our unique offering has attracted over 40 commercial real estate clients, with more than $1 billion in institutional-quality assets managed through the CrowdStreet platform.”

The Startups: Who’s shaking things up

DailyWorth, financial media co, launching female-focused roboadvisor (WealthManagement)
Advancements in technology may also be creating a shift in the other direction, with media companies becoming increasingly involved in providing financial services. One website, DailyWorth, is preparing to launch a new automated digital advice service called WorthFM.

OCC: Fintech firms inquiring about national bank charters (Banking Journal)
Several fintech companies—including one virtual currency firm—have made inquiries to the OCC about applying for national bank charters, American Banker reported this week, citing comments by OCC Chief Counsel Amy Friend at a recent fintech forum at George Washington University. Friend said firms could “be seeking the ‘regulatory umbrella’ of federal preemption of state rules,” since many are challenged by the number of state licenses needed to operate as nonbank lenders or money transmitters.

Crowdfunding platform, SyndicateRoom becomes IPO matchmaker with approval of London Stock Exchange (Business Weekly)
SyndicateRoom has become the first crowdfunding platform to join the public markets.
It has been granted intermediary status by the London Stock Exchange, allowing crowdfunding investors to participate in IPOs and placings on the UK’s main market and AIM.

 

trov’s Scott Walchek on designing the world’s first on-demand insurance for single items

trov inventory and insurance app

Scott Walchek is CEO and Founder of trov

What is trov and what was the genesis story? What was the inspiration behind starting it?

Scott Walchek, trov
Scott Walchek, trov

Trov is an application and digital insurance platform that together reinvent the way people insure their things by harnessing the information about all they own. Designed for the emerging generations of digital natives, Trov completely redefines the way people protect their possessions by letting them choose just the things they care to protect, and engage insurance for as long as they need it – a year, a month, a week, day, hour…whatever.

Together, the Trov app and platform enable the world’s first on-demand insurance for single items and feature micro-premiums, micro-duration policies, and entirely disintermediated claims – all from a smartphone. This “streaming insurance” will empower numerous new use cases including automatically turning-on protection based on date, time, location, and event.

In 2010, for the first time in history the make up of Global Household Wealth was evenly split between financial assets (cash and its myriad equivalents), and tangible assets (personal and real property) [from 2011 Credit Suisse Wealth Databook]. It intrigued me that while there were innumerable tools for analyzing and managing financial assets, there were no similar and simple tools for managing tangible wealth. That intrigue was followed by a recognition that there was enormous value latent in the information about the things that people own – and if we could capture that information and give people agency over it on their mobile devices, then we could positively impact numerous substantial markets. The first of these market disruptions would be in the P/C insurance space where emerging generations were demanding their financial services be delivered on their mobile devices, on-demand, and a la carte.

Insuring belongings has traditionally been hampered by the inefficiency of cataloguing all our stuff. How does trov change all that? And in doing so, how does the role of insurance change?

One of the biggest problems with traditional home contents insurance is that people pay a set amount of money year on year, without many questions, yet are often unsure what is actually being covered. We frequently hear of incidents when people report claims for their belongings and then their most valuable items are not actually covered.

Trov provides on-demand protection for the things that are important to you and you always know exactly what is covered and in what situations. Instead of trying to document all of your important items after an incident occurs, Trov makes it ridiculously easy to collect and update information about the things that are important to you – as you acquire them. You are then given the option to easily “swipe to protect” the items that are most important to you and then easily “swipe to unprotect” items that you may have discarded, sold or have lost value to you.

Furthermore, we’re working on opportunities for adaptive protection that is adjusted based on your situation. Imagine having insurance for your skis turned ON automatically when the ski season begins and OFF in the Summer, when you no longer need the same level of insurance.

The role of insurance will change from a once-a-year transactional relationship to a more active ongoing relationship with your things –  protecting just what you want, when you want – so you can get back to enjoying them.

What were some of the challenges in making insurance as easy as interacting with our phones? How did you solve for them?

Trov is 100% mobile, meaning it has no desktop/browser version.  This is a self-applied constraint that has forced us to be very selective in the features we introduce. Furthermore, by keeping the application entirely mobile, it has actually allowed us to introduce more unique features that are only available on mobile devices. These include things like taking photos with the app, detecting location for your home, scanning barcodes and receipts. If we had a desktop version, then none of these features would be possible.

Insurance today is bogged down by heavy process and forms, often requiring the need to talk directly to a person. By moving the entire process to the phone we’re making getting insurance as simple as a ‘1-click’ Amazon purchase. What’s more, claims can be as simple as a quick text message exchange with reimbursement or shipping of a replacement item happening in minutes – instead of days or weeks.

By placing the entire insurance process on a phone, we quickly realized which processes were absolutely necessary and which were simply functions of an arcane insurance model. Needless to say, we discarded what wasn’t necessary and made the entire process much simpler.

What’s in store for 2016 for you and trov?

In 2016, we will begin to roll out our on-demand insurance platform.  Limited release launch will take place in Australia and the UK in the first half of 2016.

Photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives via Visualhunt.com / CC BY

[podcast] The top 10 fintech stories of 2015

top stories about financial technology in 2015

2015 was in many ways a watershed year for fintech.

According to Pitchbook, it looks like 2015 will finish with close to $8 billion worth of venture capital invested in financial technology startups. To put that into perspective, there was $4.7 billion worth of fintech investments in 2014. It looks like there will be close to $10 billion of M&A done in 2015, as well.

Based on our coverage, here’s what we believe to be the top 10 most important fintech stories of 2015.

Listen to the FULL episode

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Protect your downside and follow these 20 top insurance startups in 2016

top insurance startups

Insurance as an industry has been one of the last to be reimagined in the Internet era. That’s all changing now: entrepreneurs and institutions are investing heavily to turn out the next generation of insurance companies from the ground up. Institutional capital is betting that this new class of insurance companies will make a dent in the multi-trillion insurance industry.

Industry experts like Santander’s Pascal Bouvier point to insurance tech as one of the last, and ripest, fields for investment capital in 2016. Indeed, in 2015, over $800 million of risk capital was invested into startups in the insurance technology, now called, insurtech, space.
2015 insurance tech investment trends

Here’s a quick rundown on the state of fintech, investments, and the digital disruption of the insurance industry:

    • The US insurance industry accounts for $1 trillion, or approximately 7 percent, of gross domestic product (US Treasury)
    • At $831.5 million, investment in insurance tech this year is already up nearly 10 times what it was in 2010 (CBInsights)
    • 1 in 4 insurance agents will be gone by 2018 (Insurance Business America)
    • 47 percent of households couldn’t cover an emergency expense of $400 (Report on Economic Well-Being)

Insurance technology is a broad field that includes all different types of insurance, distributors, risk and regulatory managers, big data and enabling technology.

map of the insurance technology startup field

One of the things that makes this surge in interest and money backing insurtech startups is that it’s bring driven by outsiders. The same disruptive force emanating from Silicon Valley that’s changing transportation and logistics (Uber), music consumption and distribution (Spotify), and travel and lodging (Airbnb) is now turning its sights on one of the oldest and largest economic sectors: insurance. We’ve seen both industry insiders and talented outsiders enter the industry and expect that trend to continue.

We’ve compiled a list of the top 20 insurance startups worth keeping tabs on throughout 2016. Compiling top lists are tough — like in most fields, there are way more than 20 companies that deserve such recognition.  The methodology we used in compiling this list included startups who’ve raised over $2 million, had a strong signal ranking on AngelList, and had a relatively robust Crunchbase profile. We also attempted to create a broad list that was inclusive of different approaches to impacting the insurance industry and therefore, we limited the number of startups doing something similar (say, direct distribution to consumers, for example). So, to that extent, this is a subjective list. For those that didn’t quite fit but were worth noting, we created an Honorable Mention category at the end of the list.

Top Insurance Startups

View more lists from Zack Miller

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The Startups: Who’s shaking things up (Week ending December 6th, 2015)

fintech startups shaking things up

[alert type=yellow ]Every week, Tradestreaming highlights startups in the news, making things happen. The following is just part of this week’s news roundup. You can get these updates delivered direct to your inbox by signing up for the Tradestreaming weekly newsletter.[/alert]

ApplePie Capital’s Denise Thomas on enabling investors to lend money to the right franchises, franchise owners (Tradestreaming)
Online lending marketplaces are changing the way capital is deployed and ApplePie has an interesting approach: small business loans to franchisees.

Cookies Wants To Become The Venmo Of Europe (TechCrunch)
Cookies is all about paying your friends without any fees. And now it intends to massively expand in Europe.

Trulioo’s Stephen Ufford: “Missing element to provide financial services for the 2.5 billion unbanked lies in a digital footprint” (Tradestreaming)
User identification is a seemingly simple problem, yet it stands in the way of truly opening up fintech applications. Until now, doing it well has remained elusive. Trulioo is trying to change that.

Number26 Launches Its Bank Of The Future In 6 New Countries (TechCrunch)
If you don’t like your current bank, Number26 may appeal to you. The German startup has been trying to reinvent the average banking experience in Germany and is now expanding throughout Europe.

Wealthsimple acquires online brokerage pioneer ShareOwner (Newswire)
Largest Canadian roboadvisor ($400M), Wealthsimple acquires online brokerage, ShareOwner.

SoFi’s Mike Cagney on valuation (Business Insider)
SoFi CEO Mike Cagney thinks the company could be a $30 billion business. Will he be right?

Startups raising/Investors investing

Australian Fintech Tyro Payments Raises $72M Led By Tiger Global (TechCrunch)
Australian financial tech company Tyro Payments plans to challenge the country’s leading retail banks after scoring AUD $100 million (about $72 million).

Bee Raises $4.6 Million to Deliver Banking Services (WSJ)
Banking startup Bee (which provides bank accounts, debit cards and financial services aimed at people who live in low- and middle-income neighborhoods) secures investment capital.

Clearpool secures $8 million investment (Finextra)
The electronic trading software development and agency execution business announced it has received an $8 million investment from growth equity firm, Edison Partners.

SMB Lending Technology Provider Mirador Secures $7M (Let’s Talk Payments)
Lending as a service getting more traction…and more money. Companies like Mirador help banks compete in online lending.

Q2 Acquires Social Money in $10 Million Deal (Finovate)
Formerly known as Smarty Pig, Social Money helps financial services companies better engage their customers by offering them savings solutions such as GoalSaver, a customized, bank-audited goal-saving system.

Startup Tracker’s Jeremiah Smith on how Twitter is a great distribution medium for his complement to CrunchBase (Tradestreaming)
Startup Tracker is changing the way investors and competitors research startups.

Prosper’s BillGuard Unlocks Premium Features for All Users (Finovate)
On the heels of being acquired by Prosper, the expense-management and fraud-tracking application made some of its most popular premium features available for free.

Green Dot to Enter Lending Space with Loan Marketplace (Bank Innovation)
Prepaid player Green Dot is stepping into the lending game with a marketplace for loans. The move will happen in 2016, CEO Steve Streit announced this week.

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The Startups: Who’s shaking things up (Week ending November 29th, 2015)

fintech startups shaking things up

[alert type=yellow ]Every week, Tradestreaming highlights startups in the news, making things happen. The following is just part of this week’s news roundup. You can get these updates delivered direct to your inbox by signing up for the Tradestreaming weekly newsletter.[/alert]

Stephen Klein: LOYAL3 is turning IPO stock into a powerful, new brand engagement currency (Tradestreaming)
With LOYAL3, it’s not just investing in companies you know – it’s investing in brands you love. The company is building an interesting distribution model connecting investors with brands and brands with their customers.

RealtyMogul Completes Innovative Debt and Equity Combo Transaction (BusinessWire)
RealtyMogul announces a first of its kind, full capital stack transaction combining debt and equity with the successful purchase of a 112-unit apartment in North Carolina. Investors using equity crowdfunding for real estate are getting treated to a lot of innovative investment opportunities.

The emergence of regtech as a catalyst for innovation (BANKNXT)
What are regtech (regulation technology) startups working on, and can they solve banks’ compliance headache? This article describes what regtech is and how it can jumpstart a lot of innovation across the fintech ecosystem.

Fundrise’s Brandon Jenkins on the need to keep raising the quality of real estate deals online (Tradestreaming)
Fundrise is seeing a lot of success with its online real estate investing platform. And now, it just raised $50M for an e-REIT for everyone as part of the new crowdfunding rules.

VCs investing over $500 Million in follow-on funding for companies crowdfunding (Crowdfund Insider)
If over $500M of follow-on funding happened off your platform, you’d want a piece of that, too, right? That’s one big reason why Indiegogo is interested in getting into the equity crowdfunding game.

StockTwits and Robinhood: Teamed up to Provide Social Trading (Howard Lindzon)
As part of a wider integration push, Robinhood announced an integration with the investor social network, StockTwits. Like an investment idea your connection is pitching? Click and trade – for free.

Bleu Unveils its Beacon-Powered Point-of-Sale Solution (Finovate)
Bleu’s solution around Bluetooth technology can move payment data over long distances and ranges: from a nearby transaction at a fast casual restaurant terminal to reaching a terminal in a fancier restaurant that may be several meters away.

Apple Pay to Be Available in China by February 2016 (Let’s Talk Payments)
In the latest quarter, China amounted to 27% of Apple’s revenues and now the WSJ reports Apple is launching its payments into the Chinese market early next year.

Trōv: a new way to insure the things people care about (Daily Fintech)
“Trōv is an app that collects data about your things, builds it into a list, then provides machine enhanced risk pricing for single item coverage. Trōv provides micro-duration policies (down to the second), charges micro-premiums (down to the cent) and uses chat robots to manage claims.”

Startups raising/Investors investing

Vanare | NestEgg Raises $3.25 Million in Seed Capital to Drive Fintech Innovation (Biz Journals)
Last week, Vanare announced the launch of Synapse, the first-ever fully customizable white-label roboadvisor API. The simple, flexible and scalable solution allows financial service firms the ability to create their own user interface (UI) so that their clients have a seamless experience using the firm’s existing website.

Interview with Santander InnoVentures managing partner Mariano Belinky (Business Insider)
Santander InnoVentures managing partner Mariano Belinky talks blockchain, roboadvisors, and challenger banks.

Online Lender LoanDepot Tries Plan B After Canceling IPO (American Banker)
Bryan Sullivan, the CFO at LoanDepot, talks about its growth prospects without fuel from an initial public offering, how getting consumers to opt for home equity lines of credit is tough, and why he considers the nonbank a disruptor.

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