Savers hoping to use new “pension dashboard” services to track their retirement savings will only be able to see six out of 10 accounts due to poor data quality, according to a new analysis. Dashboard services are expected to be launched in the UK later this year, giving savers the ability to see all their pension pots — and their combined value — in one online hub for the first time. A new analysis suggests they will offer...
Fintechs have done it again. It's clear that investors' appetite for fintech grew in 2019. We continue to be blown away by the level of innovation in the financial services ecosystem, created by companies looking to enable incumbent financial institutions and other early-stage businesses looking to disrupt the status quo. We also continue to see a proliferation in the number and types of firms providing financial products and services to consumers, from traditional banks to technology and ecommerce businesses....
By Braiden Coleman, Kenneth J. Merkley, Joseph Pacelli Advances in financial technology (FinTech) have revolutionized various product offerings in the financial services industry. One area of particular interest for this technology is the production of investment recommendations. Our study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the properties of investment recommendations generated by “Robo-Analysts,” which are human-analyst-assisted computer programs conducting automated research analysis. Our results indicate that Robo-Analysts differ from traditional “human” research analysts across several dimensions. First, Robo-Analysts collectively produce...
This month marked one of the largest fintech acquisitions of all times, Visa’s purchase of Plaid for $5.3 billion. It is a validation of fintech in a literal sense – Plaid is a key enabler to many of the leading fintech players, and critical in simplifying the onboarding flow and integration of players. It may also be a bellwether for the year: 2020 may be the year for fintech. Four important and interlocking trends will drive this. 1. ...
By Douglas W. Arner, Janos Nathan Barberis, Ross P. Buckley “FinTech”, a contraction of “Financial technology”, refers to technology enabled financial solutions. It is often seen today as the new marriage of financial services and information technology. However, the interlinkage of finance and technology has a long history and has evolved over three distinct eras, during which finance and technology have evolved together: first in the analogue context then with a process of digitalization of finance from the late...
The birth and growth of financial technology developed mostly over the last ten years. So as we look ahead, what does the next decade have in store? I believe we’re starting to see early signs: in the next ten years, fintech will become portable and ubiquitous as it moves to the background and centralizes into one place where our money is managed for us. When I started working in fintech in 2012, I had trouble tracking competitive search terms...
By Francesco D'Acunto (Boston College), Thomas Rauter (University of Chicago - Booth School of Business), Christoph Scheuch (Vienna Graduate School of Finance; Vienna University of Economics and Business), Michael Weber (University of Chicago - Finance) We study the consumption response to the provision of credit lines to individuals that previously did not have access to credit combined with the possibility to elicit directly a large set of preferences, beliefs, and motives. As expected, users react to the availability of credit...
By Gayatri Murthy, Maria Fernandez-Vida As Fintech companies targeting poor and underserved customers grow and scale, there is a lack of granularity on how their business models solve pain points in financial inclusion and what the industry can learn from the iterations in their business models. CGAP launched a fintech initiative in 2016 to better understand these innovations and draw clear linkages to financial inclusion, where they existed. We worked with 18 fintechs in Africa and South Asia that...
Digital bank Revolut announced on Thursday it has teamed up with authorized by the pensions regulator, Smart Pension, to launch its new business pension offering. Users will now be able to set up their business accounts and pension auto-enrolment within minutes through this collaboration. “When you sign up for a Revolut for Business account before April 30th 2020, your employees receive a preferential rate on their pension fees. Workplace pensions and automatic enrolment are compulsory for businesses across the UK, and the introduction...
In African fintech, the fourth quarter of 2019 brought big money to new entrants. Chinese investors put $220 million into OPay and PalmPay — two fledgling startups with plans to scale in Nigeria and the broader continent. Several sources told me the big bucks had created anxiety for more than few payments ventures in Nigeria with similar strategies and smaller coffers. They may not need to fret just yet, however: lessons from Africa’s most successful mobile-money case study, M-Pesa,...
