Happy Tueday, Fellow Fintechers!
We’re hoping our friends in the US enjoyed a wonderful, albeit muted, Fourth of July! Let’s hope we’ll be back to fireworks (the fun kind) and parades for July 4, 2021.
In the meantime, we have lots of new fintech content for our readers, starting with our Wealthtech Weekly column from Vasyl Soloshchuk with news from Axos Wealth, Wealthfront, FIS & more.
This week, our 3 Questions column features Jim Row of Entoro Capital, a middle market digital investment bank which offers private securities through its online platform Offerboard. Row offers insight into where he thinks capital markets are headed, why coronavirus has sped up the targeted implementation date for this transformation and how he thinks AI and regtech are the top future trends to watch for.
This week, Linda Ding of Laserfiche has guest authored a piece for us on the importance for advisors of going digital in order to continue conducting business as usual. We’ve been beating that drum for years now but it seems that the reality is now here.
FA Mag Senior Editor Chris Robbins has once again filled our roster with several important industry stories, including news that Envestnet has deepened its fixed income trading integration with Flyer, and word that a new joint content management platform for investment companies and wealth management firms – 4U – has just launched.
Robbins also reports that 12 year old roboinvestment firm Wealthfront has increased its traditional banking offering with more checking account features and a debit card. Most US robos have been seeking to launch more traditional banking features for some time, but have been tripped up with bank charter regulations. In this case, the additional offerings came via a partnership with Green Dot Bank.
Robbins has also reported this week news that Prudential has joined a consortium of other major financial firms seeking to combat social inequality in finance with a $10M investment in The Financial Solutions Lab (FSL). The FSL encompasses a fintech accelerator, a non-profit fintech exchange and a collaborative that explores future fintech innovations not yet available that may address “unmet financial health needs.”
On another front, FA Mag Senior Editor Jeff Schlegel has reported that Fusion Acquisition Corp. recently went public as a “blank check” company for the purpose of “acquiring a private entity within the fintech, asset or wealth management sectors with the aim to boost the entity's operations and unlock its value by eventually taking it public.” CEO John James is Sydney-based but the firm did its offering in the US on the NYSE, so that would seem to indicate that they are seeking a US-based acquisition as well.
Finally, on a completely different note, we finish up with an interesting read from crypto thought leader Bill Taylor on a potential Gray Swan situation unfolding in the Far East around events presently occurring in North Korea, Hong Kong and China.
Read up and be in the know!
Yours in Fintech,
Cindy Taylor