Happy Tuesday, Fellow Fintechers!
Here we are in August already, halfway through summer! It’s been an unusual one, to say the least.

That said, we continue to have a plethora of news in the fintech and wealthtech sectors. It never stops and just keeps coming. We begin this week’s newsletter once again with our Wealthtech Weekly column from Vasyl Soloshchuk with news coming out of Apex Clearing, Hearsay and Envestnet | Moneyguide, amongst others. Our Q&A story this week is with Jason Urban, CEO of Drawbridge Lending, which offers structured solutions in the digital asset space.

This week, Financial Advisor magazine Senior Editor Chris Robbins has once again filed several fintech stories for us. We had two major acquisition stories break this past week – news that Salesforce had acquired a position in social media fintech darling, Hearsay Systems and word that Refinitiv is acquiring strategic assets from Advisor Software, Inc. This is particularly interesting news, give then Refinitiv is queued up to be acquired by the London Stock Exchange. The pending sale was anticipated for later in 2020 – now it is being reported as expecting to close early in 2021. Just two days ago, it was announced that the US Justic Department’s Antitrust Division had just closed its investigation into the acquisition, saying it would not harm American companies or competition.

However, the sale is still under review in the EU, and it was recently announced that the London Stock Exchange may offload it’s Milan business unit in order to help push through the sale. There’s always a back story to these stories, and in this case, it’s that Refinitiv is moving boldly forward with business as usual and even new acquisitions – even as it is awaiting the closing of this larger deal.

FA Associate Editor Jackie Sergeant has filed a fascinating piece outlining results from a recent Broadridge Financial survey on investors’ preference for interacting with their advisors via social media and other digital vehicles.

Robbins has also published additional posts for us this week including news that Fidelity has launched a new mobile app – Fidelity Spire – to compete with robo juggernaut Robinhood. Robbins also interviewed Bob Cortright, CEO of Drivewealth, who shared the firm’s explosive growth in the digital trading platform since the pandemic hit.

We finish up with a look at digital insurance platforom Covr, which Robbins reports has seen a conversion in the past 12 months from 10% to 62% of sales being pushed through entirely by digital journeys. It seems the fintech “revolution” is no more – it is now mainstream.

I firmly believe that FA Mag now has the most superior coverage of the fintech and wealthtech sectors available in the US B2B financial media. Read up – and be in the fintech know!

Yours in Fintech,
Cindy Taylor