Challenger banks Revolut, Starling Bank and Monzo are all reported to be out fundraising; Business Insider reports that Revolut will...
If you are in finance and only looking at banks, you are missing out on the real change agents. Here's some cross-industry action that we will unpack this week.
Amazon selected Goldman Sachs to be the lender of choice for small business loans. TikTok maker ByteDance is working with a Singaporean business family to get a financial license. And small business bank Starling is integrating Slack, energy switching service Bionic, and health insurance provider Equipsme into their marketplace. And we might as well talk about the Plaid Exchange launch, and end on the computational economy of Ethereum.
We are like the hungry at the all-you-can-eat buffet. In the beginning, there is not enough! Let's democratize access to food; to music; to transportation; to healthcare; to finance; to payments; to banking; to lending; to investing. The billions in institutional capital across universities, pensions, and sovereigns are delegated to smart portfolio managers. The day before yesterday, it was allocated by small cap stock pickers (hi Warren!). Yesterday, it was the alternative managers of hedge funds and private equity. Today, it is the trading machine and the venture capitalist. Tomorrow, it is the cryptographic artificial intelligence.
Monzo is taking action to be sure they will get through the current challenges related to COVID-19; the company currently...
Many staff members at the challenger banks are working from home with Starling and Revolut opting to split staff between...
This week, we look at:
The financial model behind Monzo, and comparisons to Revolut and Starling
How the Eastern super apps inspired the marketplace model, and why that success is hard for neobanks to replicate
Paths from losing $100 million per year to break-even and enabling digital assets and other financial products
Facebook Financial forming to take over payments and commerce
AltFi has compiled a list of the fintech companies that have started new initiatives to help consumers during challenging times;...
Reuters reports the several digital banks in the UK are still awaiting word whether they can offer government-backed loans to...
Businesses across Europe have reported vastly different experiences in their efforts to secure the financial support promised by their respective...
In this conversation, we talk with Anne Boden, the CEO of Starling Bank. Starling has just turned profitable, and reached several significant milestones in terms of 1.8 million clients, $4 billion in deposits, and $1.5 billion of lending.
That is quite meaningfully ahead of our model, and probably ahead of everyone’s model, of where neobanks would be in 2020. While COVID has accelerated the digital lifestyle, Anne credits deeper demographic, technology, and cultural insights and choices she has made in building Starling for success.