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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
CNBC reported today that Quicken Loans is planning to go public this year. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan are helping manage the deal.
Founded in 1985 by Dan Gilbert, Quicken Loans has risen to the ranks of the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. It’s unclear what the company will be priced. However, as CNN explained, “The targeted valuation is still being decided, but it is likely in the tens of billions of dollars… That would imply a multi-billion-dollar IPO, one of the largest – if not the largest – this year.”
The spike in mortgage refinances has been beneficial to the Michigan-based company. In April, Quicken Loans experienced the biggest month in its history, closing $21 billion in mortgages.
There is no official word on when (or if) the IPO will take place, but CNBC reports the offering could take place as early as next month.
In some parts of the globe, cities are slowly relaxing their social distancing guidelines. Businesses are beginning to open up and residents are once again venturing out to offices and into storefronts.
Some tech companies have made the move to become remote-first, keeping employees out of physical offices for the foreseeable future. Banks, however, face regulatory scrutiny over communication and documentation, and can’t allow their employees to work from home as easily.
So as many begin to let their guard down, where do a bank’s responsibilities lie in regard to maintaining a safe, virus-free work environment and branch location?
As with everything, the buck stops with the banks’ leadership. They are responsible for not only heeding guidelines from their local and federal governments, but also for understanding concerns of their customers and employees. To answer the question in the title, no, banks don’t necessarily need a chief medical officer. They do, however, need to appoint a person or a group responsible for creating safety measures around their branch and workplace.
The first step in doing this (aside from abiding by governmental guidelines) is to listen to the concerns of customers and of employees. While some may be ready to show up to the office or branch with minimum precaution, others may request increased social distancing in the office and curbside services at the branch.
Listening to these concerns will offer a clearer picture of next steps and a timeline. Options include offering individual cubicles separated by plexiglass, monitoring employee temperatures, increasing cleaning frequency to once-a-day, limiting the number of employees in the office and rotating work-from-home schedules, limiting customer numbers in the branch, requiring face masks, increasing sick leave for employees, etc.
If a requirement such as taking temperatures at the door arises that no one on the team feels comfortable with, hire an outside medical specialist. And if all of the new protocols seem completely overwhelming, banks should consider bringing on a consultant to help with things like deep cleaning protocols, updated health and safety plans, and emergency response plans.
Would it hurt to hire a Chief Medical Officer? Certainly not. But by listening to employees and clients and applying some creativity, banks can come up with a workable solution that helps both employees and customers feel safe.
Symbiotic relationships, like the way bees help flowers pollinate while harvesting nectar to feed their colonies, can be found all over nature. They are also quite common in fintech.
The latest example of fintech symbiosis is today’s partnership between Amazon and Goldman Sachs. CNN reported this morning that Amazon revealed a lending program for U.S.-based small businesses that sell on its platform.
Goldman’s Marcus will offer revolving credit lines of up to $1 million. The loans will carry an annual interest rate of 6.99% to 20.99%. Minimum payments are due on a two-week cycle and if borrowers don’t use at least 30% of the funds, they are charged a maintenance fee.
Interestingly, the new offering will compete with Amazon’s existing small business lending product, which it launched with Bank of America in early 2018. According to CNN, last year Amazon loaned more than $1 billion to 14,000 sellers.
Goldman, which will service the lines of credit, will underwrite the loans using merchant data collected by Amazon (if the seller agrees to share their data). As CNN pointed out, this is a rare move by Amazon, which, “has kept a tight rein on its small business lending program, using algorithms and closely guarded sales data to determine who could use a loan.”
The data sharing doesn’t extend past lending opportunities, however. Goldman will only use seller data for lines of credit and will not use it to cross-sell other products or services. Additionally, Amazon won’t be able to access the data that Goldman collects from prospective borrowers.
The move makes Amazon the latest third party on Goldman’s list of partners for its Marcus brand, which caters to a younger and generally less wealthy client base. Furthermore, the partnership accelerates the bank’s mission to make Marcus a banking-as-a-service provider for third parties. Marcus’ existing partners include Apple, JetBlue, Intuit, and AARP.
The following is a guest post by Jake Rheude, Vice President of Marketing for order fulfillment companyRed Stag Fulfillment.
Fintech has dramatically shifted the way people and enterprises use and move money, and that’s increasingly impacting the world of ecommerce. While logistics is typically thought of a sloth when it comes to adopting innovative technologies, fintech may be a unique case because of the savings it generates, protection it offers, and where demands for adoption come from now.
The landscape is changing, and ecommerce is shifting in significant ways that are important to learn. If you’re in fintech, here are some major opportunities for your next solution.
Validation and KYC compliance
There’s a growing call for ecommerce brands and marketplaces to start focusing on better know your customer (KYC) compliance and services. Online payment fraud continues to rise and the European Payments Council notes that threats are demonstrating a greater degree of professionalism of cybercriminals.
Ecommerce companies are tantalizing targets as they grow larger or when it’s discovered that they lack significant security measures. KYC validation provides a very early deterrent by help collect and verify specific user information — from face IDs and credit card numbers to requirements to use only a verified current address.
It’s a security measure that ecommerce companies are happy to adopt. The lane for fintechs to work here is facilitating KYC programs (and even related AML regulatory checks) within their offering. In a growing number of cases, KYC is baked into fintech solutions, easing the burden on ecommerce and providing greater protection while also making it more of an industry standard.
Stores are looking beyond borders
Ecommerce makes more goods available to more people, regardless of where the company or the customer are. Early fintech helped establish the pathway that ecommerce-focused solutions are taking now.
SWIFT gpi (global payments initiative) made it easier for banks to manage and trace these payments. In early 2019, SWIFT announced a specific gpi link for ecommerce that included plans to use R3’s blockchain technology.
While much of the focus is on support bank payments and activities, this shift provides a unique opportunity for large ecommerce brands as well as those near country borders. When this or similar platforms become available, a company may not need a presence in another country to expand its reach there. Fast, affordable payment management could make it easier for ecommerce companies to work with a variety of payment providers for both their interactions with customers as well as supply chain partners.
When fintech simplifies cross-border payment management, it becomes easier for ecommerce to expand beyond greater boundaries or choose where to have fulfillment locations.
Ubanked shoppers are blending commerce
One of the more exciting fintech innovations for ecommerce companies is coming to stores near you. A well-known example comes from the Oxxo convenience stores in Mexico. More than half of Mexico’s shopping population lack bank accounts, but they still want to shop online. So, they make a purchase from select online merchants and then go to their nearby Oxxo store and pay for the products they selected. Someone who only has physical cash and no bank account is able to buy goods only sold online.
It’s a “low-tech” solution that takes innovative fintechs to pursue. It’s also an extremely rich opportunity. According to 2017 data, there are about 1.7 billion unbanked adults in the world. There’s a good chance, however, that this group overlaps with the ever-growing number of Internet users (about 4.54 billion as of January 2020).
We know about two-thirds own a phone, so as these consumers shift to smartphones and gain access, there’s a big place for fintechs to support ecommerce growth.
Better behind-the-scenes payments
Ecommerce relies heavily on the logistics sector and these both interest with fintech at multiple locations for every sale. The problem with all the financial movement of payments, insurance, product handoffs, etc., is that there’s a lot of opportunity for receipts and bills to go missing. Sometimes it is accidental, other times fraud.
Fintech services that aim to automate payment processing during handoffs can protect everyone. This potential is growing with the adoption of more supply chain DLT offers. Ecommerce companies are part of this when their fulfillment partners, suppliers, and manufacturers join such blockchains.
This cost-reduction and risk mitigation is often felt most by the carrier. The move into ecommerce is likely going to be driven by these carriers and logistics partners.
APIs will shape the future
In many emerging fintechs, as well as regtech (regulatory technology), the API dominates the way information is collected, used, shared, and reported. They simplify the way banks and fintechs interact with each other as well as how ecommerce companies manage payments and budgets.
Today, API use is somewhat limited, and most ecommerce merchants won’t think much about it beyond if a payment API integrates with their platform or not. However, this is likely the area of most impact for our future, even if we can’t see what that will be. It’s likely to be beyond simply moving to the cloud.
One possibility will be their ability to connect fintech and ecommerce companies in a way that customers don’t see a difference. Right now, if you shop on Amazon, you might get an offer like saving 10% by opening up an Amazon-branded credit card. API innovations could allow any ecommerce company, of any size, to offer the same based on user data.
Imagine instant (digital) point-of-sale consumer loans and financing, loyalty programs that work across merchant categories, mobile wallet integration, and more.
What might be the biggest fintech revolution, and one we hope to see, is easing ecommerce company requirements. Adopting a platform API might be all a company needs to do now to get continual access to the latest security updates and payment options when the fintechs that build these innovations join the API community.
APIs already run significant warehouse and fulfillment operations, meaning there’s a goldmine of data to be leveraged for everyone at the table, if fintechs make it easy for ecommerce companies.
Budgeting and financial comparison platform Status recently made a tweak to its business model. Company Founder and CEO Majd Maksad recently sent an email to users saying that the company launched a premium membership option.
The app will still offer free access but the premium membership unlocks advanced features and the ability to earn cash rewards for simply using the app. Interestingly, the premium membership will be income-based. Maksad explained, “The app remains free for everyone– but depending on your income, you may be asked to make a contribution to access the Premium features and rewards. You can choose your own contribution amount based on what you think is fair.”
Users can choose contribution levels ranging from $1 per month to $20 per month. However, if the user opts to contribute $1 or $2 per month, they receive a message saying, “A little goes a long way. Please consider contributing $3 or more.”
The premium option unlocks most of the features users were previously enjoying for free. In the screenshot below, the yellow locks in the sidebar show the features behind the paywall.
Status noted that it didn’t take lightly the decision to add a fee. However, the company said that the additional revenue is “crucial” for it to develop new features. “Any contribution you choose to make will also help us continue serving lower income members for free,” Maksad added.
Status’ main business model relies on referral partnerships with companies including Airbnb, AllState, Liberty Mutual, Betterment, VSP, and Haven Life. However, with the VC funding forecast looking bleak, the company probably realized it needed an alternative way to generate capital in order to stay afloat and invest more into the product.
Not that we didn’t see it coming, but the National Bureau of Economic Research officially declared yesterday that the U.S. entered into a recession in February.
With the market volatility over the past few months, many investors have attempted to assess how the changes will impact their retirement plans. Seeing the need to offer peace amid uncertainty, Personal Capital made a move last month to help investors prepare their portfolios for the worst.
The company added a new tool, Recession Simulator, to its dashboard. The feature helps its U.S. users illustrate the effects that historical recessions would have on their portfolio. Currently the Recession Simulator allows users to mimic returns of the DotCom crash of 2000 and the Financial Crisis of 2008.
“With uncertainty around the market’s performance and overall economy, we want to continue to be a catalyst for providing individuals the necessary tools and insights to best position themselves to reach their financial goals under volatile market conditions,” said Personal Capital EVP for Advisory Service, Kyle Ryan.
The retirement dashboard also incorporates expected return and volatility, annual savings, income events, spending goals, retirement spending, social security, and tax rules for taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free investment accounts. My favorite aspect of Personal Capital’s retirement tool is that it allows users to generate different scenarios to simulate retirement income under multiple circumstances. It helps users to easily compare situations such as: What if there is a recession every 10 years? What if I sell my rental property at age 50? What if I pay for a child’s tuition?
The new Recession Simulator tool is the result of a company-wide hackathon, and according to Personal Capital’s recent survey, it comes at a good time. The survey found that around 40% of people indicating they were planning to retire within the next 10 years have decided to delay their retirement. It also uncovered that around 77% of the respondents who are at least 10 years away from retirement expressed some concern about COVID-19’s impact on their retirement goals.
A Finovate alum since 2011, Personal Capital has amassed $12.3 billion in assets under management since it was founded in 2009. The company has 24,000 investment clients across the U.S. and 2.5 million registered users of its free financial planning tools.
2020 has been quite a year. No one could have predicted the strides the fintech industry has made in digital transformation, the dramatic change in the way consumers use physical bank branches, or the shift in attitudes toward mobile payments.
Because taking in all of the changes over the past six months is a monumental task, we thought we’d help out. The Finovate Fintech Halftime Review, took place June 22 through June 26, and was a free, week-long digital event comprised of webinars, videos, whitepapers, eMagazines, and more. We covered a new topic each day, and the webinars are now available to watch below.
Supporting Stimulus Lending Programs with Appian
Driving Higher Close Rates, Faster Closes, and Higher Customer Loyalty with Glance
Looking Under the Hood of Today’s Payments Ecosystem with Fiserv
Optimizing your IT Infrastructure for Fintech with Cyxtera
Rethinking Traditional Wealth Management Services with Aixigo
Thanks to our partners aixigo, Fiserv, Glance, ITSCREDIT, MyLife, Cyxtera and Appian for providing their support and expertise.
What is the safest way for banks to go live with new tools in the height of a global pandemic? Remotely, of course!
This is the reality that many bank and third party providers have faced over the past few months. Despite the complications that COVID-19 has brought to banks’ operations, many are still moving full speed ahead on projects with third party providers.
Naresh Kurup
Naresh Kurup, Marketing Director at banking financial crime risk management firm Clari5 has experienced this first-hand. After the pandemic hit, Clari5 was forced to quickly move to a work-from-home setting while onboarding two new clients completely remotely, something the team had never done before. We caught up with Kurup to get the details.
In the height of the coronavirus lockdown, you were able to help two new bank clients start projects. Tell us more about this.
We leveraged the coronavirus lockdown situation as an opportunity to excel, for our customers and for us. Amidst the din all around about how the pandemic has been negatively impacting firms and systems worldwide, we had some noteworthy achievements during the lockdown, including three new client wins.
The two projects that we started were both large enterprise fraud management projects for banks (one of them is the Philippines’ second largest bank). Both banks were agreeable to starting their projects during the lockdown – a testimony to the faith in our capability.
We also had another prominent new bank go live with our enterprise fraud management solution, despite the nation-wide lockdown, via a 100% remote implementation.
Our cloud-based project management framework – called Clari5One, has been helping us work seamlessly and virtually. In fact, we have been working at 150% productivity.
So, we actually have been having a silver lining in the Covid cloud.
Were there any hesitations from the banks’ perspectives? If so, how did you deal with their concerns?
There were a few initial apprehensions around remote project initiation and implementation as this is not the standard practice for large enterprise implementation projects.
We modified and extended our project management framework to the banks for higher real-time synchronicity and shared visibility of the delivery management plan.
In the case of the bank client going live during the lockdown, it was mutually agreed that the entire implementation would be performed remotely. Everything from requirement discussions, to integration strategy and configuration, to implementation rollout for the go-live would be conducted fully remotely.
Also, high operational rigor, advanced tele/videoconferencing tools, real-time communication, and continuous updates assured the banks that our project team were completely in-sync throughout the project journey.
These factors were instrumental in the banks gaining confidence that the projects would proceed exactly as per plan, despite the situation.
What was the biggest challenge of remote implementation?
Given the nature, scope, and scale of these projects, typically large enterprise fraud management solution implementation projects demand large teams from either side working together physically closely.
But, given our project management platform, advanced communication tools, and the heightened diligence because of the situation, instead of working alongside the banks’ fraud risk management department officials, our remote project team dovetailed seamlessly with them. So, we were very much present, but virtually.
In fact, the CIO of the bank that went live on Clari5 EFM said, “We are an execution-oriented organization that sets sight on a goal and achieves it, despite roadblocks. We are pleased that Clari5 imbibed our vision, and went live with the mission-critical, enterprise-level fraud risk management solution, despite COVID-19. We appreciate team Clari5’s efforts to keep our operations running and being supportive at every step. Happy to have Clari5 as our valued partner.”
Also, as with any conventional project management, we had no margin for error and were all set to achieve the targets on time, despite managing the projects remotely.
Lessons learnt include project management hyper-optimization, integration approach, methodology finalization, remote infrastructure setup, SIT/UAT support, and final thrust for go-live.
In fact, if it weren’t for the virus, we wouldn’t have had an opportunity to demonstrate that yes, we indeed can remotely activate and implement.
What technology/ tools have you found useful in implementing projects with clients remotely?
As a young fintech company we are equipped and enabled in processes and technology that support ‘work from anywhere’ for most of our staff. So, transitioning to a ‘complete’ remote working situation for project implementations in the wake of the coronavirus lockdown wasn’t exactly a big leap for us.
Since implementation of the Clari5 suite requires close interactions with client teams as well as tasks and activities that are required to be done on premise, we transitioned them to Clari5One – our cloud-based project management framework that has multiple technologies as components.
Clari5One helped us with –
Detailed requirements gathering, demo of use cases, technical specifications interactions
Installation / configuration of Clari5 application components
System integration tests and support for use acceptance tests
Production deployment, go-live, and post go-live support
Project governance (reviews, interventions, and decisions)
Issue tracking, work allocation, and status tracking
If given the choice between an in-person implementation and a remote one, which would you choose?
Undoubtedly, remote.
Being an enterprise product company, we work very closely with client banks to help them achieve their risk and compliance requirements completely and consistently. Project implementation proficiency and on-time delivery have been the hallmarks of our success, which we have achieved consistently in implementations across geographies. But COVID-19 tested our hypothesis.
The outcome has been a mindset shift in our project implementation approach. We had experimented with remote implementations in the past, but the COVID-19 lockdown provided a live environment to validate our remote implementation hypothesis. The leading bank going live boosted our confidence to manage an entire project remotely.
We are now honing our remote implementation expertise for other projects on the anvil. We are currently implementing an EFM project for Philippines’ second largest bank using our remote implementation methodology.
Given the clear advantages of people deployment efficiency, cost economies, and much shorter go-live timeframes, we expect a substantial number of future implementations to be managed remotely.
Suffice to say, remote implementation of large banking enterprise solution projects will become the new normal.
The following is a guest post by Hemanth Kumar Yamjala, Associate Manager in Digital Marketing at Cigniti Technologies.
Testing financial applications is the need of the hour given the spectre of cybercrime. It should comprise conducting various types of testing such as functional, performance, and security, besides understanding the integrated domains.
Why test?
One of the reasons why mobile-based transactions have become such a rage is their convenience in handling financial payments. Whether it is the paying of utility bills, doing online shopping, booking movie or airline tickets, or paying for the tickets in a concert, app-driven financial transactions are here to stay. At the core of such services are the financial applications. These applications store, manage, process, or analyze financial data and information. Since so much is underpinned on the successful functioning of these applications, financial application testing becomes critical.
A multi-tier financial application allows concurrent user sessions. As it is integrated with various APIs of third-party applications, regulatory websites, trading accounts, and payment gateways, there could be complex workflows and value chains that make testing imperative. As a greater number of customers are using financial applications for making transactions on the go, Fintech companies are looking to set up platforms that deliver seamless customer experiences.
Factors to consider while testing financial apps
Financial services testing should follow an end-to-end methodology to test various aspects such as business requirements and banking workflows, functional testing, security testing, data accuracy and integrity, concurrency, performance testing, and user experience.
Business involvement The test specialists should collaborate with the business analysts and other stakeholders to understand the business requirements of the application. The business requirements and deliverables ought to be analyzed by specialists testing financial applications, development leads, and business analysts to obtain optimal testing results.
Domain understanding Given the various domain interfaces of a financial application, the test specialists should understand and possess adequate knowledge about them, which could be about the type and scope of testing – UI, security, load, stress, or functionality or aspects like brokerage, working procedures, or banking, among others. The testers, by knowing the respective domains, can write better test cases and simulate user actions to obtain better test results.
Impact analysis It is about analyzing how the changes made to the application can impact other aspects of the application. This calls for a calibrated regression testing involving automation, which would enable the BFSI testing team to identify the affected areas of the application and get them fixed.
Functional testing This type of banking application testing exercise requires access to all source codes and architecture to identify and fix glitches and vulnerabilities. The typical test activities comprise preparation and review of test cases and their execution, including application testing, integration testing, regression testing, and user acceptance testing.
Security testing Usually financial application security testing is conducted at the end of both functional and non-functional testing. Apart from looking at the resident vulnerabilities and glitches, the testing should ensure the application adheres to the industry regulations related to security like PCI.
Performance testing As more people are using such applications, they need to be tested for load and stress thresholds. It will help make the application robust, scalable, and resilient thereby ensuring better load management.
Conclusion
As financial services are expanding into new territories and gaining new customers, the need to foster efficiency, security, and risk management become apparent. By embarking on a massive testing exercise, financial institutions can ensure the success of such applications and secure customers against any security breach.
Hemanth Kumar Yamjala has 10+ years of experience in IT Services, predominantly Marketing, Branding, specializing in Digital. Currently a part of the marketing for Cigniti Technologies with functions such as leveraging digital marketing channels for lead generation and promotion.
Last week would have been the week of FinovateSpring. However, instead of being in to San Francisco to gather in person, the majority of the world remains at home.
FinovateSpring has been rescheduled and re-named to FinovateWest for 2020 and will take place this coming November. To commemorate our original dates, we curated a week of analysis and insights for our blog readers offering updates and ideas about the future of fintech and conducting business during the coronavirus. All of the content is collated it into this eMagazine. It felt good to connect with leading industry players, pick their brains and hear how businesses are adapting.
We also gave a major sneak peek of the new digital demo format you can expect to see at our all-digital events this year.
We’ve heard a lot about how the coronavirus has made an impact across the fintech realm, but what about in the crypto space? With an unstable stock market, why weren’t investors fleeing to alternative, blockchain-based assets?
To get an inside view on these questions and more, Finovate’s Adela Knox spoke with Max Lautenschläger, managing partner and co-founder of Iconic Holding, a Germany-based company that manages and sells crypto asset investment vehicles and invests in blockchain and crypto-focused companies via its in-house accelerator.
How has the coronavirus pandemic disrupted traditional investments?
Max Lautenschläger: Personally, as a supervisory member of the biggest independent financial advisory company in Germany, I am monitoring the German financial market closely. I was surprised how good the day-to-day business is going in this very special time, which is forecasted to be one of the biggest economical depressions in modern history. Moreover, it’s positively surprising how much this pandemic is pushing us towards a more digital financial ecosystem. Consumers are adapting to the “new normal” and are suddenly forced, but also willing to make decisions online. Investment advisors and financial consultants on the other hand are realizing the potential of using online tools for signing documents, online identifications or video calls for customer acquisition and retention. Financial institutions seem to finally understand how important digitization is for the daily operations with millennials, which have a very different expectation of financial services. Even though the whole financial industry is suffering, it will also have a positive impact long-term.
By looking at the best performing stocks since corona started, you can also see that more and more money is getting invested into themes like data, remote working, online education, and sustainability. In this pandemic people are realizing the shift the world has already made and want to be exposed to the increasingly important topics.
How has this impacted the appetite for digital currency?
Lautenschläger: It’s very important to understand what was going on when corona hit us out of the sudden. We’re not in an economic crisis yet, but the initial shock led to a so-called liquidity crisis, which makes investors liquidate their holdings -if possible- to cash. All asset classes suffered severely, even “safe havens” like gold decreased by more than 10 percent. Cryptoassets crashed in those extraordinary times, as well, even though they’re said to be non-correlating to other asset classes. Nonetheless, this crisis just confirms what we already know: central banks can print money and are increasing the circulating supply constantly. The beauty about crypto is that code is law, which means that the supply-demand-relationship is predefined. Over the last couple of weeks more and more institutional money has been invested into crypto assets which also led to a new peak in commitments to traditional financial vehicles like the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
Secondly, the discussion of introducing a blockchain-based Euro or US Dollar is again one of the top priorities for central banks all over the globe.Libra, despite its weaknesses, seems to be a solid backbone infrastructure for those digitized currencies and could help to accelerate this development.
What is the biggest myth about cryptocurrency?
Lautenschläger: Most people I talk to think that crypto assets don’t have any intrinsic value and research from big financial institutions are trying to support this hypothesis. But this is entirely wrong! Let’s take Bitcoin as an example. Digital gold, safe haven, store of value — a lot of phrases have been used to describe Bitcoin, and to a certain extent, I agree with all of them. For me, Bitcoin is a commodity like gold, other rare metals or rare earth, which can be modeled by the stock-to-flow ratio. On the other hand, there are blockchain protocols which are the infrastructure for decentralized applications. The value of those protocols and their native tokens is derived from the number of deployed applications and the level of engagement. Users will use the infrastructure that offers them the applications they need and developers will go where the users are.
How is cryptocurrency performing in the current pandemic climate?
Lautenschläger: First it crashed like all the other asset classes. The reason for this is that corona -at first- didn’t cause an economic crisis, but primarily a liquidity crisis. Studies in behavioral finance suggest that people tend to convert all liquid assets to cash to be prepared for an upcoming crisis. But even though crypto
tanked even more than the stock and commodity markets it is still the best-performing asset class of 2020. With the monetary policy of the ECB, FED, and BoJ you can clearly see the vulnerability of our system, which makes more and more people lose trust in central bank policies and money in its current design. This is why crypto was born in 2009 as a reaction to the financial crisis.
What are the biggest benefits and reward of investing in digital cryptocurrency?
Lautenschläger: First of all, crypto has a low correlation to traditional and alternative asset classes, which makes it a perfect portfolio diversifier. Recently, we conducted a study in collaboration with the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, which clearly shows that an allocation of 1% to 5% of crypto to a traditional portfolio not only generated additional returns, but also increased the sharpe-ratio severely, which is the most well-known risk-to-return measure.
Is the demand for crypto assets limited to professional investors or is it something that everyday investors are looking into as well?
Lautenschläger: Crypto assets were originally completely retail driven by individuals who believed in the potential and the idea of an intermediary-free world, in which everyone is financially included. Nowadays, we see more and more high net worth individuals and family offices investing into the space. The lack of professional, enterprise-grade financial vehicles is still an issue and makes it hard for institutions to enter the space. But recent developments like the European AML directive and the German crypto custody license are first indicators that crypto assets are becoming “bankable.” This is also what we have been working on for years at Iconic Funds: make crypto accessible through traditional, regulated vehicles.
In a world of shrinking valuations and declining VC funding, payments company Marqeta is bucking the norm. The California-based company announced today it raised $150 million. Marqeta has also boosted its valuation to $4.3 billion, more than double the $1.9 billion valuation it earned a little over a year ago.
Today’s funding comes from a single investor, which Marqeta has not disclosed. However, sources have identified the party as L.A., California-based Capital Group. Marqeta’s previous investors include Coatue, Vitruvian Partners, Visa, Goldman Sachs, 83North, Granite Ventures, ICONIQ Capital, and others.
Marqeta, which was founded in 2010, positions itself as a modern card-issuing platform. The company offers scalable and configurable payments solutions available via an open API. Its services include ecommerce, incentive and disbusrsement payments, expense management, lending, and digital banking. Among its clients are Square, Uber, Affirm, Instacart, and DoorDash.
“Marqeta continues to move forward from strength to strength in 2020 as our global modern card issuing platform provides essential infrastructure and support to our customers across industries and oceans,” said Marqeta CEO and Founder Jason Gardner. “We’re building a single global platform to define and power the future of money for the world’s leading innovators. This new capital helps us accelerate our mission to empower builders to bring the most innovative products to market, wherever they are in the world.”
The company’s payment services are available in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia and is able to process payments in 10 countries in the Asia Pacific region. Last year, Marqeta marked the issuance of 140+million cards and doubled its revenue from the year prior to exceed $300 million. Jason Gardner is founder and CEO.
