This week our experts brought you the following insights based on their experience as investors, entrepreneurs & executives.
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Your Editor is Bernard Lunn. He is also the CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy and occasional opinion columnist.
Monday Ilias Hatzis our Greece-based crypto entrepreneur (Founder & CEO at Mercato Blockchain Corporation AG and Weekly Columnist at Daily Fintech) @iliashatzis wrote BigTech in Finance
Late last year, we heard that Google was looking to get deeper into the financial world by partnering directly with banks. In early August, Google announced its foray into the banking world with another six U.S. banks pledging to offer digital-only bank accounts through Google Pay. Google is already working with Citigroup, Stanford Credit Union, and added to its partnership roster, Bank Mobile, BBVA USA, BMO Harris, Coastal Community Bank, First Independence Bank, and SEFCU. The digital accounts will launch in 2021 in both checking and savings flavors and will be insured FDIC or NCUA. Google is looking to boost the usage of its digital payment services in North America by partnering with banking institutions. Google’s strategy is to let partnered banks and credit unions provide the underlying financial infrastructure and navigate regulation while it builds smarter interfaces and user experience. Lately, it would seem that every major tech firm has set its sights on banking. In 2019 Apple partnered with Goldman Sachs on the Apple Card, which currently has over three million customers in the U.S. In 2020, Samsung announced a competitive product to the Apple Card in the U.K, and now Google is cooking up its own option.
Editor note: the acceleration of disruption due to pandemic is making life very hard for incumbents
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Tuesday Efi Pylarinou @efipm our Swiss-based Fintech Adviser, founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer – No.3 influencer in the finance sector by Refinitiv Global Social Media 2019 wrote Knock & iBuying in US Real Estate Fintech
The SPAC trend continues in the US and Chamath Palihapitiya is one of the leading investors with his IPOA, IPOB,… series. The latest Fintech deal was focused on a real estate disruptor in the US, OpenDoor.
With Zillow, being the blue-chip name and already public, I wanted to dig into how OpenDoor`s positioning differs. Technology with all the B2B Software as a Service offerings (Saas) makes it so challenging to create and sustain a moat.
The secret sauce of a fintech business in real estate is not evident because the US real estate market is on the one hand mature but also very fragmented. On top of that, there are several uncertainties and moving pieces of the puzzle due to the current macro-economic environment and the emerging new normal life-style trends.
Editor note: Real estate it is a big broken market, but houses need creative selling. If Fintech can coop rather than eliminate realtors, it will be huge, just by eliminating the administrivia.
Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy wrote:Could the Sidetree decentralized identity protocol enable both privacy and personalization?
I am a bit of a privacy nut. I don’t like being tracked and I don’t like anybody else controlling my identity. Yet I know that being tracked can create personalized services that are useful to me. That is why I am a fan of decentralized identity on the blockchain. (see Part 3/Chapter 6 of The Blockchain Economy digital courseware for more on how decentralized identity on the blockchain will disrupt today’s media business).
Today we give up our privacy/identity to Big Tech/Media and that is a massive business for them. So, as a media entrepreneur in a niche domain (Fintech) I want to understand how one can make money if identity is decentralized and under user control. I think keeping advertising to contextual (avoiding all tracking technology) is part of the answer, but users want personalisation (and the networked community enabled by personalisation) and that requires access to identity.
This got me to look at the Sidetree approach to decentralized identity to see if it could be win/win ie for both users and media owners.
Editor note: bleeding edge technology alert, but all big disruption starts this way.
Wednesday Alan Scott Managing Director EMEA at 24 Exchange @Alan_SmartMoney wrote Stablecoin News for the week ending Wednesday 14 October 2020.
This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the Stablecoin market.
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Thursday
Rintu Patnaik, an Insurtech expert based in India, wrote: Taking Root, the Next Insurtech IPO. Clover Chooses SPAC.
After Lemonade and other successful IPOs including Snowflake and Palantir, Root Insurance has its sights set on the primary public market. In its S-1, Root minces no words about its intent to reinvent the $266 billion US auto insurance.
Five insurtech companies established after 2015 have each raised private capital in the region of $500 million. Lemonade has gone public, Root has announced plans and there are signs of more to come.
Root Insurance which focuses on automotive, claims to be the only P&C insurance carrier with a scaled proprietary telematics solution and largest proprietary dataset of miles driven, driving behavior and claims experience.
Editor note: Public market investors finally get a chance to ride the Insurtech wave – at rich valuations of course because of stimulus and investment bankers doing a good job.
Christian Dreyer @x3er, our Swiss based CFA who focusses on how XBRL changes our world wrote XBRL News:SupTech, future of reporting, taxonomy guidance
Editor note: This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the XBRL market.
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Friday Howard Tolman, a well-known banker, technologist and entrepreneur in London, wrote: Alt Finance for week ended 16 October 2020
Editor note: This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the Alt Lending market.
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