Featured Headlines

July 6, 2017 @ 2:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

There is a bill circulating in Congress that may dramatically impact Reg A+ utilization – the crowdfunding rule that currently allows issuers to raise up to $50 million in a scaled disclosure environment. Sponsored by House Representatives Kyrsten Sinema and Trey Hollingsworth, the bill (HR… Read More

July 5, 2017 @ 1:26 pm By JD Alois  |  

A Discussion with Charles d’Haussy, Head of Fintech, InvestHK. Hong Kong has been a definitive leader in global finance and trade for many decades. Yet when it comes to Fintech, embracing financial innovation has been slower than some other centers of alternative finance. But recently Hong… Read More

July 4, 2017 @ 12:32 pm By JD Alois  |  

Plum, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot for personal finance, has launched a crowdfunding round on Seedrs. The offer is seeking £700,000 for a convertible that allows investors to purchase shares at a 20% discount at some point in the future. The EIS eligible listing has… Read More

July 3, 2017 @ 1:44 pm By Therese Torris  |  

The European Investment Bank Group (EIB) through the European Investment Fund (EIF) has announced that it will provide €18.5 million to back a joint investment fund designed to lend money to SMEs through crowdlending platform Lendix. The EIB is the European Union’s bank, owned by… Read More

July 3, 2017 @ 9:00 am By Therese Torris  |  

Founded in Estonia and headquartered in the UK, Funderbeam is a Blockchain-powered platform for cross-border startup funding with an extensive information database, a primary market for fundraising and a secondary market for equity and debt trading. End-to-end Startup Funding Funderbeam was founded in 2013 in… Read More

July 3, 2017 @ 7:42 am By JD Alois  |  

Singapore based investment crowdfunding platform Fundnel has announced the expansion of its services into Australia. Fundnel is a private investment platform that offers unlisted securities in growth and pre-IPO stage companies to both institutional and individual investors. Fundnel screens all investment opportunities to ensure businesses… Read More

July 2, 2017 @ 7:53 am By JD Alois  |  

The presentation embedded below is an interesting perspective on the growth of alternative finance, specifically in Europe. There has been a certain amount of discussion regarding the tepid growth of investment crowdfunding in the US (not including marketplace lending) and the reasons why the sector… Read More

June 30, 2017 @ 10:00 pm By Therese Torris  |  

One day after we hear of the acquisition of the KissKissBankBank crowdfunding group by French bank La Banque Postale, crowdlending platform Credit.fr announces its acquisition by Tikehau Capital. These acquisitions seem to confirm the widespread view that Fintechs can’t go it alone. We asked Thomas… Read More

June 29, 2017 @ 7:40 pm By JD Alois  |  

Ron Suber, an iconic voice in the emerging Fintech sector and the most prominent leader in the marketplace lending industry, has announced his departure from Prosper Marketplace. First reported in a note published on LendAcademy, after five years of leadership at Prosper,  Suber has determined… Read More

June 28, 2017 @ 12:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has weighed in on the burgeoning Fintech sector of finance. The FSB has been analyzing “financial stability implications” potentially created by Fintech innovation. The FSB says it is specifically seeking to identify “supervisory and regulatory issues that merit authorities’ attention”…. Read More

June 27, 2017 @ 5:29 pm By JD Alois  |  

Earlier this month, Bancor Foundation raised more than $153 million in a “crowdsale” in what may be considered the largest crowdfunding campaign in history. This “Token Generation Event” or TGE saw 10,855 buyers step in for a total of 79,323,978 Bancor network tokens (BNTs) created with… Read More

June 26, 2017 @ 11:41 am By JD Alois  |  

Not too long ago the SEC came out with an Investor Bulletin, emanating from the Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, regarding the utilization of SAFEs as an investment vehicle on crowdfunding platforms. The SEC stated; “Some issuers have been offering a new type of… Read More

June 25, 2017 @ 2:44 pm By Barry James  |  

As impact goes it doesn’t get much bigger. Crowdfunding has been much misunderstood and, let’s be honest, has underperformed our best expectations. It was supposed to “democratise finance” – and much more. Much focus has been on equity, regulation and the JOBS Act. The friction… Read More

June 24, 2017 @ 10:23 pm By Xu Gao  |  

Chinese Retailer Suning Launches Private Internet Bank Jiangsu Suning Bank Co., Ltd., a private online bank backed by Suning Commerce Group Co., Ltd., officially launched last Friday. Like many of its peers, Suning Bank aims to create an online-to-offline bank driven by technology and taking… Read More

June 23, 2017 @ 7:11 pm By Jonathan Nieh  |  

    In a recent article published in the Hastings Law Journal (embedded below), Duke University School of Law Associate Professor Elisabeth de Fontenay discusses the relationship between the recent decline of IPOs and the deregulation of private capital. Professor Fontenay also spoke at the… Read More

June 23, 2017 @ 3:09 pm By JD Alois  |  

Here is another document that points to China’s size, dominance and creativity when it comes to financial innovation.  EY has published the “Fintech Adoption Index 2017” that grades the various markets where EY operates so just about most of the developed world. When you think… Read More

June 22, 2017 @ 10:25 pm By Therese Torris  |  

Station F, the biggest startup campus worldwide will open in Paris this month with BNP Paribas joining in the fall of 2017. BNP Paribas, the global Top-10 bank headquartered in France, is transferring its Fintech and InsureTech accelerator there with the help of global Plug… Read More

June 21, 2017 @ 10:01 pm By Therese Torris  |  

  The German real estate crowdfunding market is set to more than triple in size this year. Real estate developers, asset managers, and, most recently, real estate agents are joining the fray of real estate crowdfunding platforms, trying to unseat the handful of leaders who… Read More

June 20, 2017 @ 10:25 pm By JD Alois  |  

VentureCrowd is a multi-asset crowdfunding platform providing early stage, property and “crowd credit” funding in Australia. Currently, VentureCrowd only caters to sophisticated or high net worth individuals.  Each early stage investment listed on its platform has already secured a professional lead investor thus allowing a smaller… Read More

June 19, 2017 @ 6:22 pm By Timothy Li  |  

During July 2016, I was part of a delegation of US Fintech executives visiting our counterparts in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, China. We toured and visited some of the most exciting Fintech platforms in China such as LuFax, CreditEase, Tencent (the creator of WeChat),… Read More