Issue 325 · Aug 19, 2021 Weekly edition · 5 min read

Issue 325

China closed 11 crypto companies (see link below). What's the strategy behind that move? The local government wants to be the leader of the delivery process of digital services for capital projects, with the help of

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US banks and insurance companies slow down ad spending to compete with fintechs

While financial service's digital ad spending has historically outpaced the digital ad market, we expect a slowdown in 2021 and beyond as incumbents in both banking and insurance focus their budgets on technological innovations to compete with emerging fintech companies. Finserv institutions will spend $24.49 billion on digital ads in 2021, up from $20.99 billion in 2020, but spending growth is declining. Finservs spent 20.3% more in 2020 than they did the previous year, but this growth will slow to 11.3% by 2023.

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In this issue · 10 items

Digital Yuan: Smartphone with CBDC wallet launched in China https://twitter.com/Yemigraphy — International Organization continues to seek relevance in the fast-expanding cryptocurrency space as a result, Honor has unveiled the first Snapdragon-powered smartphone to support the Chinese digital Yuan. According to the announcement, Chinese smartphone manufacturers Honor will roll out the Magic3 brand, an affordable smartphone with built-in capability to support a hardware wallet for the People’s Bank of China’s (PBoC) CBDC project. Open story ↗ Cubas Bitcoin Revolution As political demonstrations show the world that Cubans are tired of dictatorship, Bitcoin is providing an option to peacefully protest and opt out of a broken system. Open story ↗ Argentina's Ualá hits $2.45bn valuation on funding round Finextra — Fintech outfit Ualá has raised $350 million at a $2.45 billion valuation in the largest private investment round ever for an Argentine company. The Series D was co-led by Chinese behemoth Tencent and the SoftBank Innovation Fund, with participation from Goldman Sachs, Soros Found Management, Ribbit, Greyhound and Monashees. Open story ↗ Network-Based Finance And “Open Commercial Transactions” w/Gert Sylvest co-founder Tradeshift London FinTech Podcast — Deep-dive by Gert into what Network-based Finance is. It's covered how, in a sense, it inverts the whole “Open Banking” paradigm putting the opening of transactions first (which after all represent real business) with banking rails (open or not) below. And as Gert explains there are many reasons that this works smoother/better.more naturally in this space yielding superior information and hence insight and ability to offer more competitive products. Nor is it just a question of strategic sketches on the white board – there is a lot of devil in the detail about how one makes real digitisation work. Open story ↗ HSBC To Buy AXA’s Singapore Insurance Business For $575 Million To Boost Southeast Presence Forbes — HSBC Holdings said Monday it has agreed to buy AXA Singapore for $575 million to boost its global wealth and insurance franchise in the city-state and support its expansion across Southeast Asia. The acquisition will give London-based HSBC the eighth-largest life insurer in Singapore, with net assets of $474 million as of December 31, 2020, according to the statement. AXA Singapore is also the fifth-largest property and casualty insurer in the city-state. Open story ↗ Exchanges are integrating Cordano Smart Contracts Utoday — Cardano’s smart contracts are set to launch on September 12th. To become Alonzo-ready, crypto trading platforms are actively working with the Cardano team. So far, 6 platforms are collaborating with the Cardano Foundation, but more to be expected in anticipation of the launch of the Alonzo hard fork. Open story ↗ The future of banking with Neon's co-founder Simon Youssef hosted by Silvan Krähenbühl Voices of FinTech — In this episode hosted by Silvan Krähenbühl, a serial entrepreneur and host of Swisspreneur podcast, Silvan spoke to the co-founder of Neon, a leading Swiss digital bank, Simon Youssef, about the future of banking. Topics: Leaving your well-paying corporate job +++ The business model behind a free product +++ Is Revolut a competitor? +++ Being on Höhle der Löwen +++ Doing a 5M tokenized crowd investment Open story ↗ Chime earns big valuation jump in latest financing, nears IPO CNBC — Chime said Friday it raised $750 million in a Series G funding round that values the fintech company at $25 billion. That’s $10 billion higher than its last reported valuation of $15 billion from October 2020, according to PitchBook data. Chime — a so-called challenger bank known for fee-free banking, early paydays for those who use direct deposit and a feature that lets users go negative in their accounts without overdraft fees — said it intends to invest the new capital in scaling operations, as well as launching new products and services. Open story ↗ China closes 11 crypto companies Utoday — A subgroup (the Shenzhen branch) of People’s Bank of China is going after crypto trading and forex trading companies and it has shut down 11 already due to their involvement in illegal activities, according to a CNStock report. The Shenzhen branch formed a list that contains 46 companies in total that are targeted for investigation. The goal is to pursue and close any company that provides illegal financial services. Open story ↗ The Best Robo-Advisors and How to Find the Right One for You: Barron’s 2021 Ranking Barrons — Just a few years ago, robo-advisors were seen as the future of investing, a disruptive software-driven service that promised a set-it-and-forget-it approach, at a fraction of the cost charged by traditional advisors. Then came Robinhood Markets (ticker: HOOD) and the pandemic, which turned novice investors into day traders. Meme stocks got all the attention, but the robos are doing just fine, and they’re poised to benefit from the new interest in financial markets. Here are the top 20 for the US market. Open story ↗

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US banks and insurance companies slow down ad spending to compete with fintechs

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