Fintech Age winter 2017

ASIA RISING

FINTECH BEYOND DISRUPTION Asian Leaders

Hiroki Takeuchi Co-Founder & CEO, GoCardless

Top TECH TRENDS 2017

L u f a x , P ay t m , W e L e n d , W o o r i B a n k , D i r e c t A s i a , B i t o E X

GRAND HOTEL RIMINI ITALY

17/05/17

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The FintechAge Awards will reward the leaders in digital finance and will be held on May 17th 2017 at the Grand Hotel of Rimini as part of the Investment & Trading Forum.

Fintech Age Winter 2017 Editor

Denis Masetti

A Window into the Unknown Building sustainable financial ecosystems and companies is partly dependent on our capacity to anticipate events and react nimbly to change. As Jean de La Fontaine illustrated in his fable, when the wind of blows, it’s better to be a thin reed that bends than a mighty oak that breaks. And in this fastchanging world every wise oak strives to behave like an agile start-up.

As a media company, we aim to track these winds of change and understand who will bend or break.

So, in order to predict these major trends, we have reached out to some of the brightest minds in the fintech industry.

We have focused our gaze on the Orient as it has become clear that Asian markets will be instrumental in the creation, distribution and adoption of innovation across borders. With local insight from our Shanghai-based contributors, we have analysed and identified who are the key players and what are the principal drivers of growth in the continent.

Closer to home, among a climate of uncertainty, we have sought to create opportunities for European visionaries to dialogue through our event, Fintech Beyond Disruption, as well as our articles. Although the crystal ball remains foggy, our perception is that the fintech community will find new opportunities to thrive regardless of changing jurisdictions, thanks to its problem-solving and collaborative attitude.

The market is coming to maturity and people are consuming more and more fintech products worldwide, often without noticing. If our wind profiler is not mistaken, financial technology will soon permeate our daily lives and fintech providers will enter the big league.

Denis Masetti masetti@bluefinancialcommunication.com

Publishing House iFinance Media LTD 41 Corsham Street Wework Old Street London N1 6DR www.fintechage.com Editor Denis Masetti masetti@bluefinancialcommunication.com Editorial Director Alessandro Rossi rossi@bluefinancialcommunication.com EDitor In Chief Marco Barlassina barlassina@bluefinancialcommunication.com Editorial Team AnaĂŻs Borri borri@bluefinancialcommunication.com Federico Morgantini morgantini@bluefinancialcommunication.com Contributors Armand Lapotre Emma Snow Oliver Waters Designer Rajeevan Ratnasingham ratnasingham@bluefinancialcommunication.com Advertisement Manager Michele Gamba gamba@bluefinancialcommunication.com Subscription Enquiries abbonamenti@bluefinancialcommunication.com tel. (+39) 0203 032 111 Printed by CPZ SpA Via Landri 37/39 24060 Costa di Mezzate (BG), Italy Exclusive Distributor MEPE Distribuzione Editoriale Via Ettore Bugatti 15-20142 Milano, Italy

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Asia rising

by Anaïs Borri

2016 was a record-breaking year for the Asian continent in terms of VC investment in fintech and general growth of the industry. With a welldeveloped tech sector and a large financially underserved population, countries such as China and India are ideal markets for fintech.

encouraging financial innovation, especially for banking, by creating regulatory sandboxes. Most recently the areas of insurtech and regtech have been gaining more traction with the attractive promise to reduce bureaucratic hurdles through automation.

So far, the development of the Asian fintech scene has been mainly driven by payments, peer-topeer or marketplace lending, and comparison sites. Indeed, the adoption rate of mobile forms of payments and online services is increasing much faster than in Europe or the US with some Chinese merchants even refusing cash. India’s government has also been giving great support to fintech, building a common payments platform in an effort to create a more transparent and inclusive ecosystem.

Another defining trend shaping the Asian markets is the recent creation of cross-border consortiums to develop distributed ledgers and blockchain solutions. This new form of collaboration is foreseen to greatly facilitate and accelerate the modernisation of finance throughout the continent.

Following Singapore’s example, countries such as Hong Kong and Australia have equally been

Furthermore, this wave of innovation is not likely to stop at the Oriental borders. In fact, products such as Tencent’s WeChat wallet and Ant Financial’s Alipay are already gaining terrain in Africa, Europe and the US. The Silicon Valley and the Silicon Roundabout could soon be overtaken by the rise of Asian fintech.

Head of the Anthill Eric Jing Ant Financial Services Group is an affiliate company of the e-commerce giant Alibaba and is considered to be China’s most valuable fintech firm. Although the company often makes the headlines with its new products and massive funding rounds, the man in charge remains quite a discreet and mysterious figure.

Eric Jing is a veteran Alibaba executive and has been leading its online payment unit, Alipay, since 2009. In the past few years, he gradually rose in the group’s ranks as he replaced longterm director of the board, Jonathan Lu, as well as Ant Financial’s CEO, Lucy Peng.

Jing started working at Guangzhou Peugeot Automobile after graduating from the School of Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

He then joined Havi Group, a supplier to McDonald’s, and Swire Coca-Cola. In 2004, he became chief financial officer at Guangzhou Pepsi-Cola Beverage Co. His decade-long experience in multi-national companies eventually attracted the attention of Alibaba’s boss Jack Ma, who convinced Jing to join the group as executive and partner.

During the past year, Jing was instrumental in achieving a record-breaking funding round of $4.5 billion at a valuation of $60 billion.

Furthermore, the company has been gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) and the listing is thought to be imminent.

Lastly, the mobile wallet Alipay reached over 450 million users in China in 2016. Still, Jing aims to go further and to quadruple this number over the next decade by expanding internationally. “We have an ambition to be a global company,” Jing told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “So my vision is that we want to serve 2 billion people in the next 10 years by using technology, by working together with partners…to serve those underserved.” Although his dreams may sound grand, Jing’s humble and steadfast leadership is likely to push the company forward in its path of growth and success.

At a Glance Nationality: Chinese Lives in: Hangzhou Role: CEO at Ant Financial Services Group Education: MBA, University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management Aspiration: To improve the financial wellbeing of the underbanked population Fun Fact: According to the Chinese Money Network, Jing loves wearing navy suits, going to Starbucks and letting loose at karaoke nights.

Leaders of Asia

by Federico Morgantini

Here is a selection of trailblazing companies, leading the way in fintech and digital finance innovation, in some of the most exciting Asian markets. Discover the full list of the top 100 digital finance companies in Origami (Winter 2017).

CHINA

Lufax is one of the leading online financial marketplace and peer-to-peer lender in China. Founded in 2011, it is an associate of the Chinese giant Ping An Group. The company has been gradually branching out of lending and becoming a much broader platform by working with funds, insurance companies, trading platforms and financial license holders.

After its latest round of financing, at the beginning of 2016, the company was valued at US$18.5 billion.

INDIA

Paytm is one of India’s largest mobile platforms including payments and e-commerce systems. It started with online mobile recharge and bill payments and became an online marketplace. Paytm rapidly scaled to over 164Mn registered users and more than 90Mn monthly transactions. Paytm is the consumer brand of India’s leading mobile internet company One97 Communications. One97 investors include Ant Financial (AliPay), SAIF Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank.

Hong KONG

WeLend is Hong Kong’s leading online lending platform and is operated by WeLab, a multi award winning fintech company active in Hong Kong and mainland China. The company has reinventing traditional credit services with its seamless online and mobile lending experiences. Moreover, it is able to offer exceptionally low rates by avoiding branch operational costs.

WeLend also makes use of social media, such as WhatsApp, to give a personalized and integrated service.

South Korea

Woori Bank is one of the largest commercial banks in the country with over 20 million customers. It is also the most digitally driven bank in Korea, offering top notch online and mobile banking services. Alongside its traditional banking activities, Woori Bank has a particular focus on the expat community and it provides many services destined for foreigners as well as the possibility to access their banking services in eight different languages.

Singapore

DirectAsia is an award-winning insurance provider with a customer centric and digital approach that has earned it a 98% satisfaction rate from their customers. DirectAsia is part of the Hiscox group and it offers car, motorcycle and travel insurance that can be managed online and tailored to specific needs. DirectAsia is also dedicated to creating closer relationships with their customers thus achieving greater retention and engagement.

Taiwan

BitoEX is a Bitcoin exchange website which made it possible for consumers to pay with or buy Bitcoins in 12,000 convenience stores across the country. The company is leading the way in the region to integrate and facilitate the use of this cryptocurrency in people’s daily lives. BitoEX also offers digital financial experiences integrated with other applications, such as mobile wallets, through the use of innovative APIs and payment platforms.

Fintech Beyond Disruption

by Oliver Waters

The event Fintech Beyond Disruption, held in the London Mayor’s office and organized by Fintech Age, brought together opinion leaders to discuss the major trends affecting the sector in the UK. Thanks to this initiative, we went beyond the buzzwords and gathered key insights into the evolution and future of fintech from experts of different areas of the industry, such as payments and lending.

How is the relationship between incumbents and fintechs changing?

“I think the relationship is evolving toward more and more collaboration because there is a need for distribution coming from fintechs and there’s a need for innovation coming from incumbents. So, I think it’s a natural path to work together with people who manage distribution channels and people who come up with new ideas. The more collaborations there are the more disruption will reach the mass market.“ Eric Mouilleron, CEO & Founder, Bankable

How can fintechs achieve mass market adoption?

“Mass customers are used to logging online to their bank account and doing things in one place. It’s the experience that everyone has grown up with. Now, it’s more commercial to not use just one provider. People could pick and choose these services but maintain the one app or website and that’s the experience that the mass market is waiting for. I think that is going to hugely increase the adoption of non-traditional finance companies.”

Jamie Campbell, Head of Customer Experience, Bud

What are the biggest challenges faced by fintechs?

“One of the challenges is definitely employee retention. But beyond this, there is employee identification in the first place. It’s easy to say but recruiting the right calibre of people, that have the right vision and understanding of what’s going on, and can actually challenge the status quo of what is assumed as standard is hard to find and is very valuable. Maybe some employees are replaceable, but the irreplaceable employees are the ones that make or break fintech.”

Harold Bosse, Global Head of Product and PMO, Earthport

What are your expectations for 2017?

“The innovative finance ISA was created last year and now authorized peer-to-peer platforms are going to be able to provide these ISAs out to the retail community. That is a huge market for peerto-peer! In 2015, £79 billion was invested in ISAs across the group and there’s £480 billion of legacy ISAs out there that are earning very little rates if they’re in the cash ISA product. So, we see that if even a small proportion of that moves into the peer-to-peer market it could be a game changer for the industry.”

Julian Cork, COO, Landbay

How will political events affect the fintech sector?

“There is already a macro instability that is creating huge uncertainty and what this does in our relationship working with banks is actually pulling resources away. Banks are trying to figure out how to redraw the ring fence, how to outsource and bring certain parts of business back into continental Europe instead of moving forward and delivering value to customer. Also, we work with small businesses that want to invest in their future growth. The types of events we’re potentially facing in 2017, be it the crumbling of the Euro or macro-economic uncertainty coming from the new leadership in the US, is certainly creating an environment where businesses may be less comfortable moving forward with growth plans.”

Discover More Catch up on the full interviews on fintechage.com

Katrin Herrling, Co-founder and CEO, Funding Xchange

the importance of meeting Ernest

by Anais Borri

We had a chance to talk to Niall Bellabarba, Co-founder of chatbot Ernest, about the role of robotization and artificial intelligence in personal finance management.

audience by addressing very common and relatable issues. Furthermore, Ernest will soon speak multiple languages therefore appealing to a bigger user-base.

Niall believes chatbots can help people achieve better financial wellbeing by offering support in a fast, accurate and intuitive manner. That is why him and his team created Ernest, a financial coach which uses AI and natural language processing to answer people’s financial queries.

When working at Blackrock, Niall realized that most wealth and asset management firms only provide solutions for a very niche market. “Return on investment is a nice problem to have, when you have money to put out on investment,” he noted. This motivated him to produce a product addressing people’s common dayto-day finance management problems.

The team at Ernest chose the format of a conservational UI over an application because they believe “there is an app-fatigue and people don’t want to download another app”. Currently, Ernest lives only on Facebook Messenger “where the conversations are already happening”. As Niall highlighted, there are already more than 33,000 chatbots on Messenger for all kinds of purposes and the mass market is gradually adopting this form of interaction with their services.

The start-up is also looking to scale-up by implementing their chatbot in other messaging apps (Telegram, WeChat, etc.). Their ambition is to attract not only geeks and early adopters but to the wider

Niall Bellabarba,

Co-founder of chatbot Ernest In terms of positioning, Ernest doesn’t play in the big boys’ ballpark with the likes of Siri, Cortana and Alexa. Niall explained these are horizontal bots that try to answer a much wider range of requests, whilst theirs is a vertical bot focused on a particular subject.

However, Niall sees a future where these horizontal and vertical bots will communicate with each other to give people more accurate answers.

Regarding the future of fintech, Niall foresees a growing implementation of blockchain technology. In 2017, he also expects important changes in the peer to peer sector as interest rates are likely to rise and these platforms will have to adapt to a new financial environment.

Finsight Reconnecting Financial Markets to Reality

by Armand Lapotre

For most, financial markets seem very obscure and many fail to see the intrinsic value of financial assets, as they just don’t tie in with the world they experience every day.

For instance, why is the S&P 500 now 50% higher than its previous 2007 peak? Didn’t see any of that growth anywhere did you? Well that is because it doesn’t exist, S&P 500 earnings have only grown by an average of less than 3% per year since then, and real US GDP is only 10% higher than its 2007 peak. So have markets gone completely crazy and stopped making “real world” sense?

Certainly, information needs to be aggregated at a large scale and modelled by powerful technology to understand market trends; but these tools are useless without timely information reflecting the real world. The good news is that this insight lies with you as citizens and professionals. All it takes is for you to have some basic understanding about the markets, and your common sense will do the rest to close the information gap between your world and the financial world.

Now let’s look more into depth into how we came to such disconnections between financial markets and the real economy. Productivity gains arise thanks to cycles of innovation and technology, or industrial revolutions.

The truth is that since the 2000 tech bubble burst, we have reached the end of a cycle and we are at that transitory time where we have run out of industrially applicable innovation.

Moreover, the remedy to the 2008 financial crisis has been the same as to the 2000 tech burst, but times 10, injecting unprecedented levels of liquidity into the markets. This has sent the Dow Jones and S&P 500 to record high while production, real wages, and productivity didn’t find the pace they once had. More importantly, the massive disconnection between financial markets and the economy pushed inequalities to an unprecedented level.

It is not all bad though, as innovation is finally coming: 3D printing, AI, blockchain, the sharing economy, robotisation, and VR are finding their industrial path. Those will eventually change the way we work, live, as well as our education system for better or worse.

With the current bubbles and social tensions, any event could trigger a financial burst. It could be a large currency move, a war, social unrests, anger from the inequalities fostered by new technologies. Or maybe the upcoming industrial revolution will bring the real economy up to speed, proving the markets right. One thing is for sure though: how the banking world and new technologies impact your life, how you feel about inequalities, how you view society; those are all real world insights that can close the information gap between financial markets and reality.

Armand Lapotre

Founder, AvantSight Armand is the founder of AvantSight, a platform that collects and analyzes industry insights to provide investors with better information regarding market trends. This database of insights is built thanks to the contributions of industry professionals who are rewarded for sharing their expertise. The beta platform was launched in January 2017 and applications are open for any professional who would like to contribute to this exciting project.

Featured Start-Up GoCardless

by EMMA Snow

GoCardless was founded back in 2011 by two bright Oxford graduates, Matt Robinson and Hiroki Takeuchi, who met while working as management consultants at McKinsey. Since then the start-up has had a tremendous success in the UK and is progressively taking over the European market.

GoCardless is a next-gen payments company that makes processing direct debit payments easy for small and large businesses alike. This start-up is changing the payment landscape by creating a new global network based on the bank to bank payment systems. This allows businesses to collect payment from their customers, automate processes and ensure they maintain a long term relationship with them. The company offers predictable pricing at a fraction of most B2B payment providers as well as connectivity with the businesses’ own applications and other international payment networks. GoCardless has been particularly beneficial for small businesses which were previously denied the use of direct debit systems by incumbents. Takeuchi claims that their focus on this underserved market as well as their obsession with design and UX has given them a significant edge over traditional banks. Currently the start-up processes over $1bn each year for over 11.000 businesses, including Funding Circle, the Financial Times and TripAdvisor. As the world moves ever further toward subscription models, direct debit clearly appears as the most efficient way to process them and sets GoCardless to become a major player in the global payment scene.

At a Glance Founders: Matt Robinson, Hiroki Takeuchi Valuation: $2.32 million Total Equity Funding: $24.8 million Main Investors: Accel Partners, Passion Capital, Balderton Capital Employees: 100 HQ: London Areas Served: Europe Fun Fact: Co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi enjoys playing live poker, loves the Godfather II and is a fan of actor Samuel L Jackson.

Featured ANGEL Minh Q. Tran

by Anaïs Borri

Minh Q. Tran is a well-travelled and influential venture capitalist with twenty years of experience as a fintech entrepreneur. He is currently General Partner of AXA Strategic Ventures and Managing Partner of the incubator AXA Factory.

Tran started his career in Asia in 1993 as an analyst and climbed the ladder swiftly to become Head of Corporate Ventures at Bic Asia in 1997. He then moved to New-York to join Bertelsmann Ventures where he led initiatives in media investments. In 2004, he became Director of Corporate Ventures at Nokia in Finland. His professional adventures eventually brought him back to France where he pursued his path as an investor in fintech and mobile services. For more than four years he worked for Truffle Capital whilst also sitting on the board of numerous French start-ups.

In 2013, Tran joined the insurance giant AXA and catalysed a wave of innovation within the company. With AXA Factory (formerly known as AXA Seed Factory), Tran was able to foster talent in insurtech through mentorship programmes. In parallel, his role at AXA Strategic Ventures allowed him to help these innovative start-ups to secure funds faster.

Tran believes that big insurers need to work with disruptors if they want to evolve. In this regard, he said: “If you look at all industries from telecom to music, disruption means better opportunities for customers and negative business impact for incumbents.

Hence, it makes sense to look at disruption for insurance companies and collaboration from/with startups.”

He has described himself as “a hands-on investor”, heavily invested in the growth of the companies he supports. The key factors that help him identify new talents are their product and whether it fits the market, the cohesion of the team and their business model, and lastly whether he, as an investor, can bring them value over time by delivering on plan.

At a Glance Nationality: Vietnamese Lives in: Paris Education: MBA, INSEAD Current Roles: Managing Partner at AXA Factory, General Partner at AXA Strategic Ventures Number of Investments: 20+ Fintech Investments: FundShop, Widmee, Particeep Twitter Followers: 22.3k Fun Fact: Minh Q Tran said that if he was a web icon he would be Android’s robot and if he was a social network he would be Flickr

TOP TECH TRENDS 2017 What to watch out for in the year ahead

by Emma Snow

We have to understand the past to shape the future, so we looked back at 2016 to identify which trends will be likely to influence the fintech industry in 2017. We have scrutinised our crystal ball and taken into account the intuition of other experts to predict the key factors and fields that will play a major role this year.

API and Next Generation Banking The opening of APIs is likely to bring a very important paradigm shift within the banking industry. As PSD2 and the UK Competition and Market Authority’s new regulations come into force, banks will be forced to allow third parties, such as fintechs, to access their data and provide B2C services built upon this information.

This will create a new dynamic where banks will probably end up acting as passive platforms, or data repositories, while more specialised companies will create public banking interfaces and deal with customer engagement.

Telematics for Tailored Services The use of telematics by insurers has the potential to become common practice in the close future. Whether it is for car or health insurance, telematics can provide invaluable data on customer behaviour. Based on this, insurers can offer rewards to encourage healthy and safe lifestyle choices, which is beneficial both for the company and the customer. Moreover, customers expect increasing levels of customization and engagement with their services so telematics could allow insurers to meet these expectations.

Taking Safety into our Hands Cybersecurity was arguably one of the hottest topics of 2016, between the U.S. presidential elections and Yahoo’s major data breaches. These attacks have certainly raised public awareness and will boost advances in cybersecurity measures.

For this, biometrics appear like the method of choice. Tech giant Apple is actually contributing to this trend as it has added its Touch ID technology to all its new laptops, allowing users to make purchases online using their fingerprint, among other things.

Ditch GBPs for BTCs With May’s hard Brexit and several major European elections around the corner, 2017 promises to be another year of global geopolitical instability and investors will probably retain a riskaverse attitude. Cryptocurrencies are predicted to become a preferred alternative as their value will experience less volatility than traditional currencies. Indeed, 2016 saw the Sterling crash several times while the value of Bitcoin steadily grew and nearly doubled. This trend is likely to continue over the course of this year.

Speedy Chatty Bots Chatbots are becoming more and more common in customer service departments and could soon replace humans. In December 2016, the American peer-to-peer insurer Lemonade announced that its bot, AI Jim, broke a world record by processing and paying back a claim in 3 seconds, proving that robots could make many claim officers redundant. Bots are also trending in the realm of personal finance management with start-ups such as Ernest developing virtual advisors to improve people’s financial well-being.

Must-Haves & Favourites Here are our top picks of fintech products that you can put your hands on this season.

by Oliver Waters

Best Book: Augmented: Life in the Smarter Lane Five times Amazon bestselling author and fintech influencer Brett King has released yet again an eye-opening and visionary book on the potential of tech. Augmented is a fascinating account of our future history, questioning the impact technology will have on our culture and economy.The book explores how technologies such as automation, machine learning, VR will become essential parts of our activities and interactions. Focused around four key disruptive themes - Artificial Intelligence, Experience Design, Smart Infrastructure, and HealthTech – it highlights that adaptivity will be the key to success in an Augmented world.

Best App: MoneyBox Moneybox is an ingenious app which rounds up payments on all your daily purchases and invests the change in a diversified portfolio. This app is a cost-efficient, headache-free way to start investing. It’s ideal for students and young professionals who lack the confidence to define their own investment strategy or funds to access professional advice. The users can choose between three tracker funds of variable risk and invest their spare change into over 6,000 global companies within a Stocks and Shares ISA. Moneybox therefore does a brilliant job at democratizing personal finance management, helping the average Joe reach his goals better and faster a few pennies at a time.

Best Wearable: NFC Ring The NFC Ring is a stylish accessory which gives you the power to open doors, unlock your phone, share data with others and receive payments with a wave of the hand (sorcery!). As you might have guessed it uses NFC technology, or Near Field Communication, to interact with other devices wirelessly. This is the same technology that is used in debit cards or smartphones to enable contactless payments. This smart ceramic ring is waterproof, available in black or white, and comes with two NFC tag inlays, one for public information and one for sensitive data. The ring was created

by John McLear and crowdfunded via Kickstarter, with 7,665 backers having pledged ÂŁ241,947 since 2013.

Best Platform: WealthObjects

Thanks to WealthObjects banks, asset managers and insurers can access a customisable, ready-to-go advisory platform to offer more services online. This is an incredibly cost and time effective method for traditional providers to upgrade their digital proposition with cutting-edge robo technology and keep up to speed with changing customer expectations.

The platform can be modified to fit brand and customer requirements via a very user-friendly dashboard. WealthObject also offers a toolkit of modular APIs to enable the creation of bespoke solutions. Hopefully these tools will catalyse more innovation and inclusion within the wealth management industry.

United States

Nigeria

Survival of the Innovative

Booming and Blooming Hub

In the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) latest report fintech ranked alongside factors such as the Wells Fargo scandal and Brexit as one of the biggest threats to American banks. Indeed fintechs have raised the bar in terms of service quality and the report stated that: “Failure to innovate to meet evolving needs or financial services may place a bank at a competitive disadvantage.” The OCC is also looking to integrate the newcomers into the federally regulated banking system by creating a new chartering system which might further legitimize fintechs as serious players.

Nigeria is becoming the most dynamic fintech hub in the continent. A KPMG report revealed that investment in Nigerian fintech firms over the past two years had exceeded more than $200 million. With more than 23 million smartphones in use and over 150 million active subscriber lines, the demand for mobile services has risen massively. For instance, mobile money operations have grown from an average monthly value of $5 million to $142,8 million in 2016. Nigeria’s population boom, which is expected to surpass the USA by 2050, and its growing workforce of skilled entrepreneurs have been the main catalysts of this development.

FINTECH WORLD

by Federico Morgantini

Mexico Fintechs for Inclusion

According to Finnovista, Mexico tops the charts in LatAm for the number of fintechs fostering financial inclusion (35%). In a recent study considering the fintech ecosystem in LatAm, Finnovista also identified Mexico as the second largest market for this industry, following Brazil, with 153 start-ups. The most developed subsectors in the country were payments and remittances, followed by lending services. By targeting mainly unbanked and underbanked consumers, Mexican fintechs are rapidly eating up market shares from traditional providers and are looking to account for 30% of the banking sector in 10 years’ time.

France Maison of Tech

The City of Light is soon to house the biggest start-up campus in the world within the Station F, a 32.000 sq meter hub built inside an ex-train station. This initiative, designed by Xavier Vier, is supported by the French government which has been making great efforts to become more entrepreneur-friendly. This incubator will host various facilities such as 3000 desks, 8 event spaces, testing labs as well as several programmes to help start-ups at different stages of their development. As Roxanne Varza, one of the project directors, said “the land of croissants is also the land of some seriously solid tech startups� and this hub will hopefully foster the expansion of this ecosystem.

Australia Everything is Pozible

The Australian crowdfunding platform Pozible has been achieving stellar results in the past five years. In 2016, it has been at the top for the total Australian campaigns launched (about 11,400), most successful campaigns (around 6,500) and dollar value raised (about $46 million). Pozible also has the highest success rate in the crowdfunding market, at 58 per cent, which is almost twice as much as its American rivals Indiegogo (33%) and Kickstarter (24%).

Pozible CEO Alan Crabbe claimed that this success rate was reached thanks to the support they provide to the startups, in terms of project-planning and marketing strategy.

Upcoming Events Key dates for your calendar Feb 23-24 3rd Post Trade Forum Austria Trend Hotel Savoyen Vienna Vienna, Austria

by Oliver Waters

March 15 Ignition UK: Future of Fintech King’s Place London, UK

Now in it’s third year this two day forum will focus on the global regulatory landscape for the fintech industry.

Featuring keynote speakers from regulatory and governmental bodies, leading industry associations and banks/central banks will come and share their insights and their guidelines in post-trade processing.

A mix of panel discussions, talks and networking focussing on building a community of professionals across Europe.

March 1-2 Digital Finance World 2017 Frankfurt, Germany Two days packed with information about blockchains, bitcoins, Big Data and the Internet of Value with lots of workshops thrown in to get more active.

March 9 Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Tallinn Tallinn, Estonia

Business Insider’s inaugural Fintech conference will cover the changing world of money and will be looking at the areas of disruption that can lead to an exciting future.

Leveraging London’s leading role in the fintech revolution, the full-day event will bring together industry leaders from VCs to entrepreneurs, and finance executives, featuring fascinating speakers from both sides of the Atlantic.

March 16-17 fintech: Code – Defining the Dev in Finance Novotel London West London, UK

Leading IT company representatives and startup entrepreneurs will come together to discuss Blockchain solutions. This conference is part of a network of Blockchain events across Eastern Europe.

March 14-15 3rd Annual New Generation Operational Risk: Europe London, UK

This conference will bring together industry professionals to discuss the top priorities in the fintech industry with regard to operational risk.

Fintech: CODE is a 2 day event and a new international knowledge exchange platform bringing together all DevOps, IT, and IoT stakeholders who play an active role in the finance and tech scene.

The event will focus on topics such as software development, technical challenges for DevOps, DevOps security, cloud technologies and SaaS.

April 6-7

April 6

2nd Annual Banking Transformation & Innovation Summit

BlockShow Europe 2017

Vienna, Austria

Alte Kongresshalle Munich, Germany BlockShow Europe 2017 is a major informational and networking platform for showcasing the most disruptive Blockchain solutions.

April 19 Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Russia Moscow, Russia This 2-day C-Parity event will address the key issues of banking transformation and innovation by bringing on board expert speakers to provide updated information and present solutions to the challenges facing the industry.

Featuring heads of banking from across Europe the event will be a mix of presentations and panel discussions aimed at learning from the transformative practices of modern banking and from the digital evolution of other industries.

The conference is dedicated to cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based services. The main subject of interest will be blockchain in banking sector, management and different business areas.

May 9-10 IFINTEC Finance Technologies Conference and Exhibition

Steigenberger Hotel Maslak Istanbul Istanbul, Turkey

April 10-11 Innovate Finance Global Summit

Guildhall London, UK

IFINTEC is one of the largest and most important conferences in EMEA region on banking solutions and finance technology. Aimed at Experts and Managers this event focuses on financial solutions for businesses. IFINTEC Conference serves as a platform to introduce and demonstrate banking solutions and finance technology solutions including system, hardware, software, consultancy, training and service which are developed for banks and financial institutions.

May 17 Fintech Age Awards | Blue Financial Communication Rimini, Italy

FinTech takes over London for a special two day event in 2017 – and we want you to join us.

Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS), the world’s biggest celebration of achievement in FinTech, happens on April 10th – 11th 2017 across the City of London.

A new event launching in 2017 celebrating fintech leaders across the different sectors of digital finance.

It will be hosted at the Grand Hotel in Rimini as part of the Investment and Trading Forum

Top 10 Fintech Influencers

FINTECH

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UNRAVELLED

1. Susanne Chishti @SusanneChishti CEO of FINTECH Circle, Europe’s first Angel network focused on fintech, Chairman of FINTECH Circle Innovate and Co-Editor of “The FINTECH Book”​.

2. Devie Mohan @devie_mohan Fintech speaker, consultant and researcher for several fintech startups, banking innovation groups and investors. She is also a mentor at Octopus Labs and the UK ambassador for Finleap.

Q3’16 saw overall VC-backed fintech funding drop 17 percent to US$2.4 billion, while deal activity fell 12 percent to 178 deals. (Source: KPMG)

3. JP Nicols @JPNicols MD of the FinTech Forge, which extends the innovation capacity of financial institutions, and co-founder of the fintech community Bank Innovators Council, now a part of Next Money 4. Brett King @brettking Australian banker and author of several best-selling books on banking innovation, founder of mobile banking app Moven and host of the Breaking Banks radio show.

Only 44% of incumbents’ executives are “very confident” about building a strategy responding to the shifting trends catalysed by fintechs (Source: Capgemini)

5. Chris Gledhill @cgledhill CEO and co-founder of London-based start-up Secco Aura, fintech opinion-leader and blogger. Previously he was a lead mobile architect for the innovation labs at Lloyds Banking Group.

17.4% of customers using investment management services say they rely solely on fintechs and 27.4% use them alongside their traditional providers (CapGemini)

6. Huy Nguyen Trieu @Huynguyentrieu CEO of The Disruptive Group and Fintech Resident Expert at Oxford University. Prior roles include Fintech Advisor on the Board of the World Economic Forum and MD at Citi.

7. Bradley Leimer @leimer Head of Fintech Strategy and Innovation at Santander U.S. and fintech mentor at Startup Bootcamp and the Envestnet Yodlee incubator.

Only 20% of big banks believe that fintech firms represent a genuine competitive threat

8. Christophe Langlois @Visible_Banking Writer of the blog Visible Banking, Executive Consultant for Digital Transformation at IBM and popular keynote speaker. Prior to this he was Senior Innovation Manager at Lloyds TSB.

(IDC Insights & SAP)

10. Christine Lu @christinelu CEO and co-founder of America Innovate, recognised as one of the UN70 Digital Leaders by the United Nations Foundation. She is also a Venture Partner at E3 Capital.

1) source: Klear

9. Jim Marous @JimMarous Internationally recognized financial industry strategist, co-publisher of The Financial Brand and the owner and publisher of the Digital Banking Report.

FINTECH JARGON: DLT Distributed ledger technology or DLT is a type of digital system where a consensus of replicated and synchronized digital data is spread across multiple sites or institutions. Distributed ledgers can be thought of as a type of database, but unlike traditional databases, they have no central data store or administration functionality. This type of system was inspired by the concept of the double-entry bookkeeping system used in accounting, where each transaction is documented in at least two accounts to prevent bookkeeping errors. In a digital context, distributed ledgers record a transaction’s credit and corresponding debit simultaneously across multiple computer systems. Blockchain is in fact a type of DLT.

54% of customers globally are interested in using their fingerprint to make purchases

(Foresight Factory)

Connect

Discover more news and share your fintech stories on:

www.fintechage.com info@fintechage.com @fintechage

THE VOICE OF DIGITAL FINANCE

iFinance, Fintech Age and Origami reveal the future of the financial world.

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PIMCO GIS INCOME FUND

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Daniel J. Ivascyn e Alfred (PIMCO Income, 2013) sono stati insigniti del premio “Fixed-Income ManagersChiave dell’anno 2013” negliilUSA. è gestito in relazione a un particolare benchmark o indice. Ogni eventuale riferimento a un particolare benchmark o indice contenuto nel presente documento è effettuato unicamente allo scopo di raffrontare la performance e/o I rendimenti passati non sono una garanzia dei risultati futuri. PIMCO Funds: Global Investors Series plc è una società di investimento a capitale variabile multicomparto di diritto irlandese, costituita sotto forma di società il rischio. Il presente documento può includere informazioni aggiuntive, non esplicitamente riportate nel prospetto informativo, sulle attuali modalità di gestione del Fondo o della strategia. Tali informazioni sono aggiornate alla a responsabilità limitata e registrata con il numero 276928. Si noti che non tutti i Fondi sono registrati per la distribuzione in qualsiasi giurisdizione. Le presenti informazioni non devono essere utilizzate in alcun paese né data di presentazione e possono essere soggette a modifiche senza preavviso. Il Prospetto è disponibile al seguente indirizzo [Brown Brothers Harriman Fund Administration Services (Ireland) Limited, Telephone +353 1 241 7100, in relazione ad alcun soggetto, qualora tale utilizzo possa costituire una violazione delle leggi applicabili. Le informazioni contenute nella presente comunicazione integrano quelle contenute nel Prospetto Fax +353 1 241 7101]. I risultati passati non costituiscono un indicatore affidabile di risultati futuri. Il presente materiale promozionale è pubblicato a scopo puramente informativo - e pertanto non va considerato alla stregua informativo deld’investimento Fondo e devono essere lette unitamente alle medesime.

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I rendimenti passati non sono una garanzia né un indicatore attendibile dei risultati futuri e non viene fornita alcuna garanzia in merito al conseguimento di rendimenti analoghi in futuro. Le diverse contenente le Informazioni Chiave per gli Investitori sono stati pubblicati presso la Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa e sono disponibili su www.pimco.it. © 2017, PIMCO. classi di azioni del fondo sono soggette a commissioni differenti. Salvo altrimenti specificato nel Prospetto informativo o nel relativo Documento contenente le Informazioni Chiave per gli Investitori, il Fondo qui menzionato non è gestito in relazione a un particolare benchmark o indice. Ogni eventuale riferimento a un particolare benchmark o indice contenuto nel presente documento è effettuato unicamente allo scopo di raffrontare la performance e/o il rischio. Il presente documento può includere informazioni aggiuntive, non esplicitamente riportate nel prospetto informativo, sulle attuali modalità di gestione del Fondo o della strategia. Tali informazioni sono aggiornate alla data di presentazione e possono essere soggette a modifiche senza preavviso. Il Prospetto è disponibile al seguente indirizzo [Brown Brothers Harriman Fund Administration Services (Ireland) Limited, Telephone +353 1 241 7100, Fax +353 1 241 7101]. I risultati passati non costituiscono un indicatore affidabile di risultati futuri. Il presente materiale promozionale è pubblicato a scopo puramente informativo - e pertanto non va considerato alla stregua di una consulenza d’investimento nè di una raccomandazione relativa a qualsivoglia titolo, strategia o prodotto - da PIMCO Europe Ltd (Società n. 2604517), regolamentata nella condotta della propria attività di investimento 04_PIMCO_GIS_ITAL_INCOME_PURPLE_340x240_Blue Rating.indd 1 23/01/2017 dalla Financial Conduct Authority (25 The North Colonnade, Canary Wharf, Londra E14 5HS) nel Regno Unito. PIMCO Europe Ltd – Italy (Società n. 07533910969) è regolamentata dalla CONSOB ai sensi dell’Articolo 27 del16:44 Testo ARTWORKER STUDIO CREATIVE ART DIR/DESIGNER italiano.

Si 04_PIMCO_GIS_ITAL_INCOME_PURPLE_340x240_Blue prega di leggere attentamente il Prospetto ed il Documento contenente le Informazioni Chiave per gli Investitori prima di assumere qualunqueSERV decisione di investimento.

Il Prospetto e il Documento SaatchiPro Unico Finanziario File name: Rating le Informazioni stati pubblicati presso la Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa e sono disponibili su www.pimco.it. © 2017, PIMCO. Publication:contenente Blue Rating MagazineChiave per gli Investitori Client:sono PIMCO Size: 340x2405mm Date:

23/01/17

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