The Buzz

Two distinct streams have surfaced in fintech: passive and active investment. Betterment is the posterchild for passive investment, just recently booking $70 million of venture funding and has continued to enhance its services bankinnovation.net/2017/07/betterm…he-human-touch/. But the active investment strategy for investors is long from dead in fintech. We talked with Pierce Crosby of StockTwits...

On this episode JJ chats with Benjamin Savage the co-founder of Clocktower Technology Ventures and Managing Director at Drobny Capital. At Drobny Ben spearheads new business initiatives across the firm and is responsible for private market activities, including leadership of Clocktower’s investments. Ben was previously Director, Investment Associate Program for Bridgewater Associates, where he wor...

APIS and open banking – however that term is defined – are set to transform financial services by empowering consumers to share data with third parties. This means new businesses will develop that will orbit banks, and the consumer experience may be forever changed. Furthermore, APIs allow banks a measure of control and security screen-scraping did not – so why aren’t more banks embracing this new...

Talk about financial innovation has centered around millennials for years now -- so much so that Ron Shevlin, the industry consultant, recently called Baby Boomers the "emerging" sector in fintech. That sector of people older than 50 now numbers 111 million -- and rapidly growing -- in America today. Older people have different, more-complex digital needs than millennials. Additionally, often thos...

How does a super-regional bank go about its innovation? In this episode of INV Unfiltered, Fazir Ali, Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy & Innovation at KeyBank, shares his bank’s “journey” to digital-first orientation. KeyBank, which has nearly 19,000 employees, has reconstituted its digital operations since 2013, when Ali joined the bank, and continues to push hard on innovation to he...

Finding customers quickly has become an overwhelming challenge for fintech startups. At the start of the fintech revolution, startups could mine social media to create customer relationships with an ever-expanding group of disaffected banking consumers. But competition -- from banks, as well -- has made that strategy more challenging. The new method of securing a customer base, ever-important in t...

This inaugural episode of INV Unfiltered features Leo Cherman, head of Banco Sofisa Direto, the direct bank of Sao Paulo, Brazil-based Banco Sofisa, which is a FI partner to INV Fintech. Leo brings a unique perspective to us today, because he is both enmeshed in the Brazilian market, but also keenly in tune with global fintech.