Converge

The US economy has clearly been in a league of its own in the post-pandemic era. And 2024 has underlined the exceptional position of the US economy compared to its peers with inflation and employment data broadly surprising to the upside. The lagging data that is relevant for the National Bureau of Economic Research to make a call on whether the US has entered a recession has remained resilient ov...

Join Riya Grover , co-founder and CEO of Sequence , as we discuss how her fintech, dubbed "the financial router," is building a flexible toolkit to help companies automate their contract-to-cash process. The move towards usage-based pricing and the adoption of hybrid pricing models are driving the need for tools like Sequence. And while spreadsheets are still useful, they are increasingl...

April has been about many things. In the United States, it was about inflation surprising to the upside and investors pricing out rate cuts from the Fed. In Asia, it was about a strong dollar leading central banks to verbally or physically intervene in FX markets to prop up demand for their own currencies. And in Europe, it was about confirming the bottoming of economic activity. In this week'...

It's well known that AI is an incredible tool for productivity, stretching across many use cases. But can AI's tentacles ever reach the C-suite, with the art and science needed to delicately balance the broader needs of an organization? Siqi Chen believes it can. We discuss how finance has lagged behind other areas in terms of software innovation and why it's solving this problem is lo...

The macro markets look a lot different now than they did at the beginning of April, and the story has once again been US economic data to blame for volatility. With the 3-month average jobs growth running at 244 thousand and 3-month annualized core inflation at 4.5%, policy makers will most likely be able to sit out a couple of meetings and hold rates unchanged.   Investors are coming to terms wit...

In light of Sam Bankman Fried's recent 25-year prison sentence and the FTX collapse, what are the deeper implications on the crypto industry as we move into a new era of digital asset adoption? In this week's episode, we discuss the erosion of trust, the need for strong governance and risk management controls, and the responsibility of individuals in understanding the risks involved when p...

2024 has so far been about US soft data surprising the consensus to the upside and investors paring back their expectations for rate cuts across the developed world. Naturally, this has led both government bond yields and the US dollar higher. However, the low volatility rate in the FX space means that while the Greenback has risen against 78% of its global peers in the first quarter of 2024, the...

The disbursement of humanitarian aid has been a historical challenge for many organizations aiming to provide relief around the globe. The Stellar Development Foundation's Aid Assist program is aiming to change that. Powered by the Stellar blockchain, Stellar is on a mission to democratize access to financial services, with the goal of revolutionizing how humanitarian aid reaches its recipient...

Global investors have become comfortable pricing in the eventual turn of the global monetary policy cycle to a more accommodative stance. However, the big macro theme in early 2024 has been the paring of G3 policy easing bets against the backdrop of somewhat rebounding inflation rates. This has led to a rebound in bond yields and the Greenback, without putting pressure on equity markets. Volatilit...

This week, we sat down with Raja Chakravorti , Head of Universal Access at Plaid , to broadly discuss the state of the fintech industry in 2024 and the evolving consumer attitudes that are shaping it. Why has fintech become so ubiquitous and where is it headed in 2024? How has the definition of fintech evolved over time, and what roles will we increasingly see AI play across financial services? Le...

March will be an interesting month in financial markets, driven by three major themes: inflation, paring back of interest rate cut expectations, and the lack of volatility despite underlying risks. Upcoming events in March, including central bank rate decisions, will be significant and could induce price action. Will we see a continuation of the disinflationary trend, a potential end to the US exc...

Payments in Africa are "1% built," presenting a massive opportunity to unlock growth for businesses and improve lives - not just on the continent itself but also around the globe where migrants proliferate and prosper. Join Benjamin Fernandes , CEO of Nala , a cross-border payments and remittances fintech focusing on building Africa's modern payment infrastructure, to discuss the cha...

Register for Convera Live! https://convera.com/events/convera-live/ Last week's economic data deluge, including the latest inflation reports that called into question the timing of rate cuts, triggered some significant volatility across financial markets, creating a modest case of whiplash. Could this become more frequent as central banks begin policy easing this year? Meanwhile, the carry tra...

Fraud feels like one of the inevitabilities of our financial system - if we had a system that was 100% fraud free, it would be so restrictive and buttoned down that it would be almost impossible to use.  And because we still rely on many antiquated systems to confirm the identity of customers, fraud continues to be a major problem.   Passwords persist as the dominant auth method despite their frag...

This past week, in a rare mainstream media appearance, US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell joined 60 Minutes and within that time sent expectations for a US March rate cut plunging. Regardless, major global financial markets are broadly looking for around the same moves over the next 18 months – about 200 basis points of cuts. Yet not all conditions are moving in parallel, and while wages are e...

Fintech has always been an exciting space for venture capital investors, but it’s no secret that today's environment remains a challenging one for the venture capital industry. During the previous era of low interest rates, investors were competing to back startups at increasingly high valuations, but now future ROI remains uncertain for many. Many funds are sitting on record amounts of capita...

January has been all about the broad pushback of policy makers and the economic data against the trend of lower bond yields that started in November. Central bankers have won the first round against investors that had hoped to see the first rate cuts from the Fed, ECB and BoE already in March. However, the month-to-date advance of bond yields and the US dollar have not been able to dent the attrac...

In the past, finance teams didn’t always benefit from innovation in software like sales and marketing teams did. Now, a group of fintechs are bringing new technologies to market for CFOs and their teams - leveraging the disruptive power of AI. As we see more and more tools solve for the less glamorous work that finance teams do, e.g. reconciling staff expenses, does this signal a trend towards an...

It's been a year already! Join Convera Macro Analyst Boris Kovacevic for the first episode of the year as we re-cap 2023 and deep-dive into potential market and macro risks for the year ahead, covering geopolitics, inflation, central banking, Germany, China and global FX outlooks. Disclaimer: Converge is Convera’s new podcast that discusses a range of financial services topics. We want to remi...

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and the concept of Environmental, Social & Governance investing (or ESG) is at the heart of corporate efforts to reduce it. But why do many businesses find ESG implementation to be such a challenge, and how can they not only get started with it but also embed sustainable ESG practices long term to ensure these important trends aren...

This week, in a window of ~60 hours, policy will be set for 60% of the global economy. Gear up for the last important week of the year when the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England set policy on Wednesday and Thursday. Convera global macro strategist, Boris Kovacevic , breaks down the possibilities ahead, with an eye on what the macro data is telling us. We cover: How many ba...

In October, the CFPB proposed a rule that would accelerate a shift toward open banking, giving consumers more control over their data and bolstering competition for banks and fintechs to up their game. Plaid , the open banking pioneer that seamlessly connects fintechs and services with banks, has been a key player in this evolution. And now that income and employment data is much more integrated i...

We're kicking off our new bi-weekly market and macroeconomic update series with a bang. Hear from Global Macro Analyst Boris Kovacevic on why November is shaping up to be the best month for risk assets this year as investors have priced in expectations for a major central bank pivot. In our latest global macro podcast, we distill the recent market moves and set out our thesis for why we are an...

Can financial fairness and inclusivity go hand in hand with profitability? Many often say inclusivity is hard, inclusivity isn't profitable, but in reality, it's one of the strongest core pillars around which to build a business and drive growth. Automation and AI are casting a more inclusive, wider net through technology in financial services, unlocking opportunities in lending, banking a...

B2B financial services are at an inflection point; business infrastructure is moving to the cloud, but financial services are lagging: they are fragmented, run on legacy tech, and lack scale and resiliency. At the nexus of driving this necessary change are integrated ecosystems of fintechs and financial cloud services providers offering businesses and financial institutions a ‘one-stop shop’ in em...