Basiq, the API platform powering some of Australia’s most innovative banks and fintechs with financial data is now accredited under the Consumer Data Right. Basiq’s implementation expertise and industry knowledge will provide accredited data holders and data recipients with the tools and support they need to accelerate their Open Banking use case and deliver the value of Open Banking to consumers.

Open Banking operates under the Consumer Data Right (CDR), which gives Australian consumers the rights and protections to share their data securely. Under Open Banking, consumers can request for their banking data to be shared with an accredited third-party and, in exchange, access personalised financial services and products that are right for them.

Since 2017, Basiq has been enabling fintechs to leverage open financial data in a similar way, with clients ranging from some of Australia’s largest fintechs, to startups in the pre-launch stage. Millions of consumers have already benefited from sharing their financial data and the rollout of the CDR will enable increased consumer uptake of data-driven products, a more stable connection to data and increased compatibility with data in other areas of the economy.

Currently, a handful of institutions are accredited to share and receive CDR data. Basiq’s accreditation will help accelerate data holder participation with a fully compliant data holder implementation that meets technical specifications and privacy and security requirements.

As more data is made available through this increased participation, the Basiq platform will dynamically switch to newly available datasets and increase the uptake of Open Banking APIs. This allows data recipients to immediately gain access to account and transaction data from over 100 financial institutions and take advantage of Open Banking whilst it’s still a moving target.

Specifically, the turnkey solution provides accredited recipients with CDR compliant consent management and data governance across Open Banking rails and other data retrieval methods.

Part of this solution is the ability to render a simple, informed and trustworthy data sharing experience for consumers as well as consent handled in line with CDR Privacy Principles.

According to Basiq CEO and founder, Damir Ćuća, who sits on the Open Banking advisory board,

“There’s no doubt that Open Banking will increase innovation, promote transparency and drive consumer benefit. We want to accelerate this value by helping businesses move beyond compliance and start viewing Open Banking as an opportunity to leverage a new paradigm of comprehensive, accurate and up to date customer financial data, available on demand.”

Basiq also takes Open Banking a step further with powerful overlay services across expense classification, merchant identification, income detection, expense analysis and behavioural spend analytics, ensuring that businesses can spend more time innovating and improving their Open Banking offerings.

Mr Ćuća added, “Having reliable access to data provides a strong foundation but the ability to generate actionable insights to create truly personalised experiences is what will ultimately help businesses move quickly and grow.”

About Basiq

Basiq is an API platform that provides the building blocks of financial services. Our APIs enable secure access to customer financial data and tools to uncover valuable insights. Backed by AP Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Reinventure, NAB Ventures and Plaid, over 200 fintechs and banks rely on our platform to deliver innovative financial solutions across lending, payments, wealth, digital banking and more.

https://basiq.io

Today non-bank lender Bluestone went live with its new digital lending platform. This launch includes a significant number of new features and improvements including a suite of new loan origination and servicing capabilities.

This move takes Bluestone from a legacy system to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted, cloud-based platform, powered by Mambu and supported by NextGen and Katabat. Bluestone worked with global software consultancy, Thoughtworks, in the development of its next-generation lending platform.

Kristofer Rogers, Mambu’s general manager of Australia & New Zealand, says, “Mambu is incredibly proud to power Bluestone’s core platform upgrade, which will have far-reaching benefits for Australian brokers and borrowers. We believe that our cloud-native SaaS banking and financial services platform – along with the support of our team here in Australia – will help Bluestone deliver a future-ready digital lending platform, ensuring its continued success in the home lending market.”

Bluestone has also developed a new, mobile-first internet banking platform with a number of new features and benefits, including real-time payments powered by Byron-based Split Payments (AFR Most Innovative Technology Company 2020). This brings Bluestone’s technology in line with industry best practices and demonstrates their commitment to continuously improving their broker and borrower experience.

“Projects like this get us really excited. Hats-off to Bluestone’s commitment to collaboration and customer-first payments solutions,” said Matt Cheers, Split Payments Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships.

While Bluestone is already known for its industry-leading turnaround times, brokers can now benefit from a range of features that include automated validation of application information, real-time status updates, and automated valuations for most loans. Brokers will also benefit

from an improved digital settlement process, and improved loan tracking with easily accessible lender correspondence.

“This investment in technology demonstrates our dedication to supporting the broker community and continually enhancing their experience with us. This system upgrade ensures that our brokers can have access to a more streamlined experience that will help them deliver better outcomes to their clients,” said Bluestone’s Chief Customer Officer, James Angus.

Campbell Smyth, Bluestone CEO, said, “We’re incredibly excited about launching our new platform. The immediate benefits are obvious in terms of improved efficiencies and better broker and borrower experiences. However, the long term benefits of speed, flexibility and the ability to seamlessly integrate with new technologies present and future will allow Bluestone to stamp itself as an industry leader in lending and technology.”

“Developing Bluestone’s new digital lending platform has been a massive undertaking involving many thousands of people hours, incredible support from our partners and, not least, the talent and creativity of the wider Bluestone team. This platform will put Bluestone’s technology on par with, and in some ways, ahead of, the best in our industry,” added Chief Technology Officer Jason Barry.

The transition of the back book to the new platform will take place over the coming months, as Bluestone migrates existing customers in stages.

The platform will continually evolve with an offset product due in the next release, expected later this year.

BOC Gas is the first large enterprise business to join the Australian e-Invoicing network. The multi-year deal with Adelaide based Access Point provider Link4, allows BOC to send and receive invoices in line with Peppol standards.   

The Australian government recognises that e-Invoicing does help small and medium businesses build their digital capacity and thrive. But it will fall short if big business avoids it’s adoption. 

The 2021 Federal Budget set aside $15.3 million for promoting e-Invoicing through Australia’s business community to help get more of corporate Australia onto the e-Invoicing network. 

“Research shows that Australian businesses will free up cash flow with e-Invoicing, injecting as much as $3B into the economy each year and creating new jobs,” noted Link4 CEO, Robin Sands. “We are very happy to see the business community stepping up and look forward to more organisations following BOC’s lead.” 

Thousands of small businesses in Australia already deliver their invoice data without the need for email or PDFs, but large organisations have been slow to adopt this new service. 

“We’re very happy that BOC has benefited from e-Invoicing as an enterprise organisation. In a time where on-time payments are crucial for business survival, it is important to use the latest technology to achieve those goals.” Says Sam Hassan, CTO of Link4. 

BOC send over 2 million invoices a year and have been working with Link4 since 2018. “BOC wants their small business customers to experience the benefits of e-Invoicing, which is why they are putting themselves forward as leaders in this area,” stated Hassan.

e-Invoicing is a service that any large organisation can implement without changing its current cloud-enabled ERP system. 

To date, BOC has seen a 50% improvement in on-time payments with e-Invoicing, and an improved customer satisfaction rating. 

Send, the Queensland-based international payments specialist has today announced the appointment of Andrew Perry to its Board of Directors.

With his appointment, Perry brings to Send a wealth of knowledge and extensive industry experience, amassed over a 30-year career that has seen him hold senior posts at large financial institutions including Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Tudor Investment Corporation, and Bank of Queensland.

Perry had previously been working alongside Send’s CEO, Paul Billing, as a member of its Advisory Board since June 2019, and his subsequent appointment as Director comes at a time of accelerated growth for the company, recently named by The Australian as one of its ‘Top 20 Australian tech stars to watch for.

“I’m delighted to be joining the Board at Send,” said Perry. “The payments sector and Send as a business are changing rapidly, and I have the utmost confidence in Paul and the team’s ability to deliver the exceptional products and critical components that will support the growth of both Send and its enterprise partners.”

“Since first joining us in an advisory capacity, it quickly became clear that Andrew’s first-class track record would be an invaluable asset to Send,” stated Billing. “As we continue to build and launch more market-leading products for our partners, I have no doubt that his ongoing input will help us grow commercially and drive further innovation in the payments space.”

About Send

Send provides international currency transfer solutions to a range of Australia’s most-loved brands, and giving their customers the very best rates.

• More than 50 new cities and 20 new countries have been added to findexable’s Global Fintech Rankings 
• The value of fintech unicorn companies has more than doubled 
• The evolution of fintech in a country is highly correlated to financial inclusion in emerging economies 
• The 2021 findexable Global Fintech Rankings is produced in partnership with Mambu, the market-leading cloud banking platform

A new report by findexable shows that 2020 was a year in which the financial technology (‘fintech’) sector expanded globally and financially, building upon a surge in demand for technology that increases access to digital finance. Previous reports showed that this trend was accelerating, but over the period covered by this year’s report diversity among fintech companies exploded, with 50 new cities and 20 new countries added to the index, meaning that they host the headquarters of at least 10 privately-owned fintech companies. 

The 2021 Global Fintech Rankings, powered by Mambu, identifies emerging hubs, fintech companies and trends. The Index algorithm ranks the fintech ecosystems of more than 230 cities across 65 countries incorporating data from findexable’s own records and collated and verified by its Global Partnership Network, including Crunchbase, StartupBlink, SEMrush and 60+ fintech associations globally. The index was first published in 2019 and has seen a huge uptake by the fintech industry. 

This year’s Global Fintech Rankings report shows that although major technology and finance centres like London, New York and San Francisco are still global centres of development, the fintech industry is becoming more geographically diverse. Several African countries have debuted on the list, including Seychelles, Rwanda, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, and Somalia. Cities like Riyadh and Tel Aviv have moved up the rankings, with the latter joining the top ten cities in the world for fintech growth. With more fintech companies being founded in a greater range of locales, from Flutterwave in sub-Saharan Africa to the digital currency launched in the Bahamas, the needs of specific populations are being served by people from those areas. In total, of the 83 countries in the rankings this year, more than 20% are new entrants. In short, emerging markets and digitally savvy but underbanked populations continue to be sources of fintech innovation. 

This speaks to one of the report’s larger themes: fintech is bridging gaps in consumers’ lives, many of them revealed or made more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from Mastercard showed that in the first quarter of 2020 there was a greater shift to digital banking in ten weeks than there had been in the previous five years. Fintech can no longer be dismissed as a fad but is a part of billions of peoples’ lives – ‘fintech for all rather than the few. However, there is a significant gap between major players and the next generation of innovators in terms of funding that needs to be addressed to keep the industry moving forward with new ideas. There also remains a gap between the customers of fintechs – women are often early adopters while emerging markets are sources of giant user bases – and the people leading them. 

The report also shows that significant investment came into the sector during the year. The number of ‘unicorn’ companies (privately-held start-ups with a valuation of more than $1 billion) has increased dramatically, with multi-billion dollar ‘mega-rounds’ from a handful of companies propelling the total invested in fintech unicorns to $440 billion, up from $199 billion in April 2020. This dramatic increase in investment means that fintech unicorns now account for 20% of total tech unicorn value. 

Findexable’s founder and CEO Simon Hardie explains: “The level of investment and activity in the fintech sector is hugely gratifying for those of us who have been championing the industry. It is especially good to see that the pandemic didn’t slow down, and may have in fact accelerated, the adoption of fintech in parts of the world that have previously been underserved.” 

He adds: “Just as important as whether the industry is growing is the question of whether the industry as a whole is helping ordinary people solve the problems of financial access, cost and simplicity. A University of Illinois study conducted with last year’s data showed that a country’s level of fintech development is highly related to improvements in financial inclusion in emerging economies.’ We can extrapolate from this that the increase in fintech companies in under-banked regions will lead to greater financial inclusion in those areas.”

Elliott Limb, Mambu’s Chief Customer Officer, comments: “Fintechs are part of a global revolution to make financial services easier, faster and simpler. They are changing the way we save, spend, borrow, and invest money. Whether competing, cooperating or supporting traditional financial institutions, they are reshaping digital services for a real-time, on-demand world.” 

He adds: “This is why we are proud to have earned our stripes in this imagination-rich community and stepped up to sponsor the Global Fintech Index. The need to understand where the energy and ideas are being created is a tool that decision-makers need. Whether it is an aspiring unicorn, a neobank seeking new markets, a provider that wants to go digital, or a financial institution that wants to act like a fintech, you need a roadmap…a guide to where to begin and where to go. This is why a ranking system is important.” 

For the purpose of the Index algorithm, fintech is any business that applies a technologically enabled innovation specifically geared to provide or distribute financial services. 

The country and city rankings were calculated from a total score comprised of a combination of three metrics: 

• Quantity – Size of fintech ecosystem and supporting structures – number of fintechs, fintech hubs, co-working spaces, accelerators, global influencers and population (countries only)
• Quality – Impact/performance – size and growth of fintechs (e.g. number of unicorns), investment, events, value generation, international collaboration, website ranking 
• Environment – ease of doing business, critical mass, regulatory environment – regulatory interventions to improve the competitive environment, incentives for start-ups, internet censorship, payment portals, fintech courses. 

To learn more and download a copy of the report, visit: https://findexable.com/

Moneythor, a leading provider of personalised customer experiences for banks and FinTech firms, and Envestnet | Yodlee, leading data aggregation and analytics platform powering dynamic, cloud-based innovation for digital financial services, have today announced a partnership that will enable financial institutions across Australia and New Zealand to provide engaging, contextual and actionable customer experiences. 

The partnership will now enable Moneythor to offer their fully white-labelled and scalable solution with integrated Envestnet | Yodlee financial data aggregation. The solution will provide access to consumer-permissioned financial data from over 100 financial institutions across Australia and New Zealand to give consumers a holistic and dynamic view of their financial situation.   

The Moneythor solution uses data analytics and behavioural science techniques to improve functionality and experience for banking customers across digital channels to provide actionable financial guidance. It utilises data sources from multiple banks and financial institutions, facilitated in part by Envestnet | Yodlee’s Financial Data Aggregation Platform, to deliver highly personalised and engaging content. Use cases include notifications that assist customers with personal financial management (PFM), financial literacy & advisory, targeted offers and more. By combining this with Envestnet | Yodlee’s advanced data aggregation solution, financial services providers can turn data into more meaningful digital experiences for their customers.   

The combined solution is already used by companies including Raiz, the leading micro-investing platform in Australia, to provide customers with financial wellness tools driven by aggregated account and transaction data.  

Moneythor has a global portfolio of clients including traditional banks such as ANZ, BNZ, CIMB, DBS and Standard Chartered Bank among others, as well as digital banks and FinTechs. It has a proven track record of implementing data-driven personalisation across multiple regions.  

Envestnet | Yodlee is the market leader in financial data aggregation, enabling innovation and insights for financial service providers. It has partnered with more than 1,400 financial institutions and FinTech innovators, which enables firms to build innovative financial solutions with access to an industry-leading application programming interface (API). Envestnet | Yodlee is an Accredited Data Recipient and Intermediary under the Consumer Data Right. 

Commenting on the partnership, Olivier Berthier, CEO and Co-Founder of Moneythor, notes, “the combination of Envestnet | Yodlee’s experience in comprehensively and securely aggregating data and Moneythor’s ability to enable personalised digital banking experiences results in financial firms of all sizes deploying differentiated features to their customers within a short time-frame. The demand for these types of solutions is continuously growing, and we are delighted to add Envestnet | Yodlee to our list of partners and to bring these solutions to life across Australia and New Zealand.” 

“Enabling financial institutions to utilise Envestnet | Yodlee’s rich financial data, combined with Moneythor’s customer experience solutions, means they can communicate with their customers in new, engaging and purposeful ways,” said Timothy Poskitt, Country Manager ANZ at Envestnet | Yodlee. “By truly understanding customers through data insights, and utilising technology to engage with them effectively, finance service providers can significantly improve the experience they offer and generate revenue by providing consumers with the information and personalized guidance they need to improve their financial health.”