[ad_1]
Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for your subscription and vote of confidence. If you are reading this as a post on our site, please register over here So you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I look at the hottest fintech news from the previous week. This includes everything from funding rounds to trends to niche analysis to hot takes on a specific company or event. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it – and understand it – so you can stay informed. – Mary Ann
Last week I wrote about four companies that have an insurance technology angle. Do they all have one thing in common? Each of them had a very special focus.
This is interesting considering the fact that many general insurance technology companies have struggled over the past year. As my colleague Alex Wilhelm explained on Friday’s Equity Podcast: Root zeroed in on value, and MetroMill went into Lemon, which lost most of its value. This led him, Natasha Massarenhas, and I to ask: As broad-based consumer neo-insurers fail to generate value, will elite players do better?
Although we don’t know the answer to that question, we do Note that investors seem to be ditching insurance players.
On September 19, I reported how Infinite rider And Cover tree Each of them raised millions of dollars to provide insurance for very unique products. Boundless Rider was founded specifically to serve riders of motorcycles, e-bikes and power sports vehicles. In particular, the company sees great potential in the growing e-bike market in the coming years. CoverTree’s focus is exclusively on residents of pre-fab or manufactured homes.
“If it’s made in a factory—and that includes modular homes, tiny homes, and ADUs—we’ll help insure it,” Adarsh Rachmale, a former LinkedIn product manager, told me in an interview. “And because we pay attention, we do it a lot better.”
Then, by midweek, I was covered. Pie insurance Top $315 million Series D. In the year As I tweeted in 2021, the size of this round would not have turned heads. But in the current environment where investors are pulling back and funding is shrinking sharply, the $315 million in revenue stands out. That company also has a very special focus: providing workers’ compensation insurance to small businesses. The Washington, D.C., company He told me that the annualized rate premium (ARR) for the first four months of 2022 has increased by nearly $300 million. In the first quarter of 2022, it more than doubled its gross underwriting fees compared to the same period in 2021.
And last but not least, I wrote about how Mark Shaw, the engineer behind activity and fitness tracking app Strava and insurance software company Guidewire, raised $15 million for his latest venture. It is inclined. Shaw’s third startup, lending to whole life insurance policies, aims to digitize “many of the traditionally time-intensive tasks” involved in the process.
Co-founder Josh Weiss told TechCrunch, “There’s a trillion dollars worth of money in the entire life in America. “We want to support this great opportunity.”
The current total life loan market is $150 billion, compared to $1.1 trillion, and that’s a derivative focus. Wow. Who knew??
Weekly news
Featured on TechCrunch.
As Connie Loizos reports, “Klarna, the 17-year-old Stockholm, Sweden-based buy-now, pay-later clothing company, said in a video message from COO Camilla Giske on Monday that it is once again downsizing to reflect its new and “more focused nature.” Around 500 Klarna employees have been invited to “see the news including in IT and recruiting,” although Klarna told us in a separate statement that the layoffs will affect fewer than 100 employees worldwide.
From Carly Page: “Fintech startup revolution It has confirmed that it has been hit by a highly targeted cyber attack that allowed hackers to gain access to the personal information of tens of thousands of customers. “An unauthorized third party accessed the short-term details of a small percentage (0.16%) of our customers,” Vigilance spokesperson Michael Bodansky told TechCrunch. Revolut discovered the malicious access late on September 11 and identified the attack the following morning.
Manish Singh wrote: “In six years UPI It has become the most popular way for Indians to transact online. Mobile electronic payment systems were used in more than 6.57 billion transactions last month in the world’s second largest internet market. Now, it is taking steps to boost its growth… The central bank is working to expand UPI to “more parts of Asia and the Middle East and other parts of the world,” and is setting up an international branch.
Featured on TechCrunch+.
From Anna Heim: “In In 2021, we wondered if Brazil could be in for an IPO bonanza. It didn’t: Not only is Latin America’s largest economy going through the same IPO drought as the rest of the world, it’s also one of the most high-profile public listings. Nubankis coming to an abrupt end.
From Alex Wilhelm: “In In late 2020 and 2021, companies offering savings, investing and trading products to consumers are hot. Coinbase, Robinhood, M1 and others grew rapidly; Hell, start born and provide balance other The ability for companies to bake services like equity trading into their platforms! We all know what happened next: 2022 brought about a change in market conditions and a decrease in consumers’ desire – or perhaps ability – to save, invest and trade. This made Coinbase a prominent player in the consumer fintech market, quickly going from impressive profits to heavy losses in just a few quarters. Robinhood has seen its market value fall dramatically, and M1 fired the workersHe said. For a quick check on consumer fintech activity ahead of Q3 data, go here.
To take a closer look at the status of E.AAccess to salary About space, how it should be allocated and where the money is going, Karan Bhasin spoke to a few active investors in the space. Read more here.
And elsewhere
From Guest: “You no longer need to live in the US to use it. prove it’Buy-now-pay-later services for most of your online transactions. Affirm is expanding into Canada in partnership with Amazon. If you spend $50 or more on Amazon.ca, you can choose the Confirm Payroll option at checkout to split the bill into monthly payments. Unlike states, there are no late fees or surprise fees. The payment option is available within one month. The Canadian rollout comes nearly two years after Affirm bought local counterpart PayBright — effectively a rebranding. Affirm also serves Australia, but only for people who buy Peloton fitness equipment.
from of Robinhood Blog: “Today we introduced a new Robinhood Gold benefit that allows members to earn 3% interest on brokerage cash – up from 1.5% for non-Gold members. With the new interest rate, gold customers can earn more on their unspent money as they plan their next move and earn 23x more interest compared to the national average savings rate. The added benefit comes in the form of a federal rate hike earlier this week.
The beginning of manpower to tear It announced last week that it is branching out into fintech, entering the ever-growing expense management space. In a blog post, product lead Rishab Hegde announced the launch of the company’s new offering, which includes corporate cards, expense management and invoice payments. As the company’s Ripple expense management product is linked to the company’s HR system and employee data, it gives the business a way to “view and manage” all of its monthly cash burn “in one place.”
From PYMNTS: “Finance Super App for Businesses Flexbase It is now offering B2B merchants a buy-to-let, pay-later (BNPL) solution called Flexbase Pay. With this product, merchants can get paid instantly while also giving their business customers the option to get interest-free financing for 60 days… Practically, merchants just need to add the ‘Flexbase Pay in 60 Days’ button to enable the payment. Flexbase Pay option, and then Flexbase handles the underwriting process and funds merchant customers within five minutes.
The information, on the other hand, “Scratch Founders John and Patrick Collison of the payments software pioneer, valued at $95 billion in its latest fundraising, aren’t in a rush to go public… A new listing could solve one problem for the 13-year-old startup: Stock awards for some of its first employees face a deadline next year… Before those original Stripe employees end If they’ve exercised the options before, they’ll have to come up with cash to pay a higher tax bill based on the private value of Stripe shares. Stripe can arrange another secondary offering to buy the personal stock of these loyal employees, which the employees can then use for their tax bill. Alternatively, an initial public offering or direct listing would allow employees — as well as Stripe’s investors — to cash out.
Jeff Bezos-backed Chipper cashDiaspora, a cross-border payments app used by over 5 million people across Africa, has announced a partnership with a card issuing platform. High note. The companies said in a news release that the new service will provide US-based ChipperCash customers with “a way to access their digital wallets for transactions such as e-commerce purchases that require card payments in the US and foreign countries.”
StashThe company, which built investment and banking applications with more than 2 million customers and nearly $3 billion in assets under management, announced the launch of a new product called Stash Core, a new proprietary infrastructure platform to support its services. Americans who bank as investors.
Image Credits: Richard Drury (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Funding and M&A
Africa
Ghana’s FinTech Second Stakes Enables Investors to Access Capital Markets Abroad, 1.6M
Asia
Singapore’s Arbor Ventures has raised $193M for its next early stage fintech fund
Zoper raised $75 million to solve India’s insurance crisis
Europe
A new approach to B2B fintech orders a $19M order led by a16z
European digital bank Moniz took $35 million from HSBC
Latin America
HSBC, Goldman, Santander Color 810 million dollars for Kavak funding
United States
Noble comes out of hiding to help companies extend lines of credit to their customers
Fintech app Portabl raises $2.5 million to help consumers store financial data securely
Healthcare financier Scratchpay secures $35M Series C
Remofirst raises $14.1M to make it cheaper and easier for businesses to hire remote workers globally
Sardine raises $51.5M led by a16z to sniff out fintech transactions
Proptech Rook Raises $4.1M to Grow Its “Shared Value Investment” Program
Property management startup DoorLoop paid $20M.
Image Credits: PonyWang / Getty Images
A little about me
Did you know that The Interchange was recently mentioned as “recommended reading” in the Financial Times? It was my soul!
I was a guest on the One Vision podcast! I chatted with Bradley Limmer of Unconventional Ventures about how he views the current fintech landscape and how he approaches “the wisdom and responsibility of informing the changing technology landscape.” Click here to listen to the episode.
To learn a little more about me, check out this MuckRack Q&A, which covers everything from what I’m interested in when I think about quotes to some random personal facts.
Also, a point of clarification: Although crypto falls under the “fintech” umbrella, we do have a team of writers (Anita Ramaswamy, Lucas Matheny, and Jacqueline Melnyk) focused on crypto. Crypto. In other words, send your crypto pitches their way, not mine! Oh, and TC also has a crypto newsletter! Sign up here to receive a chain reaction in your inbox.
And that’s it for this week. Thank you for your support in reading and sharing this newsletter. I know there are many fintech newsletters out there, so I’m honored that you choose to read mine. Until next time…xoxoxo Mary Ann
[ad_2]
Source link