Category Archives: Sales Management

Deutsche Börse leads $15m round for sustainability start-up Clarity AI

Deutsche Börse has led a $15 million investment in Clarity AI, an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investment platform.

The start-up says Deutsche Börse approached its CEO, Santander’s former digital transformation head, Rebeca Minguela, on LinkedIn to initiate the deal.

Co-investor, Mundi Ventures’, a Madrid-based fund, also took part in the round.

In the last six months, the start-up claims it has seen a “significant increase in demand” for its services. This includes signing clients with eight times the assets under management as clients it’s signed previously.

The fresh funding will be used to scale-up Clarity AI’s investments in proprietary and artificial intelligence technology. As well as to integrate with “the world’s largest financial services platforms”.

This, the company says, will help to speed up the time it takes investment firms and corporates to … Read the rest

Starling Bank claims to be UK’s first profitable challenger bank

UK challenger Starling Bank claims to have become the first among its peers to break even, posting £9 million in revenue and £800,000 in profit for October.

The figure represents a landmark moment for a handful of neobanks in the UK market.

The Bank of England says prospective banks must prepare for a “sizeable step-up” in capital requirements.

The regulator operates a path of incremental rises for new banks. Despite this, it stresses that a “clear path to profitability” is “necessary condition for success”.

Founded by Anne Boden in 2014, and launched in 2017, Starling is part of a leading group of challengers in the UK market.

Its contemporaries and competitors – challenger bank Monzo and fintech unicorn Revolut – have yet to make a profit.

Monzo recently reported losses of £115 million, while Revolut’s grew to … Read the rest

Chipper Cash raises $30m in Series B featuring Jeff Bezos VC

San Francisco-based cross border payments firm Chipper Cash has nabbed $30 million in Series B funding in a round featuring Jeff Bezos’ VC fund.

The round, led by Ribbit Capital, saw participation from Bezos Expeditions. It brings the company’s total funding up to $52.2 million from six rounds.

Chipper operates across seven African nations and helps to provide peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services.

Founded in 2017 by Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled, Chipper Cash came into being after the two worked at Big Techs in Silicon Valley.

Serunjogi spent time at Facebook, and Moujaled at Flickr and Yahoo.

Chipper plans to use its latest injection to expand both its existing product portfolio and its geographical reach.

Serunjogi tells TechCrunch that his firm has had demand from customers for more services on its platform. These include the addition of cryptocurrencies and investment in … Read the rest

Australia’s largest stock exchange suffers worst outage in more than a decade

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) went down for investors earlier this week.

Monday’s shutdown marked the longest in well over a decade for the country’s largest exchange.

After opening for less than half an hour, a software glitch forced Monday’s session to close.

It occurred on the first day the ASX was debuting its updated trading system with US technology partner Nasdaq.

The exchange had been testing the system for over a year, and had run four dress rehearsals, according to The Trade News.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) weighed in on the outage. The regulator is currently looking into whether ASX met its license obligations with the software update.

Who is responsible?

The day-long downtime is the latest in a string of outages which have hit exchanges across the globe.

The … Read the rest

FCA issues Lanistar warning as tech partners disavow connection

Lanistar, the fintech start-up added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) warning list this week, has faced backlash from its technology partners.

The uproar follows a high-profile, influencer-led launch on Instagram featuring many high-profile celebrities and sports stars.

It later emerged that the fintech was not registered with the FCA, causing the regulator to issue a warning to consumers citing “investment scams” as a potential worry.

Lanistar “has no right”

UK payments-as-a-service fintech Modulr issued a statement late on Wednesday confirming that Lanistar “has not completed” Modulr’s due diligence process.

“It does not have any right to refer to Modulr or suggest that it has the right to provide regulatory services on behalf of Modulr,” says a spokesperson for the tech partner.

It adds that any press around Lanistar’s relationship with Modulr was published without its consent. The firm makes it clear that “until and if … Read the rest