IBS Journal June 2017
19
two of three tranches in its Series A fundraising round. It has bagged $107 million in the world’s largest distributed ledger technology investment to date. Investors include SBI Group, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Intel and Temasek.
The first two tranches were made available only to R3 members, while the third and final tranche – which opens later this year – will be accessible to members and non-institutional investors. R3 will use the funds to accelerate technology development and expand strategic partnerships for product deployment. The company’s efforts will be focused on Corda, its DLT platform for regulated financial institutions, and its infrastructure network.
The aim is to raise $150 million from members and strategic investors and give them a 60% stake. R3 has declined to disclose the valuation. The move has been shrouded in controversy, with the completion of the first two tranches following the departure of several big hitters from R3 over the past few months, including Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, Morgan Stanley and National Australian Bank. The banks have internal blockchain projects or investments in other startups.
2% ... There is massive resistance among consumers when it comes to automated financial services, according to the ING International Survey Mobile Banking.
The research, involving 15,000 people in Europe, the USA and Australia, found that one-third aren’t interested in this at all. Just 2% would trust a fully automated robo-adviser to invest their money on their behalf and only 26% would opt for this even if they got final approval on all decisions.
Nathalie Spencer, Behavioural Scientist at ING Group Research, comments: “People have a lot of faith in their own ability to make the best decisions. At the same time, we know from research that computer programmes can outperform humans, so technologies like robo-advice have the potential to be very advantageous for consumers.”
She adds that, as people learn more about this tech, they will likely be drawn to the convenience and personalisation on offer. “It’s up to us now to understand better how we can address that need for control so that people can take advantage of robo- advice’s potential to improve their financial positions.”
85% … The United Nations-based Better Than Cash Alliance has highlighted a project in which agriculture
nonprofit organisation One Acre Fund, in partnership with Citi Inclusive Finance, enabled farmers in Kenya to make loan repayments via mobile money instead of cash.
One Acre Fund says that it can now reach more farmers with greater reliability, and staff can spend almost half as much time collecting payments in cash, using that extra time to help farmers increase their incomes through training and educational programmes. Other findings include: 85% decreased instances of repayment fraud; Reduced processing time for each repayment from 12-16 days to 2-4 days; farmers now know immediately when their payment is received; 80% decrease in repayment processing costs; Women farmers feel safer about payment deliveries.
“For companies and nonprofit organisations who want to work in rural Africa, this success story is a must-read,” says Oswell Kahonde, Africa Regional Lead at the Better Than Cash Alliance. “Digital payments are essential to building sustainable business models and creating long-term impact. By enabling smallholder farmers to make and receive payments digitally, we are creating transparency and accountability which translates to numerous benefits and empowers people to take control of their finances.”
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