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Emerging markets and climate insurance focused  insurtech start-up WorldCover has partnered with the world’s largest ILS fund manager Nephila Capital, who will now provide some of the firms reinsurance protection through its Lloyd’s syndicate 2357.

With Nephila Capital onside for reinsurance capital as well, WorldCover is well-positioned for growth, working with a team that has an understanding of the challenges associated with parametric data-driven insurance products, as well as emerging market climate risk exposure.

AgroCenta is an innovative online platform that empowers small holder farmers and farmer based organizations in rural farming communities access a wider online market outside their immediate locality to trade fairly and equitably. They can access technological tools and information that will inform them on best farming practices such weather information, market information and finally access to agro inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides directly from stakeholders.

AgroCenta is an innovative online platform that empowers small holder farmers and farmer based organizations in rural farming communities access a wider online market outside their immediate locality to trade fairly and equitably. They can access technological tools and information that will inform them on best farming practices such weather information, market information and finally access to agro inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides directly from stakeholders.

AgroCenta is an innovative online platform that empowers small holder farmers and farmer based organizations in rural farming communities access a wider online market outside their immediate locality to trade fairly and equitably. They can access technological tools and information that will inform them on best farming practices such weather information, market information and finally access to agro inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides directly from stakeholders.

This study sought to find out perceptions of employee poaching by employees in telecommunication firms and how these perceptions affected their morale. A survey was conducted in which 30 questionnaires were administered and 27 filled. Results showed that 92% of the population had a positive perception of poaching with 8% having negative perceptions. When a regression analysis was done on the data received, in order to test the significance of the relationship between the variables, p-value for significance did not meet the standard which implies that there is not significant relationship between the variables. According to these results, employee perceptions of poaching do not have any effect on morale.

FarmDrive generates real-time credit reports for smallholder farmers, allowing them to access loans. Their proprietary platform collects traditional and alternative data points like revenue and satellite imaging to create detailed yield estimates and assess credit risk and then delivers loans via mobile money. As a result, farmers can increase their crop yields, improve their incomes and invest their additional revenue back into their families and communities.

Financial-technology companies are changing the face of finance. Over the past ten years, what started mostly as disruption in the payments space has expanded to every corner of finance. Even areas once assumed to be safe are seeing new entrants and competitive threats. Wealth and asset management, wholesale banking, capital markets, regulation and risk (“regtech”), and trade finance are just the most recent areas to see innovation driven by small technology-first players.

Whether fintechs ultimately win or lose significant market share may be beside the point; they are redefining customer expectations and continue to create new business models. As fintechs are frequently building their entire technology stacks from the ground up, they are highlighting incumbent financial institutions’ weaknesses not only in digital user experiences but also in operational efficiency. Whether a new digital brokerage wins or loses may not matter when customer expectations around brokerage fees change. A retail foreign-exchange fintech having 5 or 50 percent of the market may matter less than retail FX margins disappearing for everyone. Whether the next crops of “neobanks” disrupt retail banking may be less important than their highlighting for users and customers the possibilities of a modern, digital-first experience.

f your downside potential from disruptive threats. Incumbents can choose to invest in companies they partner with or to focus on areas they know well or interesting adjacencies. We frequently advise clients to find ways of keeping corporate venture-capital groups slightly at arm’s length to attract skilled managers, and we recently have seen increased interest in investing in established outside managers who focus on financial technology. Transform yourself to be more like a fintech. Digital transformation is a difficult but necessary process for most incumbent financial institutions. Redesigning core infrastructure to be more modular and dynamic, driving a new agile operating model, and upgrading technology and workforce skills are all necessary to compete with outside threats, fintech and otherwise. Build your own (internal) fintech. The road for transformations is normally measured in years, but the competitive threat from fintechs is today. Increasingly, we are seeing financial institutions try to beat fintechs at their own game or self-disrupt areas of their business before others can. The key to success in new digital business building is to combine the agility, speed, and talent of a start-up with the “unfair advantage” of an incumbent by leveraging existing assets (e.g. customers, distribution, or infrastructure). Serve the fintechs. A few financial institutions can find their competitive advantage in creating scaled, efficient technology and operations to enable others to embed financial services in their customer experiences. This “banking as a service” business model depends on finding a profitable path to white labeling but draws on the inspiration of large tech platforms. Enabling the customer experiences of others has quickly moved beyond just enabling fintechs to also working with big technology companies, retailers, telecommunications companies, and beyond. Ignore fintechs. Although ignoring the competition is rarely the right choice, some businesses are built on moats—frequently regulatory—that are difficult to disrupt or they play within narrow markets. Companies should prioritize where they need to focus and in doing so know when they need to pay attention and when they need to avoid the distraction of disrupters.

Most smallholder Kenyan farmers are excluded from the financial system because they do not have a satisfactory credit profile. Without access to formal credit systems, they use alternative systems providing credit at high-interest rates, which, in addition, are not well suited to support their farm and off-farm activities.Having done this, the FarmDrive team met banks and organisations financing smallholder farmers to better understand the reasons for exclusion. They discovered that it is often the lack of information that locks farmers out of the financial system. They decided to try to fill this gap by collecting information from farmers, and analysing the data obtained, establishing their credit profile. Once this is done, farmers can apply for a loan via the platform FarmDrive.

African smallholder farmers face a recurring problem of access to finance and credit. Financial institutions, for their part, do not have access to many potential customers, considered as too risky. Young Kenyan computer scientists have developed FarmDrive, an application that aims to promote access to credit and financial services for smallholder farmers. banks remain to be won over, but the project is on track.

The investment will allow FarmDrive to scale to US$13 million of loan originations in 2019 with minimal losses and exceptional returns using RiPe, a customisable lending engine that will allow lenders to plug in and access low-cost loan origination channels such as USSD, credit scoring, identity verification, and a portfolio management suite that includes recovery and collections, payments, customer support, and advanced real-time data analytics.

SIMBA Pay is open source and designed for developers who wish to integrate blockchain-based payment systems. SIMBA Pay offers built-in support for a wide array of third-party technologies and services, including CoinBase and cold wallets. The ease-of-use for developers will accelerate the growth of the cryptocurrency industry and make integrations with traditional financial systems easier down the road. “We believe our technology stack provides a unique advantage for developers,” said Joel Neidig, CEO of SIMBA Chain. “SIMBA’s world-class developer tools have already made cloud-based dapps easier to create than ever and provide transparency and verification for complex digital workflows. It’s never been easier to jump into this exciting space, no matter where you are in your developer journey.” “We are excited to see SIMBA Chain, a Stellar Service Provider, launch their open source payment application to foster greater adoption of Stellar and end-user accessibility through lower fees as compared with traditional payment solutions,” said Boris Reznikov, Director of Business Development at the Stellar Development Foundation.

Robos came on the scene about a decade ago, and two early startups were Wealthfront and Betterment. Today, there are dozens of robos in the market, Fisch said. There are pure robo services, as well as those that offer the option of talking to a human advisor, with or without an extra fee. Since they’re automated, robos can more easily avoid conflicts of interest that could beset a human advisor, who might push investments that pay the highest commissions.

Artificial intelligence is changing the world of retirement planning. By using improved datasets and algorithms to efficiently deliver solutions tailored to people’s needs, AI can help them save, invest and retire better. One of the hottest trends to emerge in this area in recent years is the use of robo-advisors. These are software programs that use the data supplied by clients to create and automatically manage their investment portfolios

“Through our digital platforms, we aim to make available a one stop solution to our customers in terms of funds transfer and with the inclusion of SimbaPay, our customers will now send money to friends and family across the world at the comfort of their mobile phones,” added Mr. Kantaria.

Through SimbaPay, Prime Bank customers will now be able to instantly and securely send money directly to bank accounts or mobile wallets across 15 countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia including India, United Kingdom, China (WeChat Pay), Germany, Uganda among others. Commenting on the partnership, SimbaPay’s Head of Operations Victor Karanja noted that the service will provide a seamless platform for Prime Bank’s customer base to send money abroad at the click of a button.

‘KYC’ is one of the most important terms in FinTech, as ‘knowing your customer’ is a regulatory requirement for all financial institutions. The main goal is fraud prevention and constraining the ability of certain users who do not meet given acceptance criteria. Traditionally of course, this was done entirely in person, with account holders visiting their banks with the relevant ID documents. But for the past years, KYC has been moving increasingly into the digital domain. This move has brought a vast range of benefits to users and FinTech providers alike, but a number of challenges remain. Below, we outline some of these and present you with ways in which to combat them if you’re looking to set-up, or improve your digital finance platform, or to improve your customer experience.

CAIRO (Reuters) - The initial public offering for Egyptian digital payments company Fawry was oversubscribed by 30.3 times at a price of 6.46 Egyptian pounds (39 U.S. cents), data from the Egyptian stock exchange showed on Monday.

Fawry plans to list 36% of its share capital, worth up to 1.6 billion Egyptian pounds ($97 million), in the flotation.It said Actis, Banque Misr and National Bank of Egypt would each be offered about 7% of the stock, and 5% would be offered to retail investors.A private placing representing the remaining 10% of the share capital was 15.9 times oversubscribed, raising about 360 million Egyptian pounds, investment bank EFG Hermes said last Thursday.

“The subscriptions for both the public and private offerings for Fawry were large and strong because the industry itself is new to the market and has greater than average growth,” said Radwa El-Swaify, head of research at Pharos Securities Brokerage.

Cloud computing allows financial institutions to optimize IT resources and remove development constraints based on IT’s capacity to deliver (Cofran, 2011, p. 1). Financial institutions can respond faster to needs of customers by reducing development cycles for new products and scale products as needed because of the flexibility of the cloud (Sriram, 2011, p. 4). Furthermore, cloud computing helps financial institutions standardize applications and infrastructures which simplify the overall enterprise architecture. According to Courbe (2013), having a common infrastructure already in place worldwide enables a system to serve customers more efficiently and effectively globally.

Neobanks emerged — young banks licensed (often from a traditional institution) and a modern core banking system that allowed them to operate and scale faster while spending much less on customer service. Neobanks started to grow like startups — building only relevant products, nailing marketing. The rebundling phase was under way.

The next wave currently underway is niche fintech. Due to a dramatic reduction in the cost of launching technology startups (500 times in 20 years), focusing on product group for very specific user personas (teens, retirees, SMEs) became possible. Thanks to their precise relevance, these fintechs enjoy higher customer loyalty and satisfaction.

The goal of blockchain is to digitally record information to be distributed but not tampered with. It is an open, decentralized ledger that records transactions and entries that are confirmed by peer-to-peer networks and encrypted. The data is stored into a “block,” or a fixed event that has been approved and locked into place. Each block is then added to the “chain” of events, leading to the methodology’s moniker. Each record is easily verifiable and incorruptible. The network cannot be influenced by a single party nor taken down because it exists in multiple distributed places.  

CGAP and FarmDrive Announce Partnership for Satellite-Based Credit Assessments for Smallholder Farmers

Through CGAP’s financial contribution, FarmDrive will collaborate with The Impact Lab and Planet to use satellite images to better understand planting cycles, crop yields, and trends in production to help forecast future revenues, timing of income and potential gaps in payments.

FarmDrive Co-founder commented, “We are delighted by CGAP’s support. We created FarmDrive to revitalize agricultural production and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The opportunity to incorporate world-class satellite technology and data analytics is a monumental step towards achieving these goals.”

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Our scan to pay feature is definitely our most loved solution, but we're evolving into so much more because we can't stop making your lives easier. With SnapScan you can pay in a snap, without the fuss of handling cash, cards, or EFTs.

​​Stellenbosch University (SU) is the first university in South Africa to make use of the SnapScan in-app payment solutions for payments on its campuses, so that students no longer have to carry cash with them for certain payments.

SnapScap is a mobile application that enables cashless payments. Initially two of SnapScan's in-app payment mechanisms will be available for students to do bill payments for their student fees, as well as for pre-paid internet and printer credits. These payments previously had to be made (in cash or with card) at the University's cashiers in the central administration building

Apart from SnapScan in-app payments, students also have an online option on the SU's website where they have the options of pre-paids (for internet, meals, washing, printing credits and rides) and bill payments (for student fees).

Three concepts that have animated this thinking recently are: artificial intelligence, data stewardship and optimization, and the cloud. Each of these concepts has been bandied about ad nauseam but each has a story behind it that liberates vertical solutions from the confines of what was possible in the past.