Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 19 April 2018
Hoocht. adds home insurance to AI-powered services
Digital mortgage adviser Hoocht. has added home insurance to its AI-powered services, becoming the first financial services provider to join forces with insurtech disruptor Homelyfe.
Like HOOCHT., digital insurance provider Homelyfe is at the cutting edge of fintech, driven by a desire to offer customers some of the most complex products of their financial lives, as quickly and simply as possible.
And now HOOCHT. has added Homelyfe’s four-minute home insurance purchase – the first such solution to use ‘quote to buy’ technology and data analytics to significantly reduce the time it takes customers to fill in their details – to its growing portfolio of products and services.
HOOCHT., which launched in November 2017, boasts the ability to complete mortgage applications in as little as 15 minutes using online chat and AI. It aims to make applying for a mortgage ‘as quick and easy as online shopping’.
One of only a handful of digital brokers worldwide, it is punching far above its weight, for a business of its size, with huge demand for its service.
“We’ve certainly proved our concept, that people have a real appetite for digital mortgage solutions, as an alternative to the more traditional and time-consuming options available to them,” said HOOCHT. Founder and MD Rich Wynn.
MFS Africa secures $4.5 million led by Chinese fund LUN Partners
MFS Africa, a leading Pan-African FinTech company, today announced a $4.5m Series B funding round led by LUN Partners Group, a China-based global investment management group.
Goodwell Investments, an Amsterdam based investment firm focused on financial inclusion, fintech and inclusive growth, as well as several angel investors completed the round.
MFS Africa is the first African FinTech to receive funding from a China-based global investment management group. The investment is in-line with China’s ‘Belt and Road’ strategy, and follows wider interest from global investors in African FinTech, which took nearly a third of African VC funding in 2017.
MFS Africa operates the largest digital payments network in Africa. The company connects over 170m mobile wallets through 100+ partners, including Airtel, Ecobank, MTN, Orange and Vodafone across 55 markets. By providing a single access point for global organisations to reach and transact with millions of African consumers and businesses across networks, across borders and across currencies, MFS Africa aims to drive financial inclusion and accelerate the continent’s digital economy.
Rival Systems adds VaR to platform
Rival Systems (Rival), an award-winning provider of trading and risk management software, today announced the availability of Value-at-Risk (VaR) within its Rival Risk platform.
By enabling users to calculate VaR, Rival adds yet another enhancement to its long list of risk features, creating one of the most comprehensive, all-in-one tools in the risk management space.
“Our team is always innovating and providing unique software solutions for a better, more thorough client experience,” said Robert D’Arco, CEO at Rival. “Implementing VaR into Rival Risk is a perfect example. The ability for users to calculate VaR for all of their accounts at any point in the day by simply clicking a button will save risk managers time and provide valuable insights to better analyze their firm’s exposure.”
Rival Risk’s VaR calculation utilizes Monte Carlo simulation, the most advanced and accurate way to calculate VAR, generating thousands of possible future market scenarios to determine the risk of loss in a set timeframe and confidence level. Rival’s Monte Carlo simulation is able to calculate VaR for an account in seconds and provides a unique view into the calculation with graphical displays of the distribution and statistical output. The simulation runs on the entire portfolio at once, so it captures non-linear interactions among positions in correlated products.