Fintech Focus Roundup For December 5, 2020

Meet The Backbone Of Major Finance Platforms

What Happened: In recognition of the top disruptive innovators creating positive and diverse change within the financial services space, Benzinga spoke with Kenneth Chan, managing director at ViewTrade Holding, as well as the president and CTO of Orbis Systems, a ViewTrade Holding subsidiary. Chan co-founded ViewTrade Holding Corp. along with James StClair and Bob Dombrowksi over 20 years ago.

Why It Matters: ViewTrade is the backbone of the largest fintech platforms and institutions in over 20 countries on 5 continents.

“We’re the people behind the trading technology and brokerage experience."

TradingView Launches 'Timelines' Feature

What Happened: Founded in 2011, TradingView is one of the 300 largest websites in the world, powering over 40,000 other websites and providing social network as well as market analysis tools to over 10 million traders.

As part of its mission to help investors of all levels of experience gain better insight into companies, the Timelines feature identifies impactful moments in history and maps them to the company’s share price. Curated by the TradingView editorial team, users get more context when it comes to understanding how a company’s stock has traded around significant events.

“Traders need the best possible information to make smart decisions and, crucially, they need this information quickly,” said James Maddison, Chief Market Officer at TradingView. “One issue we’d identified was that pulling together all the data you need to make an informed choice about a stock can be very time consuming. You’d need to carry out detailed desktop research about company performance, study earnings reports and then cross reference it back to the company’s stock. In short, it can be a pretty big undertaking.”

Simply put, with Timelines, TradingView visually unpacks what factors affected the performance of securities in the past.

“Timelines is an industry first and one we believe will be of major benefits to traders and investors around the world, whatever their level of experience. Today we start with Tesla but we’ll be rolling out the feature to some of the biggest companies in the world over the coming months. We’re drawing straws on who does the timeline for IBM, though – there’s a lot of history to cover there.”

M1 Finance Adds Smart Transfers Feature

What Happened: M1 Finance is a platform for digital investing, borrowing and banking.

As part of its vision to help self-directed investors build wealth for the long-term, M1 Finance is lowering the barriers to financial wellness with Smart Transfers, a rule-based solution that allows Plus members the opportunity to move their money where and when they want it.

“We all know the steps to building a sound financial plan: save an emergency fund, take advantage of tax-advantaged retirement options, make regular contributions to a well-diversified portfolio -- the list continues,” said Brian Barnes, CEO of M1 Finance.

“But keeping up with our financial plans is extremely complex and time consuming. Smart Transfers are the answer and the next step in M1’s on-going quest to help investors optimize every dollar, build long-term wealth, and achieve financial freedom with ease and control.”

Fintech Spotlight: How Chaka Unlocks Global Investment Opportunities For Africans

The Take-Away: The digitization of financial markets in Africa will continue to accelerate as local investors seek diversified access to higher-yield financial products.

That’s according to Chaka founder and CEO Tosin Osibodu, who suggests investors are yearning for ways to hedge against the effects of currency depreciation and inflation.

“Something unique about the African market is that it’s virgin,” Osibodu said. “We’re about a year old, so there is no before and after. It is just happening.”

The Core Product: Chaka presents the go-to financial markets gateway for underserved African investors.

The firm’s core solution is a regulatory compliant, low-commission investing app that provides nearly 50,000 users access to education, actionable insights and fractional investing functionality.

“Individuals can build balanced portfolios that they want. Not because of the share price, but because of how much they have and their actual goals,” Chaka's founder said. “So, for as low as $10, people can have access.”

Additionally, after attracting the use of high net worth individuals, Chaka recently expanded the depth and breadth of its portfolio to cater to those institutions and asset managers searching for low-cost, fast access to markets.

“We have individuals on our platform who have hundreds of thousands of dollars individually,” he said. “We’ve also started pilot partnerships where some asset managers are levering our tools to service their customers. That’s an area that we’re very excited about moving forward.”