By Christopher Hamman
Earnings calls and reports revealed secrets many companies would have loved to keep out of prying eyes.
Maybe at least, for a bit.
Tesla’s love connection with crypto is clear (and no, it is NOT Dogecoin).
As storm season nears, several insurance products and contracts have been launched or introduced, focusing strongly on technology.
And the Fed is still on the fence about issuing a digital dollar.
This is your week in digital wealth!
WealthTech, RegTech and Treasury
Adena Friedman/NASDAQ
During NASDAQ’s Q1 2023 earnings call, CEO Adena Friedman indicated that the exchange had applied for regulatory filing for Dynamic M-ELO (Midpoint Extended Life Order), a first-ever AI-driven order type
M–ELO launched in 2018, and the Dynamic M-ELO is a consequence of AI-driven optimizations of M-ELO and M–ELO+CB order types.
Larry Fink/BlackRock
Meanwhile, during BlackRock’s Q1 2023 earnings call, CEO Larry Fink indicated that the use of the all-powerful Aladdin platform increased following the recent bank failures.
Fink also said that the bank crises would be the basis for capital market growth and benefit the investment giant.
Goldman Sachs
Derivatives trading on Goldman Sachs’s Marquee platform got a boost by introducing precious metals, crypto tokens, and equities to its Visual Restructuring tool.
This brings Marquee’s equity count to over 2,000.
Broadridge Financial Solutions/Linedata
Post-trade order processing received a boost per automation with the expansion of the Broadridge Financial Solutions-Linedata partnership.
Per the expansion, Broadridge’s NYFIX Matching solution will be directly linked with the Linedata Order Management System (OMS), improving trade lifecycle efficiency and reducing errors.
Crypto, Blockchain, and Digital Assets
Maple Finance
Non-US unaccredited investors, persons, and institutions now have access to U.S. Treasury bills with the launch of Maple Finance’s new Cash Management Pool.
Yields will come from one to three-month T-Bills, and reverse repurchase agreements, with Room40 Capital as the sole lender through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV).
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors
It seems the Fed Board of Governors is still hedging bets over the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) debate, with Governor Michelle Bowman addressing privacy concerns during a speech at Georgetown University.
Bowman also questioned the financial inclusion advantages of a CBDC for the unbanked touted by proponents.
Tesla
Elon Musk and his team of innovators at Tesla continued their ongoing love affair with Bitcoin as token holdings remained relatively unchanged at $184 million in Q1 2023.
Tesla bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoins in February 2021 and sold 75% of its holdings in Q2 2022.
FinTech, Personal Finance, and Apps
Square
Android phones received one of the first tap-to-pay products with a revelation that payments giant Square beat everyone to the game.
Contactless payments for Android users are traditionally available within Google Pay. Square’s iteration allows sellers to turn their devices into mobile Points of Sale via integrations within the Square ecosystem.
Fiserv
Cardholders won’t need to wait for physical issuance of lost or stolen with the launch of Fiserv’s “Digital Issuance”, a service that automatically issues digital card versions to users and allows immediate addition to wallets.
The product launch follows a successful pilot test with the New Jersey-based Manasquan Bank.
Liberty Bank/Owners Bank
Small businesses nationwide got a boost with the launch of Owners Bank, a digital bank launched by Liberty Bank that caters exclusively to SMBs.
Owners Bank offers the same thing your everyday bank does, but with a personalized focus and flexible tools that aid personal and business planning decisions.
Banking, Payments, and Infrastructure
U.S. Century Bank/Pidgin
Pidgin, a leading payments solution firm, and U.S. Century Bank revealed their partnership to ease payment frustrations on an end-to-end basis account-wise.
Per the partnership, Pidgin will enable real-time payments via the Miami-based bank, creating cheaper and faster transactions for account holders.
ACI Worldwide
As part of its preparations for the FedNow real-time payments system, leading payments platform ACI Worldwide indicated that it enabled fraud detection and prevention for U.S. customers within its ACI’s Real-Time Payments Cloud, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product launched in partnership with Microsoft Azure.
Total Expert/Amazon AWS Marketplace
Banks and other financial institutions can apply massive savings to their Amazon AWS budgets with Total Expert, a customer solutions software ecosystem, recently included in the AWS Marketplace.
The AWS Marketplace is a listing of premium enterprise software vendors that enables immediate deployment in a plug-and-play fashion but within the highest levels of security and data fidelity.
REtech, Insurtech and Investing
Hippo Insurance Services/ Opterrix
As Spring gives way to Summer and consequently increased weather incidences, P&C insurance firm Hippo Insurance Services improved its claims management processes with data licensing from the Opterrix Claims software ecosystem. Opterrix is a leading risk intelligence firm that caters to the insurance industry.
Wisconsin-based Opterrix will give Hippo Insurance Services analysis and data from extreme weather events in real-time, improving claims responses and allowing for effective post-event investigations.
Resolute Global Partners/Gallagher Re/Karen Clark & Company (KCC)
Similarly, boutique investment advisor Resolute Global Partners launched Footprint, a reinsurance contract that caters to extreme weather events, and its first transactions will focus on severe storms.
Resolute Global Partners developed Footprint in partnership with Gallagher Re (per reinsurance) and Karen Clark & Company (KCC) (per catastrophe modeling).
BondExchange/Jet Insurance Company
Upfront financing in the Surety Bond industry could be a thing of the past with the introduction of a straightforward “pay-as-you-go” offering developed in partnership with BondExchange and Jet Insurance Company.
The new product allows BondExchange agents to pay monthly subscriptions with filed rates from Jet Insurance.
