cure - search results

As I reviewed our columns going back to the first of the year, it was abundantly evident that the deal sizes have ratcheted up as the year has progressed. I'll also admit, it felt weird to leave out deals in the $500M - $600M range. But those did not make the list, incredibly.

Forward-thinking financial advisory firms face an increasing number of challenges. In addition to fee compression, strong market competition, shrinking margins and increasing cyberattacks, firms also have to navigate and comply with country-specific regulations.

Until recently, financial advisors were severely limited in the value they could extract from their software, but new, more flexible technology has the potential to simultaneously catalyze growth, lower operating costs and improve the client experience.

This week, 3 of the top 5 deals were international - out of South Korea, Holland and China; The Chinese deal received funding from a Canadian teacher's pension fund - we thought that was interesting and rather unusual; In America, the two firms who made our list this week were in auto finance and wealthtech - two strong areas of financing in our country.

Most advisory firms want to scale, but not all of them can. One of the biggest obstacles to scaling is not having the right technology in place, said Adrian Johnstone, Chief Commercial Officer at Practifi, a business management platform for financial services firms.

The wealthtech space has been abuzz with M&A activity and new hires over the past week.

The advisor-Tech segment has been bustling with deals, including new partnerships, mergers and more for the week of 6/9/21.

This week, same as I always do, I went to my trusted source for listings of these deals and the first 5 were all over $100M. I thought to myself, "hmmm, this column will be a piece of cake this week!" BUT - I scrolled down and saw MORE deals - HUGE deals - on the following pages. So we have again hit another round of massive funding this past week - EVERY ONE OVER $300M USD!

Fintechs continue to grab the spotlight on a global stage as venture capital chases startups and the pipeline continues to grow for more mature companies to list in the public markets, mostly through SPACs. The pace of deals does not appear to be slowing down as fintech billionaires are minted overseas while Asia and Latin America seek to raise their profile for tech innovation. The Robinhood of Pakistan’s investment app is one of two fintech related rounds just announced. And millennials are fueling a transformation in banks to a more digitized business model. Let’s dive in.

SIMON Markets LLC (“SIMON”) today announced it will integrate cryptocurrency education into its leading-edge fintech platform for wealth management professionals, delivering on what firms and their financial professionals have been asking for amidst a rapidly growing market.