Forbes

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Paul Tudor Jones' JUST Capital aims to find large U.S. companies that engage in "just business ... [+] behavior." Kevin Mazur/Getty Images Goldman Sachs Asset Management is jumping into the do-good investing game with a new ETF: JUST. The new fund aims to track an index created by JUST Capital , a nonprofit that does research to find large U.S. companies engaging in “just business behavior.” (Disclosure: Forbes ’ chief content officer Randall Lane is on the board of Just Capital, and Forbes publishes JUST Capital’s top 100-ranked companies each year.) Cofounded in 2013 by billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones II and thought leaders like Deepak Chopra and Arianna Huffington, JUST Capital has surveyed 72,000 Americans to understand the business practices related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that matter most to them. Using those priorities, it scores Russell 1000 … [Read more...] about Feel Good, Get Rich With New Goldman Sachs Paul Tudor Jones ETF

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin By Lauren Gensler and Samantha Sharf After the consumer credit bureau Equifax revealed last September that personal data from 145 million Americans had been exposed in a breach of its computers, a well-worn corporate scandal playbook kicked in. Nervous investors beat its stock down by a third. The CEO and other top execs felt a sudden urge to "retire." Congress held hearings. Lawsuits were filed. One response, however, was more surprising: Sign-ups at Credit Karma -- which requires consumers to trust yet another financial company with their credit records --spiked 50%. Apparently some hack-weary folks concluded that the only way to protect themselves from a bad guy with their financial data was to arm a good guy with it too. And Credit Karma has built a reputation, particularly among Millennials, as a good guy. More than 80 million Americans (one in three adults) are now Credit Karma "members" and eligible to use its … [Read more...] about Big Brother, With Benefits: Why A Third Of Americans Let Credit Karma Cash In On Their Data

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Enigma’s cofounders: Marc DaCosta (left) is chairman; Hicham Oudghiri (right) is CEO. Jamel Toppin for Forbes There’s a fintech revolution going on inside Wall Street’s biggest firms. At asset management giants from Blackrock to Third Point, banks such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and financial service behemoths Nasdaq, MetLife and American Express, upstart fintech firms are revolutionizing the way they operate. These blue-chip institutions are both users and investors in the most disruptive fintech firms on Wall Street, as laid out in Forbes’ 2019 Fintech 50. Pioneering fintechs are allowing banks to make faster and better underwriting decisions, and to get a better handle on their risk. Armed with powerful new sets of data and machine-learning algorithms, banks and insurers are now able to sift through haystacks of information to quickly spot financial fraud, identity theft and those who are trying to … [Read more...] about The Future Of Wall Street: Fintech 50 2019

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin As the price of bitcoin collapsed last year from a high of $19,000 to less than $4,000, skepticism fell over many other applications of blockchain, the technology that powers most cryptocurrencies by recording transactions without a central authority. Much of the hype surrounding promises that sounded too good to be true is dissipating as reality and regulations set in. What remains however, are proven teams, flush with cash from mainstream investors, and increasingly, actual revenue. Going forward, the blockchain selections from this year’s Forbes Fintech 50 2019 picks will undoubtedly form some unusual alliances as they evolve past competing against other blockchain startups, to competing in mainstream finance against long-established players. Axoni co-fonders Greg and Jeff Schvey. Axoni Axoni New York City Using blockchain-based smart contracts to overhaul the back office of the world's biggest … [Read more...] about The Future Of Blockchain: Fintech 50 2019

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Nova Credit cofounders: CTO Loek Janssen, COO Nicky Goulimis and CEO Misha Esipov. The startup ... [+] standardizes information from international credit reporting bureaus so that U.S. lenders and landlords can serve immigrants who lack a U.S. credit record. Photo credit: Nova Credit Reported by Jeff Kauflin, Tom Anderson, Michael del Castillo, Antoine Gara, Sarah Hansen, Jonathan Ponciano and Kristin Stoller. Some of the private fintech companies on this year’s Fintech 50 list have grown so large they rival public companies. Stripe is now worth $22.5 billion and Credit Karma, $4 billion. But the industry keeps attracting new entrepreneurs and novel ideas—there are 20 companies on our fourth edition of the Fintech 50 that have never appeared on our list. That includes businesses like Nova Credit, which standardizes information from credit reporting bureaus in India, Mexico and other … [Read more...] about Fintech 50 2019: The Newcomers

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Osama Bedier, founder and CEO of Poynt, a fintech startup that makes point-of-sale credit card ... [+] readers that third-party developers can build apps on top of. Photo credit: Poynt In 2018, while cryptocurrencies aiming to disrupt central banks suffered a stunning bear market, many fintech firms trying to make the traditional payments system work better thrived. Global funding for payments companies jumped from $8 billion in 2017 to $12 billion last year, according to Accenture . And that doesn’t even count the Chinese payments and financial services giant Ant Financial’s $14 billion funding round. In the U.S., the payments category ate up 15% of all financial technology funding deals, more than any other segment of fintech, reports CB Insights . So it’s no surprise that we had more payments companies on this year’s Fintech 50 list than we’ve ever had in our four years of running it. They run … [Read more...] about The Future Of Payments: Fintech 50 2019

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Want half a share of Apple, or bitcoin alongside protective puts? The investing, trading and wealth management firms on Forbes’ Fintech 50 2019 offer more than just the services once exclusive to big banks and traditional financial firms. They’re tapping into markets by merging new tricks with the old. Take, for example, the maturing roboadvisor market as it embraces the human side of advising. Pioneer Betterment added human advisors to its mix in 2017 and last year introduced the ability for investors to tailor their automated portfolio allocations. Further evidence of the hybrid-advisor appeal: Digital wealth management platform Personal Capital returns to the Fintech 50 list after announcing an Atlanta office in September to bulk up its team of more than 200 financial advisors, and its free online financial dashboard now claims almost 2 million users. Meanwhile, the new generation of online brokers, … [Read more...] about The Future Of Investing: Fintech 50 2019

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Almost every personal finance company on Forbes’ 2019 Fintech 50 list is betting on the insights of behavioral finance to take their company to the next level. List returnees Lemonade and Acorns have been doing this successfully for years. Our three newcomers on the list (Chime, Even and Root Insurance) are doing this with the goal of helping the under-served save more. And all of them allow you to save, invest or insure conveniently and quickly from your cellphone. Here are seven of the country’s most promising personal finance and insurance companies: CEO of Acorns Noah Kerner speaks during the 2018 Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit at The Times ... [+] Center on September 20, 2018, in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images) Getty Acorns Irvine, California For $1 a month, the micro-investing mobile app rounds up each debit or credit card purchase to nearest dollar, investing extra … [Read more...] about The Future Of Personal Finance: Fintech 50 2019