This week, I pause to reflect on the sales of (1) AdvisorEngine to Franklin Templeton and (2) the technology of Motif Investing to Schwab. Is all enterprise wealth tech destined to be acquired by financial incumbents? Has the roboadvisor innovation vector run dry? Not at all, I think. If anything, we are just getting started. Decentralized finance innovators like Zapper, Balancer, TokenSets, and PieDAO are re-imagining what wealth management looks like on Ethereum infrastructure. Their speed of iteration and deployment is both faster and cheaper, and I am more excited for the future of digital investing than ever before.
Hardeep Walia spoke about the lack of transparency that exists in investing today with many investors investing in a black box as he demonstrates on stage; in turn, investors may be supporting companies who may not have the same values; sustainability is a trend and consumers are increasingly willing to pay more for sustainability but investors need to vote not just with consumption dollars, but also investment dollars; to that end Motif has launched a new digital wealth product called Motif Impact that allows investors to build an investment strategy around their values such as a sustainable planet, fair labor and good corporate behavior. Source
This week, we look at:
Lending Club, the peer-to-peer lending innovator, turning off peer-to-peer lending after having a bank in its pocket
Consolidation of the UK's largest crowdfunders, CrowdCube and Seedrs, and their limited economics
The scale of the Morgan Stanley and Eaton Vance deal, creating a $1.2 trillion asset manager
The struggle of peer-to-peer models more generally, and whether the blockchain movement can overcome the Prisoner's Dilemma
This week, we put on the Goldman hat and go shopping for companies. We buy a little bit of Folio and sell some Motif. We look at Personal Capital and the $1 billion it wants for its $12 billion of assets. We examine the private markets with Addepar / iCapital and SharesPost / Forge, and then move over to the banking sector. Should we buy Wells Fargo, as rumored, or some digital wallet apps? Read on for how to acquire a best-in-class Fintech.
Motif Investing provides a unique platform for investors interested in investing in stocks based around different themes; Lend Academy interviews Hardeep Walia in their podcast which provides more details on the investment platform; Motif allows investors to build a thematic investment portfolio with low trading costs; it has over 300,000 investors and is also working with institutional clients. Source