VIAINVEST blog

When it comes to investments these days, according to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (and a bit of our own expertise on the subject) there are numerous options when it comes to conventional investing:

• Annuities (Retirement plan)
• Bonds (Loan to a company)
• (CSB) Canada Savings Bond (Government savings product)
• (EFT) Exchange Traded Fund (Stocks, bonds, and commodities)
• (GIC) Guaranteed Investment Certificate (Capital protection investment)
• Mutual Fund (Multi-person investment managed by a financial advisor/ manager)
• Security (Transferable investment)
• Segregated Fund (Minimum pay-out guarantee investment)
• Stock (Shares/equities in public companies traded on the stock market)
• (T-bill) Treasury Bill (Low-risk government investment with a set period)

And then, of course, a more unconventional method of investing – P2P lending (of which we are experts in and we’ll discuss later). Continue reading Different Investment Types and How to Choose the Right One

Whether you live in an industrial country or a developing one, consumers worldwide have an unprecedented array of choice when it comes to electronics, cars, insurance, and even the way they manage money. The world economic crisis of 2008 changed a lot of things for people, businesses, and governments. It initiated an accelerated paradigm shift in terms of who controls what, and this includes the way we transact and lend money. Continue reading The Role of Alternative Financial Service Providers in Modern Societies

The recent quarter of 2018 was absolutely amazing for financial technology companies. According to freshly published Global Fintech Report Q2 2018 by CB Insights, VC-backed fintech firms have raised $20,3B across 383 deals in the second quarter of the year. Even when excluding the Ant Financial’s mega-deal, accounting $14B alone, this remains a record quarter both in terms of the number of deals and funding with about $700M from Q1’18, reaching a total of $6,3B invested. Continue reading New Funding Record for Fintech Firms in Q2, 2018

Cashless societies aren’t really something new. As the history books tell us, our earliest ancestors may not have had monetary coins or notes to trade with, but bartered and traded based on perceived value. As time went by, the Chinese invented paper money and it is something that has impacted the whole world. Continue reading Cashless society – the next big thing?

Fintech does not require explanation anymore, right? Along with the big bang in finance, fintech has also benefitted the development and sudden increase in popularity of various fintech podcasts. This phenomenon is especially bright in the US, where approximately 112 million Americans have listened to podcasts, with about half of this number being regular listeners. Here we have a made a selection of the most interesting fintech and digital finance podcasts. Continue reading The best fintech podcasts out there

Peer-to-Peer lending (P2P) started as a way to fill the gap left by the economic crisis that swept through most of the word around 2008. Financial markets were hammered, banks were failing,  and capital was drying up. Continue reading The Impact of Blockchain Technology on the P2P Market

The finance industry was hit by a storm a few years ago by the blast that arrived in the form of fintech. Within the last years, fintech has been maturing and evolving incredibly fast, with emerging technologies that have the potential to change the industry substantially like blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). Continue reading AI: the impact on fintech and finance industry

Peer-to-Peer lending (P2P) is essentially an online way for people to lend money to individuals and/or businesses that completely excludes the traditional banking channels we are accustomed to. It’s also something that offers a higher return for investors as the risks are also higher. Continue reading Realizing the Value of P2P Lending

You’re on the younger side, energetic, and ambitious. And you’re ready to take the world by storm and make your mark on life.

But maybe you’re not quite sure where to begin. You may be thinking of what to study next, trying to figure out what your passion is, and what you really want to commit to doing for the rest of your life. As the popular cliché goes, the possibilities at this point are endless and the world really is your oyster. Continue reading Investing in Your Twenties

Still getting some of those GDPR emails? Same here. As boring as it could sound, we are talking about an important new privacy regulation that came into force on May 25th and basically will affect everyone engaged in the digital world. We already introduced GDPR and its requirements a few months ago, but now we can actually observe how this new set of rules has affected the business. In this blog post, we will take a look at how financial and fintech companies are affected by the GDPR. Continue reading GDPR and its impact on financial industry