There’s a curious “truth” doing the rounds in the peer-to-peer sector. It goes something like this:

Institutional money has arrived in crowdfunding big time. This is a fantastic endorsement of this growing sector. The future will be more institutional money enabling more sector growth. This is brilliant, if bittersweet. It will enable peer-to-peer to become the premier way for companies and individuals to borrow, but retail investors will get squeezed out in the process.

With the return of the Conservatives to government many of their policies will see a ‘business as usual’ banner hoisted above them. Last year the Chancellor made a potentially game-changing commitment to include crowdfunding within the ISA wrapper. The crowdfunding industry has long asked for a separate ISA, one which is not treated as the same asset class as the renowned and respected Cash ISA, or even to the more complex Stocks and Shares ISA. It is obvious that P2P lending has its very own risk and reward profile, and consumers need to understand these nuances.

Financial IT speaks with Mike Schutt, Managing Director/Head of Trading SunGard’s Fox River Execution Solutions about the company’s flagship product designed by traders and for traders.

Ullink, a global provider of market leading electronic trading and connectivity solutions, today announced that Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE), one of India's leading institutional brokers and a division of Kotak Securities has chosen Ullink’s UL Bridge connectivity solution.

Misys, the leading financial software company, has launched an in-memory analytics engine, FusionBanking Insight, integrated with its next-generation core banking solution, FusionBanking Essence.

SimCorp, a leading provider of investment management solutions and services for the global financial services industry, today announced that LIM AdvisorsLimited, a Hong Kong based fund manager, has signed a milestone agreement to utilize SimCorp Dimension for a full front, middle and back office platform.

Surecomp^®, the leading global provider of trade finance solutions for banks and corporations, announced today that Isbank AG, the European arm of Turkey’s leading bank Türkiye Is Bankasi A.S., has licensed Surecomp’s state-of-the-art DOKA 5® trade finance system. A configurable bank back-office solution, DOKA 5 leverages Surecomp’s decades of experience providing proven trade finance systems to banks and corporations worldwide.

Partech Ventures today announced that it has co-led a new €10MM financing round in Kantox,  the pioneer in foreign exchange services for SMEs and mid-cap companies.

“With our 2^nd significant investment in 18 months, Partech Ventures reaffirms its full commitment to Kantox” explained Philippe Collombel, Managing Partner at Partech Ventures and Kantox board member.

SWIFT’s RMB Tracker shows that the value in weight of the RMB used for payments exchanged with China and Hong Kong within Asia Pacific increased by 327% between April 2012 and April 2015. During this three year period, the Chinese currency moved from position number five to the top currency used in Asia Pacific to do business with Greater China.

SunGard has been named “Best Collateral Management Solution” and “Best Corporate Actions Processing Solution” in the FTF News Technology Innovation Awards 2015. SunGard is also an FTF Gold Standard Award recipient in the “Best New Post-Trade Solution for the Buy-Side” category.