Views from Mr. Dilip Modi – Founder, Spice Money:

 “It is heartening to see that, according to the recently launched Financial Inclusion Index by the RBI, the financial inclusion in India has increased to cross the halfway mark to 53.9 in the financial year ended March 2021, as compared to 43.4 for the year ended March 2017. We, at Spice Money, are happy to be a part of India’s financial inclusion journey and aim to work towards reaching the population that is still financially excluded. 

Spice Money has been encouraging more rural entrepreneurs to join the platform as Spice Money Adhikaris or banking correspondents with our zero-entry fee onboarding process that lowers the barrier of entry. Spice Money had been able to grow the network exponentially by almost 130% between FY19-20 and FY20-21. The number of Adhikaris working with Spice Money today stands at more than 7 lakh. 

These Adhikaris are making essential banking services accessible through AePS and providing an assisted model to further financial inclusion in India. AePS is being extensively used to withdraw cash and pay for goods in rural India. Enabling cash deposit through AePS will significantly increase the number operating bank accounts, making it a major step towards financial inclusion. Besides making this amount productive, it will also build banking transactions history that will lead to the collection of valuable data for extending credit. In FY20-21, Spice Money saw a growth of almost 124% in GTV of AePS transactions. 

Spice Money has also deployed 1 lakh micro-ATMs across India. An infrastructure of this magnitude will develop confidence among the rural citizens in banking infrastructure.

Spice Money’s network is present in 95% rural pincodes with a market share of over 17%, and we intend to keep expanding rapidly to accelerate financial inclusion and financially empower Bharat.”

Luke Massie, CEO of VibePay, comments on the latest online outage of UK banks Santander, HSBC, Halifax and Natwest:

“The disruption to the banking services of millions of people across the country today highlights a growing issue with legacy systems and unreliable technology. Cases of outages are regularly reported and the banking sector needs to resolve what is becoming a larger problem in terms of customer trust and satisfaction, as a result of the outdated technology.

“Open banking and PSD2 was legislation put forward for the UK to create consistency so products, like VibePay, could be built directly on top of. We have innovated and supported this process by building our ecosystem on open banking, but currently legacy banks are letting the sector down and making progress difficult with unreliable APIs.

“There needs to be revolution in the industry to drive an evolution in the way people manage their finances and transact. Currently the UK is lagging behind its peers in the US and Asia, who boast services such as CashApp or WeChat. Building a banking and payments system that offers empowerment in terms of actionable banking statements, simpler social transactions and a holistic overall experience will give UK consumers what they want and need. This is the future for the industry but it won’t become a reality until a shift away from traditional services to impactful, innovative new fintech solutions is implemented.”

Harmonize will coordinate existing vault and sub-custody solutions and provide a uniform policy management framework for Covario’s stable of technology solutions.

Most organizations working with Digital Assets find that, as they mature, they need to work with multiple vaults, sub-custodians, and liquidity providers, irrespective of whether their focus is trading, custody, or tokenization. This emerging situation creates institutional challenge in terms of security, and scalability, with a proliferation of access points weakening end-to-end processes.

This was the experience of Covario, an independent prime broker for digital asset managers based in Zug, which currently supports multiple vault providers and sub-custodians, and connects to more than 20 exchanges and liquidity providers, a list that is growing continually. 

As such, the firm was looking for a solution to manage this complexity and mitigate the risks in working with this growing ecosystem of partners and selected METACO Harmonize as its digital asset orchestration engine. Harmonize acts as the overarching policy layer to ensure tight management of Covario’s operations, coupled with a single point of integration to its various internal systems.

Mark Banner, Covario Co-Founder, commented: “Covario’s focus has always been on providing secure, reliable, fast and compliant services to the institutional crypto market. With the vast group of electronic exchanges, 3rd-party custodians, financing pools, and alternative trading venues that we connect to globally, we have been searching for a solution to help unify our policy management while enhancing security and scalability. The METACO Harmonize product impressed us with its flexibility and sophistication and is a perfect complement to our existing stable of leading institutional financial technology solutions.

Adrien Treccani, METACO CEO, added: “Over the past five years, in working closely with many of the largest and most sophisticated organizations in the field, we have seen first-hand how the provision of multiple vaults, as well as access to sub-custodians and liquidity venues, is essential to their operations, and how this has come at a cost in terms of loss of end-to-end control and increased systems integration overhead.  Consequently, we created METACO Harmonize, which allows customers such as Covario to continue to grow and manage their partner ecosystem flexibly, economically and securely.” 

METACO Harmonize is the orchestration layer for a range of subproducts that allow institutions to seamlessly integrate potential future use-cases into their infrastructure as they evolve. With flexible deployment options including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premise, METACO Harmonize ensures there are no trade-offs between security and agility for every firm, large or small, looking to build a digital asset use case. 

Commenting on a £0.5bn year-on-year increase in IHT receipts, Nick Ritchie, Director of Wealth Planning at RBC Wealth Management, said: “The £0.5bn year-on-year increase in IHT receipts comes as no surprise. Rising house prices and investment markets have increased the volume and value of estates caught in the IHT net, and with the Chancellor freezing the nil rate band until 2026, this trend looks set to continue.

“At the same time however, many individuals have brought forward their plans to gift to the next generation amid mortality fears fuelled by the pandemic, and concerns over how the Chancellor might target larger estates in the future.

“One thing is for certain, at just 0.6% of the 19/20 tax take and with an IHT rate of 40%, already among the highest of the OECD countries, targeting IHT won't be the silver bullet to recouping the swelling deficit. Increasing the rate of IHT seems unlikely, but enhancing receipts by removing or reducing reliefs, targeting lifetime gifts or removing the generous capital gain exemption on death, could have a part to play. 

“Individuals might wish to consider implementing their wealth transfer strategy sooner amid current, tried and tested rules, rather than risk being caught out by stricter rules in the future.”

Commenting on the UK CPI slowing to 2%, Ian Warwick, Managing Partner at Deepbridge Capital, said “While inflation may have slowed slightly to fall within the Bank of England’s target of 2% this does not mean that rates won’t pick up over the coming months. Many early-stage businesses will be thriving in the recently reopened economy, but they will continue to watch the debate around the decision on a subsequent rise in interest rates very closely as this will directly impact how much they are able to borrow at a crucial time. With inflationary pressure continuing it raises the question of exactly how long the Bank can hold interest rates at current levels before it is forced to step in, subsequently causing a problem for growing, early-stage companies who require access to funding as we focus on economic recovery. It therefore remains critically important that scale-up businesses, particularly in high-growth sectors such as digital technologies and life sciences are supported as they will be at the very heart of economic growth as we create an economy fit for the twenty-first century.

“Government initiatives such as the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) have never been more important for helping entrepreneurs and innovators source the funding they require, whilst also offering private investors with tax incentives to develop UK-supporting private equity portfolios. With our EIS funds reaching record levels of funding in 2020/21 it is evident that there is considerable demand from investors and financial advisers alike to invest in early-stage UK companies which we believe will be at the forefront of our economic recovery.”

Commenting on UK CPI inflation coming in at 2%, Olivier Konzeoue, FX Sales Trader at Saxo Markets, said: “CPI rose by 2% in the 12 months to July 2021, down from 2.5% in June and below the 2.3% expected. This is the first time UK inflation has fallen back to 2% since April and the first time in a while that UK CPI doesn’t match economists’ consensus.  

This drop can be partly explained by the sharp rise in prices observed in July 2020 as lockdown restrictions were eased more broadly.

This slowdown in inflation is broadly regarded as a blip. The Clothing and Footwear sector as well as Recreational and Culture were attributed the largest downward contributions whilst price for transport represented the largest upward contribution to change. At last, manufacturers felt a stronger than expected inflation. Their input prices were up 9.9% in July (from 9.7% the previous month) whilst output costs also rose 4.9% which was more than expected (4.4%)  

All in all, inflation in the UK is expected to pick up again in the coming months although base effects could create some further noise in future data. Investors may have just had a glimpse of how sharply inflation could fall once distortions implied by the pandemic have faded. Markets seemed unmoved by the print, FTSE trades flat to mildly negative, GBP is on the backfoot as are most G10 currencies versus USD due to new COVID outbreaks globally causing a flight to traditional safe havens.”

Commenting on UK CPI inflation coming in at 2%,Douglas Grant, Director of Conister, part of AIM listed Manx Financial Group, said: “The UK isn’t currently experiencing runaway inflation like in the US. This is not the say that rates won’t pick up over the coming months as more of the pandemic cost burden is passed onto consumers but as per UK GDP data last week, we are seeing more encouragement for the future of the UK economy. One area of concern however is current business default levels caused by the ongoing impact of the pandemic and we must acknowledge that the UK’s business debt burden has ballooned to unprecedented levels and unfortunately this has already created a relentless flow of weak zombie-like companies falling off a loan default cliff. It is imperative that we support sectors and businesses that are strong and nimble enough to adapt to the new economy and therefore continue contributing to its growth.

"We also believe that the introduction of the Recovery Loan Scheme will act as second support system for those businesses currently struggling but with long term growth potential . Indeed, we have been pleased to see the Government look beyond the obviously more resilient business sectors and introduce the RLS which can support those businesses that have been mostly negatively impacted by Covid-19, such as the hospitality and leisure sectors. Conister will continue to do all it can, working alongside the Government and traditional lenders, to support businesses.

"At Conister we have delivered upon all of our initial objectives. We have lent our full CBILS and BBLS allocation and have applications which we hope can be accredited under the RLS. We will focus on lending this to robust businesses in all sectors that we believe will thrive in the future. Conister will continue to do all it can, working alongside the Government and traditional lenders, to support British businesses."

Gilded, a new-age wealth-tech app offering fractional digital gold investment, allows users to send Swiss-refined physical gold digitally as gifts on the auspicious occasion of Raksha Bandhan and during the upcoming festive season.

Raksha Bandhan is a memorable day when siblings and families come together under one roof to celebrate the festivities. This year, however, might be different for many as social distancing is still being prioritised and travelling is being discouraged. Siblings living apart will be limited to sending rakhis and gifts via post.

Gilded will enable brothers to gift something as precious as Swiss-refined gold digitally to their sisters living anywhere in India, from the convenience of their homes via a mobile app available on Android and iOS. It is safe and secure as the process will be done virtually through the app. Gilded’s gifting feature is perfect for those brothers who forgot to buy a gift too. Digital gold is accessible 24*7 on the mobile app and can be sent to sisters (or other family members) on the day itself. Gilded offers fractional gold, making it more affordable and allowing it to be a gifting option for a larger population. There are also a variety of virtual gift wraps available for a personal touch.

Ashraf Rizvi, Founder & CEO, Gilded, said, “Gold is culturally important in India and holds immense value when bought or gifted on festive occasions. Digital gold has been making its way into Indian portfolios and now it should also be considered as a great gifting option.  The receiver will not only own Swiss gold but will also possess a safe asset that will give long-term returns and build wealth. While digital gold rose in popularity during the pandemic, I believe it will continue to gain preference over physical gold as an investment.”

Digital gold is simply physical gold bought online through the Gilded mobile app. Gilded provides assured quality, safety, insurance and security. The physical Swiss gold is stored in fully insured non-bank Brink’s vaults in Zurich, Switzerland.