1096. News: Singapore puts $173m behind fintechs, Plum picks Upvest, and US regulators tighten the rules

Benjamin Ensor (0:05)

This is Fintech Insider News. This week, Plum chooses Upvest as its UK investment infrastructure provider.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore commits $173 million to the next phase of Singapore's fintech development. And US regulators finalize the rules on unsafe banking practices. We'll be tackling all of this and more on today's news show.

SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

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Benjamin Ensor (1:06)

Hello and welcome to Episode 1096 of Fintech Insider News, brought to you by 11FS, the six-time Consultancy of the Year that works with financial providers big and small to help build the next generation of financial services. I am Benjamin Ensor, Director of Research and Strategy at 11FS.

To help me unpack the biggest and most interesting stories from Fintech and Financial Services from the past week, I'm joined by a brilliant panel of three guests. First of all, we have a very welcome back to the podcast for Valentina Christensen, Corporate Affairs Director at Oak North. Welcome back to the show. Please could you remind our listeners a little bit about you and a little bit about Oak North?

Valentina Kristensen (1:46)

Yes. Great to be back. Thanks so much for having me.

I'm Corporate Affairs Director at Oak North. I cover a really broad range of things from comms and CSR through to ESG and public policy. For anyone who's not out of Oak North, we focus on providing products and services to lower mid-market companies, so typically a million to 100 million revenue across the full banking suite.

Benjamin Ensor (2:09)

Fantastic. Welcome.

I'm also delighted to welcome to the show Rashmi D'Souza, Vice President of Product at Plum. Welcome to the show, Rashmi. Could you also tell us a little bit about you and a little bit about Plum?

Rashmi d'Souza (2:24)

Thanks, Benjamin. Happy to be on. I'm Rashmi. I've currently led the Product and Design Organization at Plum. I've spent the last 15 years or so building products that make money accessible and wealth building simple for customers.

For people that are hearing about Plum for the first time, Plum is a smart money app that helps users automate how they save and invest. We offer a large variety of products on our platform from market reading, late savings as well as investments. But our most loved feature is the automations, which helps people build habits around saving and investing.

Benjamin Ensor (3:00)

Amazing. Welcome. I'm also delighted to welcome Todd Phillips, Director of Claros Advisors. Welcome to the show, Todd. You probably get the drill at this point.

Could you also tell our listeners a little bit about you and a little bit about Claros Advisors? Yeah.

Todd Phillips (3:16)

Thank you so much. I'm a Director at Claros, where I focus on BSA, AML, and general banking and financial services policy. I'm a policy wonk.

Claros is a US consulting firm where we help banks and fintechs with all matters of issues in the US regulatory space. We help companies trying to become banks, get bank charters. We help foreign fintechs enter the US space, and we help fintechs that are already here, find great banking as a service partners. It's great to be here.

Benjamin Ensor (3:53)

Fantastic. Welcome.

Okay. Well, let's get started. So our first story is that Plum has chosen Upvest as its UK investment infrastructure provider. So Plum has chosen Upvest to be the infrastructure provider powering its UK investment offering, extending a partnership that has covered Plum's continental European investment business since 2023

Plum currently uses several providers across different parts of its investment operations. Moving to Upvest will replace parts of the existing infrastructure with a more consolidated brokerage and custody structure. The same Upvest investment API will support Plum's investment propositions across both the UK and to the rest of Europe. Plum says that more than 10 billion pounds has been put aside through its app by customers across Europe.

The deal also represents another expansion for Upvest in the UK, where its offering includes stocks, exchange rate of funds, and UK-specific products and tax wrappers, including individual savings accounts, junior individual savings accounts, and self-invested personal pensions. I was trying to avoid giving you an acronym soup. For British people, that's Isis, Gises, and Sips. Right. Don't you love the jargon? Rashmi, this is interesting news. Plums worked with Upvest in Europe since 2023 Why now extend that to the UK?