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Enterprise Blockchain Platform for Real Estate, Ubitquity, Is Partnering LavaTrust to Streamline Closing Operations

Ubitquity LLC, an enterprise-grade blockchain-enabled platform for real estate and title recordkeeping, is teaming up with LavaTrust Consultancy in order to gain key insights into the US real estate closing sector.

Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Canada, LavaTrust Consultancy aims to bring its industry expertise and valuable experience in the real estate markets (USA / Canada), as well as the global digital assets sector.

The founders at LavaTrust have reportedly been looking to streamline the real estate sector with the adoption of blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT). Now mainly focused on education and consultation, company CEO Joy Case is pleased to have some sort of alignment with Ubitquity, which is an established player in real estate applications for blockchain tech.

Having “vision” and “values” aligned with Ubitquity, LavaTrust aims to open up networks and key opportunities for both to participate in the restructuring of outdated technology and business processes with greater efficiency of DLT-based solutions.

Nathan Wosnack, Founder and CEO at Ubitquity, stated:

“Ubitquity and I are excited to be working with LavaTrust Consultancy. Ms. Case and her team bring a wealth of knowledge and years of experience in the real estate and digital marketplaces. Combining this with our blockchain applications will be mutually beneficial and make a long-term impact on the evolution of the real estate closing industry,”

Wosnack also mentioned that they benefit from leveraging LavaTrust Consultancy’s CEO Joy Case’s “trusted” network developed by taking advantage of 15 years of experience in the real estate sector (residential, commercial and development initiatives). He added that as LavaTrust has “strategic” relationships with Family Offices and various other investors, their potential for new collaborations has “expanded tremendously.”

Joy Case, CEO and Founder of LavaTrust Consultancy, remarked:

“I am excited and grateful to partner with Ubitquity to help galvanize blockchain adoption in the often antiquated processes within the real estate industry. Ubitquity has various blockchain-based products that can serve the industry with enhanced efficiency, increased security in the transaction process, less friction and increased agility in the closing lifecycle, parallel recordkeeping data storage, alternative revenue streams for its partners, future-proofed settlement solutions and so much more.”

Case also noted that with the emergence of more regulatory clarity in the US pertaining to stablecoins and banks now being permitted to custody crypto-assets, she sees Ubitquity offering an “autonomous” future-compatible settlement platform through its SmartEscrow offering to the future decentralized finance (DeFi) real estate industry.

She added that LavaTrust Consultancy is looking forward to working with Ubitquity so that they can keep innovating and offer “real value to the real estate closing industry together.”

Ubitquity has several Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) tools currently available on its “unanimity” platform, that it has integrated across key industries such as aviation and real estate for escrow and title closing support, title abstracting, digital, hybrid, and paper notary support, smart contract management, and secure document management.

Ubitquity can also help out with “regulatory-compliant” digital token sales, integration consulting, and various other services. The availability of each offering “depends on the regulatory body (SEC, FINMA) exemption chosen by its tokenization clients,” the company clarified.

In August 2020, Ubitquity had partnered with Washington-based Rainier Title, which aims to offer the “highest levels” of real property title and escrow services.

Through the partnership, Ubitquity will create a platform for issuing tokenized property titles and parallel records of conveyances for Rainier.

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Dash trade volumes soar 282% in 2020 as commercial adoption grows

Dash (DASH), a cryptocurrency analog for electronic cash, recorded impressive growth in 2020, as average daily trade volumes, users and retail payments grew considerably. 

During its Q4 live stream on Thursday, Dash Core Group reported that average trade volumes jumped 282% year-over-year, from $9.8 million to $37.4 million. On a quarterly basis, average trade volumes increased by 48%.

The total volume of payments hit $916 million, up 80% from the previous year. Commercial payment values rose 37.3% year-over-year, exceeding 22,000 transactions per day, which is reportedly higher than Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

The quarterly report indicated that DASH is currently accepted as a payment method at thousands of stores, which is a reflection of growing mainstream adoption. “In January, Dash outperformed Bitcoin in terms of the number of brick-and-mortar retailers accepting digital payments in the United States,” Dash Core Group said.

Merchant adoption got a boost in January after Dash partnered with CrayPay, a U.S. loyalty program, to enable DASH spending at major retailers, including American Eagle, CVS, Domino’s Door Dash and GAP, among others.

Dash’s quarterly results follow a rare exchange delisting in January over the cryptocurrency’s alleged privacy features. DASH was grouped alongside Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) as a privacy coin that would no longer be tradable on Bittrex, the U.S.-based digital currency exchange.

Dash pushed back against the “privacy coin” label, arguing that, from a technical standpoint, the cryptocurrency’s “privacy functionality is no greater than Bitcoin’s.”

DASH is currently the 44th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a total value of just over $1.1 billion.

Dash trade volumes soar 282% in 2020 as commercial adoption grows

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Schroders Wealth Management to Use Banking Software from Temenos to Enhance its Financial Advisory Business

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), a banking software company, has revealed that Schroders Wealth Management in Switzerland has decided to use its solution in order to automate and improve its financial advisory business.

Schroders Wealth Management will reportedly launch the Temenos Wealth Front Office which is described as a portfolio or investment management system. The solution will be deployed on the Temenos Transact core banking platform in order to streamline the capabilities of relationship managers, financial advisers, and portfolio managers.

With Temenos Wealth Front Office, Schroders Wealth Management will be able to standardize its financial advisory services.

The solution will reportedly include various dashboards for relationship managers and portfolio managers, client and investment profiling, investment proposal process, advanced order generation, extensive pre- and post-trade compliance checks, flexible benchmarking and performance reporting.

The solution also offers a wide range of portfolio modeling and rebalancing tools, covering various asset types, in an intuitive or user-friendly manner.

Schroders Wealth Management stated that they have £65.7 billion of assets under management (AUM) from clients based in the UK, Channel Islands, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Giovanni Leonardo, Head of Investment, Schroders Wealth Management, Switzerland, remarked:

“We chose Temenos Wealth Front Office following a selection process to support our advisory business in Switzerland. The software handles all the complex processes and stringent regulations involved in advisory portfolio management, allowing our relationship managers to focus on the needs of our clients. It also provides the flexibility and efficiency we need in discretionary portfolio management.”

David Macdonald, President of Europe, Temenos, noted that they’re pleased to extend their long-term business relationship with Schroders Wealth Management. As the banking institution continues to grow and expand its line of products and services, the Temenos Wealth Front Office will help to “deliver an enhanced service, greater efficiency and consistent experience for its high and ultra-high net worth clients, leading to greater customer longevity and new business opportunities,” Macdonald added.

As reported recently, Temenos now supports 60 banking challenger clients. Temenos has confirmed that digital banks, such as Alba, Alpian, Banco del Sol, Flowe, FlowBank, Lunar, Next Commercial Bank, Pepper, Varo Bank, and WeLab Bank, have selected the company’s Cloud-native, Cloud-agnostic technology, joining more than 3,000 Temenos customers around the globe.

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UK based Property Finance Platform LendInvest Claims it’s Well-Prepared to Deal with New COVID-19 Lockdown Measures

UK-based LendInvest, a property finance platform, has reportedly told its investors that it’s well-prepared to deal with new lockdown measures. This, after making upgrades to its business processes, risk mitigation efforts and various financial metrics during the lockdown enforced in March of last year.

The digital lending platform confirmed that it had to face challenges during the first lockdown, which was when construction and property viewings had to temporarily stop. But during the current lockdown period, property viewings may continue and home moves are also going as planned.

Jono Gomez, Treasurer at LendInvest, has noted that companies are beginning to adapt to changes after the initial lockdown. Gomez revealed that the lender learned more about the COVID-19 pandemic, which has helped with opening up construction sites. Valuers have also been able to carry out socially-distanced visits, and third-party services figured out how to conduct operations remotely.

Gomez added that LendInvest has spent this time carefully going over its business processes, building in more resilience and buffers, and changing up its financial risk metrics to support greater limits and also make plans for the worst possible scenarios in the foreseeable future.

Gomez further noted that the lending platform has been able to adapt and held significantly more funds or assets just in case its investors experienced their own challenges and asked for approval for alternative types of valuation methods with its funders.

Gomez noted:

“None were required, and none have been utilized, but should something of the scale of the March lockdown happen again, we are better placed to pivot more nimbly to keep supporting our customers.”

Gomez also mentioned that the lending platform would be able to keep operating throughout the Coronavirus pandemic with a full set of valued loans to progress which will help the company face the current challenges.

Gomez added:

“March was a month riddled with uncertainty, and the team’s quick reaction to the scenario and the work carried out to put both internal and external stakeholders at ease is easily the success story of 2020. Resiliency planning, scenario analysis, credit risk and liquidity management pivoting, were done with incredible rigor, diligence and speed, to give [the] executive committee and the board confidence that the business could weather the storm.”

Christian Faes, Founder of LendInvest and creator of the lobbying group Fintech Founders, recently noted that the Fintech sector is “losing out to big banks” in receiving attention from the government.”

Faes said:

“Now, more than ever, the Fintech sector is facing real challenges and the voice of founders needs to be heard loud and clear.”

Last month, LendInvest launched a new Cloud-based application for short-term lending products. The new application is designed to streamline and automate the loan origination process. The application utilizes Salesforce to enable a centralized hub for customer information, a log for all interactions with LendInvest while automating the workflow.

As reported in November 2020, LendInvest was recognized as the BTL [Buy to Let] Lender of the Year at the 2020 National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) awards for the second year in a row.

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Toronto-Dominion Bank Announces Acquisition of Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance Business

Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank) announced on Thursday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business. TD reported that the acquisition of Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business is expected to add scale and capabilities to its existing Canadian Equipment Financing business and expand its presence in core markets.

“Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance’s direct origination model is expected to allow TD to better serve a more diverse set of business customers in need of competitive equipment loans, leases, and customized financing services.”

TD Bank further revealed that Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business has a 25-year operating history, which includes the acquisition by Wells Fargo of GE Capital’s Canadian Equipment Finance business in 2016. The business, which has approximately C$1.5 billion in assets and over 120 employees, provides loans and leases covering a full range of commercial equipment for businesses across Canada.

While speaking about the acquisition, David Pinsonneault, Executive Vice President, Commercial and Industrial, Canadian Business Banking, TD Bank Group, stated acquiring the Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business, it will expand TD’s competitive position in the Canadian’ equipment finance industry as well as build on TD’s customer service.

TD’s purchase of Wells Fargo Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business is expected to close in the first half of 2021, subject to receipt of regulatory and Competition Act approvals and clearance, and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. Terms of the acquisition agreement have not been disclosed at this time.

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