History
Smartfinance was founded in 2008 having witnessed the tremendous growth of aggregator sites in mature economies. The founders believed that the service offered would be of particular relevance to emerging economies where there is typically a far lower level of understanding of financial products and little or no opportunity for consumers to access independent advice.
The launch territory for the business was Vietnam in 2009. With a small team based in Hanoi, Smartfinance has had to raise awareness among both consumers and product providers. By August 2009, Smartfinance.vn covered a wide range of products from Savings through to Credit Cards and Insurance, with prices provided by over 50 different institutions.
Smartfinance.sg launched in April 2010, and the business will deploy the portal to other Asian and emerging markets during 2009–2011.
Each country serviced has a dedicated site to ensure that all local legislation, regulatory requirements and market conditions are catered for.
Microfinance is a category of financial services targeting individuals and small businesses who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems, among other services. Microfinance services are designed to reach excluded customers, usually poorer population segments, possibly socially marginalized, or geographically more isolated, and to help them become self-sufficient.
Personal finance is the financial management which an individual or a family unit performs to budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events.
Financial services are the economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, consumer-finance companies, stock brokerages, investment funds, individual asset managers, and some government-sponsored enterprises.
A savings and loan association (S&L), or thrift institution, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans. The terms "S&L" or "thrift" are mainly used in the United States; similar institutions in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth countries include building societies and trustee savings banks. They are often mutually held, meaning that the depositors and borrowers are members with voting rights, and have the ability to direct the financial and managerial goals of the organization like the members of a credit union or the policyholders of a mutual insurance company. While it is possible for an S&L to be a joint-stock company, and even publicly traded, in such instances it is no longer truly a mutual association, and depositors and borrowers no longer have membership rights and managerial control. By law, thrifts can have no more than 20 percent of their lending in commercial loans—their focus on mortgage and consumer loans makes them particularly vulnerable to housing downturns such as the deep one the U.S. experienced in 2007.
The Bank of Korea is the central bank of the Republic of Korea and issuer of Korean Republic won. It was established on 12 June 1950 in Seoul, South Korea.
HSBC Bank Australia Limited is the Australian subsidiary of HSBC. The bank offers a wide range of financial services in Australia through a network of 36 branches and offices. These services include retail and commercial banking, financial planning, trade finance, treasury and financial markets, payments and cash management and securities custody.
Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, formerly known as HCM Securities Trading Center, is a stock exchange in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It was established in 1998 under Decision No. 127/1998/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister. HCM Securities Trading Center officially opened on July 20, 2000, and had its first trading session on July 28, 2000, with 2 listed companies and 6 security company members.
Discover Financial Services is an American financial services company that owns and operates Discover Bank, which offers checking and savings accounts, personal loans, home equity loans, student loans and credit cards. It also owns and operates the Discover and Pulse networks, and owns Diners Club International. Discover Card is the third largest credit card brand in the United States, when measured by cards in force, with nearly 50 million cardholders. Discover is currently headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Riverwoods, Illinois.
A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt. The card issuer creates a revolving account and grants a line of credit to the cardholder, from which the cardholder can borrow money for payment to a merchant or as a cash advance. There are two credit card groups: consumer credit cards and business credit cards. Most cards are plastic, but some are metal cards, and a few gemstone-encrusted metal cards.
A decoupled debit card is a debit card in the US that is not issued by, and not tied to, any particular retail financial institution, such as a bank or credit union. This is based on the ability in the US ACH Network payment system to make an electronic payment from any bank or credit union without needing to use a card issued by the bank or credit union. A third party, such as a retailer, can create a decoupled debit card which will use this system to make a payment from the customer's checking account. They may do this as part of a loyalty scheme or to reduce their own debit card processing costs.
Moneyfacts Group Plc is a financial information company founded in 1988 based in Norwich in the United Kingdom employing over 80 people.
Financial inclusion is defined as the availability and equality of opportunities to access financial services. It refers to a process by which individuals and businesses can access appropriate, affordable, and timely financial products and services. These include banking, loan, equity, and insurance products. Financial inclusion efforts typically target those who are unbanked and underbanked, and directs sustainable financial services to them. Financial inclusion is understood to go beyond merely opening a bank account. It is possible for banked individuals to be excluded from financial services. Having more inclusive financial systems has been linked to stronger and more sustainable economic growth and development and thus achieving financial inclusion has become a priority for many countries across the globe.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is South Korea's integrated financial regulator that examines and supervises financial institutions under the broad oversight of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), the government regulatory authority staffed by civil servants.
Bank regulation in the United States is highly fragmented compared with other G10 countries, where most countries have only one bank regulator. In the U.S., banking is regulated at both the federal and state level. Depending on the type of charter a banking organization has and on its organizational structure, it may be subject to numerous federal and state banking regulations. Apart from the bank regulatory agencies the U.S. maintains separate securities, commodities, and insurance regulatory agencies at the federal and state level, unlike Japan and the United Kingdom. Bank examiners are generally employed to supervise banks and to ensure compliance with regulations.
Citibank Berhad is a licensed commercial bank operating in Malaysia with its headquarters in Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur. Citibank Berhad operates as a subsidiary of Citigroup Holding (Singapore) Private Limited. Commencing its banking operations in Malaysia in 1959, Citibank Berhad was locally incorporated in 1994.
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
Nguyễn Xuân Minh is the Executive Chairman of Techcom Securities, a subsidiary of Techcombank – a leading joint stock bank in Vietnam. Techcom Securities (TCBS) is the leading Wealthtech company and is the largest securities company in Vietnam in terms of profit and brand value. TCBS helps domestic companies raise in aggregate more than U$3 billion per year via Debt and Equity Capital Markets in Vietnam. It also has more than 80% market share in trading of local listed corporate bonds in Vietnam. Consecutively, Techcom Securities was named the Best Bond House in Vietnam for 2007–2016, 2008–2017 and 2009–2018 by Alpha Southeast Asia and the Best Debt Capital Markets House for 2017, 2018 and 2019 in Vietnam by FinanceAsia.
The financial crisis of 2008, or Global Financial Crisis (GFC), was a severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm." Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to American real estate, as well as a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. Financial institutions worldwide suffered severe damage, reaching a climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and a subsequent international banking crisis.
Open banking is a financial services term within financial technology. It refers to:
- The use of open APIs that enable third-party developers to build applications and services around the financial institution.
- Greater financial transparency options for account holders, ranging from open data to private data.
- The use of open source technology to achieve the above.
Digital banking is part of the broader context for the move to online banking, where banking services are delivered over the internet. The shift from traditional to digital banking has been gradual and remains ongoing, and is constituted by differing degrees of banking service digitization. Digital banking involves high levels of process automation and web-based services and may include APIs enabling cross-institutional service composition to deliver banking products and provide transactions. It provides the ability for users to access financial data through desktop, mobile and ATM services.
