For a long time, New York City (NYC) has been a financial centre in the United States. In the 19th century, it emerged as a world centre of trade in debt capital markets and public equity, let’s have a look at the New York City Fintech Hub.
Certain factors favoured the emergence of NYC as a fintech centre. Being an international financial centre, the city easily attracted fintech investors who were assured of attracting the readily available financial talents.
Secondly, the old-school banks that have existed in the city for hundreds of years played and continue to play a major role in attracting fintech startups that hope to collaborate with them for mutual benefits. Indeed, banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have realized the importance of financial technology. Goldman Sachs, for example, has invested in several fintech startups and continues to incubate web teams, designers, and product managers.
Today, the largest stock exchanges, NYSE and NASDAQ are located in NYC. Currently, the city has one of the most complex fintech ecosystems in the world. Major Fintechs with headquarters in NYC include:
EquityZen focuses on improving how employees of startups are paid. The company has helped streamline equity compensation schemes benefiting the companies, shareholders, and the owners.
SecondMarket provides a software that has been critical in streamlining private securities transactions. SecondMarket, which was acquired by NASDAQ in October 2015 is credited for having started the Bitcoin Investment Trust.
ACE Portal is simply a platform that allows brokers to manage private placement offerings. Additionally, the portal enables investors to view and evaluate investment opportunities while at the same time enabling brokers to target selected investor classes.
TradeBlock, a venture-backed company, serves financial institutions by providing them with products that help them improve their overall performance by use of blockchain technology. TradeBlock is a top toolset for corporate bitcoin traders. It offers key technologies such as market analytics, compliance automation and order management.
OnDeck is essentially a lending platform for small businesses. OnDeck has offered loans to companies located in all the states of the US as well as Canada. OnDeck Score, a proprietary credit scoring system, evaluates large amounts of data to deliver a quick and accurate credit decision.
Basically, there is a lot of innovation in NYC’s fintech sector with companies offering a range of services such as:
- Wealth management
- Peer-to-peer lending
- Point of sale transactions
- Cryptocurrencies
- Insurance
Matthew Wong, a senior Research Analyst with CB Insights, says that with time, more and more fintech firms will be established in NYC. According to him, employees of current fintech firms will move to new ventures while the CEOs become angel investors creating more of an ecosystem built around fintech space.
