Here are the links to today’s stories:
Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans. One Problem: He’s Not Real from Chronicle.com
Addepar Celebrates $1 Trillion Assets on Its Platform from LinkedIn Pulse
Tope Awotona – A Founder Story from AtlantaTechVillage.com
Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar.
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Company Uses “Drew Cloud” Pseudonym
In this week’s shocking news, it turns out that you can’t trust everything you read online about personal finance.
This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that a journalist who went by the name Drew Cloud is not actually a real person at all. In it’s exposé, the Chronicle explained how a company called LendEDU made up the pseudonym of “Drew Cloud” to represent a group of authors who wrote content for Student Loan Report, a company LendEDU owns, but also failed disclose its financial interest to Student Loan Report readers!
The admission by LendEDU sheds light on controversial practices where content and influencer marketing tactics are used to lure readers into buying financial products recommended in blogs and websites sites that are actually owned by the product providers themselves, who don’t disclose the conflict of interest to their readers.
So be careful out there, you can’t always trust what you read online about personal finance recommendations!
Addepar Surpasses $1 Trillion in Client Assets
In adviser technology news, this week, Addepar announced that its comprehensive portfolio management, reporting and aggregation solution passed $1 trillion dollars in client assets on the platform. Co-founded in 2009 by PayPal alumni Joe Lonsdale, Addepar provides investment management technology to over 300 large financial institutions, wealth advisors, and family offices according to a company statement.
Calendly Solves Scheduling Frustrations
And finally, are you tired of wasting time sending emails back and forth trying to book a meeting? Then check out the online calendar solution from Atlanta-based Calendly, which has helped close to 30 million people worldwide schedule their meetings. The Atlanta Tech Village recently highlighted the story of Calendly’s founder Tope Awotona which I recommend you check out, and then see if Calendly’s might help you save time when scheduling meetings with clients and colleagues.
Just visit FPPad.com/flashbriefing to find the links to all of today’s top stories.
I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.
