| By Victor Hill It was bound to happen – and now it has. India's love affair with technology and e-commerce has spawned an explosion in "fintech". We can define fintech as digital technology businesses that compete against (and disrupt) – or sometimes support – the activities of established financial institutions. Businesses in the fintech space serve both customers who already have bank accounts and, in the case of India, the many who do not. Opportunities abound for wily investors in start-ups; but for non-specialist investors there are established players who are poised to profit handsomely from India's fintech revolution. Old India was a conservative country where nothing much happened in a hurry and anything that did happen had to be approved and rubber stamped by several layers of bureaucracy. Banks in Old India were shuffling beasts that behaved more like bureaucracies than facilitators. They were largely state-owned – in fact there were no privately owned banks in India until the 1990s. And they were often under-capitalised and carried large portfolios of non-performing loans (NPLs). Well, things are changing. New India is a country with a can-do finance sector and where fintech start-ups are mushrooming. And Nahendra Modi's Government is on-side. Many investors are aware that Fintech has been driven in technology hubs in California's Silicon Valley, London's "Silicon Roundabout", Tel Aviv, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong, often with important input from leading universities in the host countries. They may not be aware, however, that Bengaluru, Mumbai and Gurgaon are emerging fintech hubs developing services for a huge market of over 1.2 billion people who share a voracious appetite for technology The longer term performance could be due to the fact that professional investors have bid up their value to protect themselves against the return of inflation, even though there are no real signs that this is imminent. There is a school of thought that the monetary easing by the central banks will eventually result in rising prices, but the high level of debt will make it extremely difficult for them to increase interest rates to get things back under control… Click Here To Read The Full Story The Master Investor Market Report - The FTSE 100 closed the day at 6,826.05, an increase of 20.53 points.
- The FTSE 250 rose 56.80 points to finish at 18,060.24.
- The FTSE All Share climbed 11.39 points to finish at 3,737.86.
- The FTSE AIM All Share ended the day at 801.41, up by 3.64 points.
Financial services provider Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.) said that uncertainty surrounding the Brexit referendum had increased trading volumes during the year ended 30th June, which contributed an 11% improvement in net revenues. Profits before tax climbed 10% to £218.9 million and assets under management were up 12% to £61.7 billion. Management said that they were confident in the firm's future performance, despite current uncertainty. The shares fell by 7p to 767p. | 
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