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August 26th, 2025
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FINTECH FRIDAY$ (EP.10-Sep 21): A Regtech-based Blockchain KYC Solution for Document Custody with Brice Penaud, CEO Commercial Passport
NCFA Canada | Sep 21, 2018
Ep10-Sep 21: A Regtech-based Blockchain KYC Solution for Document Custody
About this episode: On this episode, our host Manseeb Khan sits down with the CEO of Commercial Passport Brice Penaud. They chat about what KYC looks like in blockchain, how fintech and regtech can work alongside with governments, and the benefits of creating a digital identity. Enjoy!
Host: Manseeb Khan, NCFA, Fintech Fridays show host
Guest: Brice Penaud, CEO, Commercial Passport
Bio: Commercial Passport provides global digital KYC solutions, helping financial institutions reduce the time to on-board clients by automating beneficial ownership analysis and client document maintenance. Based in Toronto, Canada, Commercial Passport’s Universal KYC Solution is a paradigm shift in KYC collection, providing senders and receivers a clear chain of custody for KYC documents through blockchain technology.
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Transcription of Interview
Manseeb Khan: Hey Everybody how are you doing today Manseeb Khan here . And you tuning in to Fintech Friday's today. I have. OK. I know I see this every episode. But I do have a really incredible guest today.
Manseeb Khan: I have Brice Penaud from Commercial Passport and Bryce pretty much is on the forefront of all the regulation tech. And all of the blockchain KYC that are going to be what are going to be hopefully implemented in the next 18 to 24 months that are going to help either investors or aspiring investors. Brice Thank you so much for sitting down with me today, I know you are super busy. This means the world to me.
Brice Penaud: Thank you so much for inviting me I'm happy to be here and help or share what I understand about the industry and where I think it's going and what people should expect to be doing and what the future kind of looks like for the space.
Manseeb Khan: So, could you I guess for the audience. Tell us a little bit about who you are and essentially what commercial passport is.
Brice Penaud: Sure. So, I'll start with who I am. So, my name is Brice. The company is called commercial passport and are like what you might guess by the actual name. The idea behind our business is that entities and companies should have a passport just like an individual. That's right. The difference is that it's a commercial passport it's a digital I.D. identity that basically verifies you our as a business. So, there is sort of different categories of KYC or KYB some are you know your customer, and some are not your business were obviously sort of more focused on the complex legal entities that need this IP and so that can be a mutual fund. If the sovereign funds it could be hedge funds from banks know wealth management arms so on and so forth. Anywhere where there is are even offshore component or sort of a complex environment that sort of who we're looking to help the most those people who have you know very complex ownership structures where there is an identified need for analyzing all those relationships and then which documents you need for which people based on the jurisdiction that you're in. So that is essentially the problem that we're tackling.
Manseeb Khan: You could you just touch base a little bit more of why is focusing on regulation like regulatory tech. So crucial for businesses like be it in just the regular fintech space or even if they are in the blockchain space why is either understanding regulatory tech and looking into regulatory tech why is it important?
Brice Penaud: Well I guess you have two ways of thinking about it. One is sort of like the legal legislative regulatory jurisdictional perspective which is mostly about staying in compliance and you know not getting slapped with fines or fees or getting caught doing something you're not supposed to be doing. So, from that perspective it's more about avoiding pain than anything else. But then the other perceptiveness about being I guess it’s OK forward thinking or forward minded or futuristic. And that is sort of hopefully what we want to inspire and the people that we work with. It's not just the fact that you know we're thinking about solving these you know problems that are regulatory based that are becoming more and more complex for sort of each line of business that you might associate KYC with for example you know typically it was only for you know large corporates who had all the sort of complex stuff that they need to submit. But now you have you know things of real estate that are coming out and insurance in the medical world this is slowly coming up as well. So, you have this creeping sort of KYC expansion that's reaching and touching these other industries that weren't necessarily always affected by it. Now we see that now with ICOs and sort of other sort of token offerings. So, with that happening we want people to think about OK how do we solve this in a way that's kind of frictionless in a way where we do some work up front to create this digital identity. This commercial passport. And then from there you're now being able to use that interchangeably with sort of a whole host of different businesses who you might do business with. And I think that's what we want people to sort of be aware of is not just reducing the pain but actually being proactive about what it means to work with other people so that you're not stuck in this world of Excel spreadsheets and PDF's and e-mails and sending faxing paperwork you know back and forth with just that that happens.
Manseeb Khan: I totally agree with that you don't want to be stuck in that little purgatory of Excel sheets and e-mails right just not just time and energy that's getting wasted and not being put into business to make you as incredible as you aim to be right.
Brice Penaud: So while it also prevents you from being productive in your job right if you're absolutely out doing all this paperwork you're now focused on oh what do we need right now and let's not get caught being behind on work versus we have what we need let's be proactive about how do we manage our relationship with our clients and also how do we seem modern ourselves. Right. You know how do you feel if someone's managing a fund of let's say you know 10 billion dollars and they're still asking you to fax stuff over it doesn't really seem like current does it. You know like you have some of the best traders in the world or whatever who are executing some and incredible investments on their behalf using all kinds of you know you are a crypto slash you know algorithmic analysis of different things that seems quite a quite cool and high tech but how does that sort of relationship juxtapose itself to you know saying hey the media that some this documentary or PDF or an email or your fax right that seems kind of a mismatch.
Manseeb Khan: Yes. It's not is not as efficient and fast pace as it really should be and that's the whole purpose of being in financial tech and being in the block chain space is like hey we want to be as we want to move in microseconds when it comes to these things.
Brice Penaud: Exactly.
Manseeb Khan: What does blockchain KYC look like?
Brice Penaud: So, I guess there's a couple different ways of thinking about it but for us we're using just the business application of blockchain. So, we're not necessarily creating any kind of you know new currency or anything like that and we're not necessarily taking people's ideas and putting them on the blockchain. where we're doing essentially is gathering the necessary documents for you know all of the due diligence or the compliance checks that people might have. Instead of publishing these ideas on the watch and what we're doing is we're publishing a hash of these documents so that there is a ledger as a chain of custody of all these documents somewhere that says hey isn't these documents have integrity they haven't been changed they haven't been altered. They're real they're the ones that have been submitted by clients. So, on and so forth so that when you have this sort of proof of sort of kind of like you would like track changes in Microsoft right it's kind of like the same idea. The difference is that here as you know that nothing has been changed be published. And even though the Hash presented documents no one has no access to the actual document itself. so, no one can reverse engineer what that document looks like. This is obviously quite sensitive as you let know personal and sensitive data. So that's kind of how we see KYC fitting with blockchain. We don't necessarily see it as you know you need to take people's ID and distribute them across the ledger. We don't necessarily think that that's the safest thing to do. But what is safe for us to sort of keep a track record of all these super sensitive documents that people want to make sure are valid and they're legal and they've been certified properly.
Manseeb Khan: So, some of the challenges that KYC may face I'm going to try to break this down is as detailed as I can. Sounds good. Yeah as the disparity of specification. Right. So, every bank has their own specifications that they adhere to. Some of them also might be stringent regulations by regulation. Rules are often changed they're often even added more. The compliance burdens on banks and the adverse impact to relationships with customers because banks is constantly have to keep hitting up the exact same customers even though they have the information. Again, it comes on the faxing right like a fax to one bank, but this other bank wants it. But OK. Right. Right. It just it just gets so troublesome and you just get and just get really angry. On top of that it starts escalating costs right. I mean like Reuters even talked about how like onboarding a KYC can increase your costs to go up above 18 percent. Right. And it takes a minimum of like 26 days to completely onboard a customer. How do you see commercial passport tackling these problems?
Brice Penaud: Well whether it's our company or another company I think that what you want to get access to is documents are being updated in real time that are also either changed or sort of you know Evolved with the regulation. So, like you mentioned if things change right. Because we know that all these new laws come out every year that sort of change the gathering or of a certain specification of these requirements. So, whether it's our company or someone else's that you know these financial institutions work with what they what they should want is to make sure that whenever someone says something they can send it in real time that can be updated that can be changed. And another way of thinking about this is if you know documents going to expire for example you won't be able to know that AND track that. And that sort of helps you stay ahead a little bit of the sort of regulation you know nightmare and the other piece too is you know kind of lobbying some of the you know bodies that sort of decide on these legislative matters. Right. Is giving them also the best information that fintech companies have because they actually deal with this on a day to day basis and giving them the information so they make you know informed decisions about what it means to have great data that is actually helpful to both you know the people who are supposed to be overseeing these financial institutions but also for them and for their clients.
Brice Penaud: So, what you really want is the synergy between you know the government and the fintech companies and the large institutions that are sort of now somewhat being sought after in terms of being you know compliant and you know being you know sort of responsible with the way that they're gathering information. So, I think whoever it is that is doing this needs to keep that in mind throughout the entire time. So for us obviously that's one of our key priorities and why we see the future for KYC of being you know in one sort of central location that has real time changes and updates that are going to be complaint with these banks don't get in trouble so that these financial institutions have exactly what they need without having to do this paper based chasing.
Manseeb Khan: Yeah. And to make sure I like we dot our p's and q's to make sure that everything is adds up.
Brice Penaud: Absolutely that that's exactly right. I think most people will subscribe to that idea but it's harder to implement in real life right and that also has to make a mental shift in their mind and say OK we understand it we've been doing it this way for 50 years and whether it's through fax or e-mail or PDF sharing or order or courier or whatever it might be. So, it means that whoever is you know leading inside these institutions they have to be willing to make a decision to say we understand that this process is outdated and it's not really going to be fit for purpose anymore. And so, if they want to you know be a leader is in that sense. I think they have to come to terms with the idea that no solutions are available out there we're not the only company doing that. But in either case, I think that there has to be a sort of a wave of a recognition that this change is coming and that these digital solutions are going to be a part of the future. And you know that's led both within the people who are you know innovative inside these institutions but also know from people in government we need to recognize it as a solution. It's better for everyone involved. So, there's sort of you know multiple layers of complexity of you know making this sort of happen. But it is going to come one way or any other and I think it's better to be sort of prepared and proactive about it then just wait and let it take you by storm when it's kind of too late and you suddenly have to do all these changes and be kind of unprepared for it.
Manseeb Khan: Yeah no I absolutely agree. I think if we start educating some of the lobbers and make them understand like hey this is the new tech that's coming in without like all the flash and bling. This is exactly what it does. This is why implementing companies like commercial passport and other KYC companies like us. It's going to help just move faster and we're smoother I'm just going to be so much more ease of use. Right. I mean I don't like everybody knows the joke that like government officials and government workers are overworked already. Let's just try to make the jobs that are easier. So, we have to start moving and things a lot smoother.
Brice Penaud: That's exactly right. I mean and part of that you know helping people do that is having you know a digital version of things that's available to for example auditors. Right. I mean I don't know who really wants to sit through you know hours of paperwork and scan documents so on and so forth. You know people have this sort of no digital I.D. or version of a digital passport. Then you have something that actually people can look at in a currently you know I guess it's a speedy way to say hey this you know checks of all the compliance things that you know you know financial institutions are supposed to be doing. So, you're out. You're also helping. You know one hand kind of leads the other all the way up down the value chain of you know the KYC world. I think part of that needs to be taken into consideration. While the lobbying happens right. While the advocacy of this change happens is that this isn't just for the institutions or just for the fintech companies but it's also for the people who are supposed to be overseeing the process.
Manseeb Khan: Yeah, I love the how one had feed the other I know we touch this a little bit prior so some of the caveats of having KYC's in blockchain is having trusting parties right the trust factor that's built in block chain. It's very crucial to have to make sure OK how do we verify these trusting parties. what are the checks of the check off on the checklist to make sure hey this is up this is Manseeb's bank. This is. I meet all the regulations cool, you can move money and move crypto through me. dealing with the nature of blocking itself right, we have to decide OK we'll block chain be private will be public would it be a hybrid and just tracking variabilities right. So, which changes a lot. Right. So, investors and like people that have stake under 25 percent in a client’s company that's very hard to track, because it's such an it's such a minuscule amount. Right. It's like. So again, how do you how do you see commercial passport tackling this problem.
Brice Penaud: Well whether again whether it's us or another company that does things similar to us part of it is building tech that can help map what you just described out so you know mapping out you know who owns the interest and you know all those key things that you need to know to make sure that you're gathering the right documents from all the different entities or individuals. But the other key is that you get from about you know all the you know how is this trusted and how does that function within the greater scope of the longevity of the idea. And I think part of that is making sure that you're choosing you know a ledger or block chain that essentially you know is going to be around for a while. Right. There’re different ways of thinking about that but for us it's pretty obvious that you know Bitcoin ledger the public ledger makes more sense for now. It's the one that's been used it's one of the ones that has been you know sort of surpassed in terms of security flaws that it may have but even the application of that isn't necessarily to just secure a document it's more to secure the variability of what you said a change in the document. So even from that perspective we're safeguarding you know the documents and just publishing a hash of those documents. So, if you're thinking about how you know trust is built in part of it is how you're using the technology. It's not just using blockchain and the idea that oh well it's pretty secure right because it's decentralized. You can't just be thinking about it from those simple terms that have to also be OK but how does it specifically you know benefit us and our customers. Why do they get a benefit from us? Oh well they get a benefit. Because we understand that they can work at any of their documents being you know changed or signed or sent over to anyone without having to expose any real you know sensitive data. So, I think that's the way that we think about.
Manseeb Khan: Do you have any questions you want to you want to throw in or they've come up with on the the way?
Brice Penaud: Well sure. I mean I think that there are more questions for the greater community. You know people who are in regtech or fintech or the KYC side. which is you know if you are an innovator in this space and you're trying to help financial institutions are seeing the light and you know some of these changes that are coming I think part of it has to do with asking yourself how do I make sure that people who are going to be using these kinds of services or products from a fintech perspective how do we make sure we serve them in the best way possible but that fits current regulation. And there's some really interesting companies are doing great things out there. I'll mention one from the U.K. called Cube for example where they gather all the regulatory changes that happen every day and they have an ability to sort of source and track all these different jurisdictional changes. And so, if you're a company that's in that space. you need to be thinking about how to create partnerships with those kinds of businesses because not one company can do it all. So, a lot of that has to do with integrating and partnering to make sure that when this innovation does happen we have at least sort of cohort of solutions can coexist with each other right.
Brice Penaud: So, for example I think in the early days of Salesforce didn't necessarily do everything. But now the Salesforce exchange where no other parties can come in and help build top of what they do. And I think that that's essentially what's going to happen with the KYC space I think will be a couple big players who will of Win the sort of core of what KYC, you know automation in happens for you know from the digital perspective. But then there will be other people who come in and sort of build off that. And so, I think that the way to do that is to think about how do we best serve the people who are going to be using it and how do we best serve people. We need to follow those kinds of laws so that's just one question that poses you know how people think about that and how to focus to make sure that you're serving all the parties that are involved.
Manseeb Khan: It was mentioned a couple of episodes back but this whole thing is just it's a grand experimentation right. we're just testing and we're learning and we're failing and we're saying OK what works what doesn't work. OK what if we service our customers this way with this. OK. OK. Kind of sort of we did. Eighty percent. OK. Well I was going to get some next 20. How do we automate a couple spaces here? And we know it is an educational factor that we are throwing in. It's all we're all just like playing with the clay and hopefully molds into something.
Brice Penaud: That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
Manseeb Khan: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I definitely learned a lot more about KYC than I did 12 hours ago. so, thank you so much for sitting down with me today, very much educational and I'm very excited to see the journey that commercial password is going to embark on and all the other KYC companies
Brice Penaud: Thank you I really appreciate you having me on the show. And if anyone wants to reach out to me they can if I can be of help in any way and whether it's competitors whether it's institutions or people who just want to know a little bit more about the space and I'm happy to help.
Manseeb Khan: Awesome. What would be the best way to contact you would be through Twitter with snapchat you.
Brice Penaud: Yeah, I'm just I'm just on LinkedIn. It's just Brice Penaud. B.R.I.C.E , P.E.N.A.U.D and that's the easiest way to get me.
Manseeb Khan: Ok awesome. Brice Thank you so much again for sitting down with me. I cannot wait to have you on the show again.
Brice Penaud: Thanks so much for inviting me. And hello to all the listeners out there.
End of Podcast
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August 17, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Banking And Credit, Artificial Intelligence And Data Construction Lending Workflow Modernization In Canada On August 17, 2026, Montréal-based Brdg confirmed a C$850,000 pre-seed round to expand its construction finance platform. One week earlier, Toronto-based Mortgage Automator launched Construction Draw Management, bringing construction budgets, draw schedules and approvals into the active loan file. Brdg organizes project information across developers, cost consultants and lenders. Mortgage Automator brings draw control into the lender's loan system. Brdg Structures The Information Lenders Need Brdg isn't a lender. Its software organizes the documents, budgets and project information used to prepare and review construction financing. The platform accepts documents through email or upload, classifies them and organizes them into a project record. It tracks budgets, project progress and funding information, checks draw readiness across legal, contract, construction and financial categories, and produces lender-ready reports. Brdg provides separate workflows for developers, lenders and cost consultants. Its construction finance platform also shows document ingestion, project dashboards, cash-flow tracking and draw-disbursement readiness. Brdg reports 30,000+ construction-related documents processed, more than C$300 million in development and active construction, and an average 5.5-day reduction in draw cycle time. The document volume and reported time ...
August 19, 2026 | NCFA Resource | Cybersecurity And Fraud, Risk Compliance And Regtech, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure 12 Controls For Cyber Risk, Vendors, Access And Recovery In August 2026, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority published Cybersecurity Effective Practices, a 12-part framework for FINRA member firms reviewing cybersecurity programs, controls and operating procedures. A firm can use the resource as a structured checklist for who owns cybersecurity, which systems and vendors create risk, who can access sensitive data, how threats are detected, and whether the business can recover when systems fail. FINRA designed the practices to scale with firm size, business model, technology complexity and risk profile. What It Does In Practice FINRA organizes the resource around 12 areas: governance risk management third party risk management asset management access control and identity management data protection security awareness and training vulnerability and patch management security monitoring threat intelligence and information sharing incident response and reporting resilience and recovery The framework starts with accountability and risk ownership. FINRA recommends a designated cybersecurity lead, regular reporting to senior decision makers, documented policies and periodic reviews, while also making cyber risk part of decisions about new technology, systems and operating changes. From there, ...
August 19, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Competition And Market Structure, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure, Open Banking Open Finance And Data Sharing Can Canada Turn Access Into Productive Participation? Capital, Payments, Data And Retail Markets Are Converging Into A 2030 Growth Test On March 9, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission held its 45th Annual Small Business Forum. The agenda moved from early-stage entrepreneurs to growth companies and smaller public companies. Market participants could propose recommendations and vote on which should be prioritized for the SEC and Congress. The U.S. has not solved small-business capital formation. That is partly why the process is useful. Questions around finders, investor eligibility, offering rules, fund structures, secondary liquidity and smaller public-company economics keep returning as markets change. Canada is now opening several parts of its financial economy at the same time. Capital programs, SME financing, payments access, consumer-driven banking and retail private-market initiatives are moving from policy design toward operating tests. The question is no longer whether access exists on paper. It is whether more businesses, investors and challengers can use it economically. The U.S. Keeps Reopening The Participation Question The Forum looks across the financing lifecycle The SEC brings ...
Aug 19, 2026 Canada enters the second half of 2026 with two pieces of payment infrastructure arriving at once. The Real-Time Rail is scheduled to go live in the fourth quarter, and the regulations underpinning consumer-driven banking were published in the Canada Gazette in June. Both have been discussed for the better part of a decade. Neither has yet changed how a Canadian consumer actually pays for something online. That gap between framework and behaviour matters more than either announcement. The most recent full picture of Canadian payment behaviour comes from Payments Canada's Canadian Payment Methods and Trends report, published in October 2025 and covering 2024, which counted 22.5 billion retail payment transactions worth $12.2 trillion. The market grew three per cent in both volume and value year over year. Over five years, volume rose nine per cent and value 22 per cent. Some of the sharpest movement in that behaviour is happening in sectors where account-to-account transfer is already the preferred rail, regulated online gambling among them. Swiper online casino Canada, a casino and sportsbook brand launched into the Canadian market in 2025 and available across the country outside Ontario, is a useful illustration: it runs thousands of casino, ...
```html August 18, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Payments Infrastructure And Money Movement, Digital Assets Wallet Delegation, Spending Limits And Machine Payments On August 18, 2026, Amazon Web Services made AgentCore Payments generally available, taking the capability from its May preview into production. AI agents can now encounter paid APIs, services accessed through Model Context Protocol (MCP), or other digital resources during a workflow and initiate payment through infrastructure that connects spending controls with external wallets. AWS can enforce how much an agent is allowed to spend and for how long, manage access to wallet providers and coordinate the payment from inside the same infrastructure used to run the agent. Coinbase or Stripe's Privy provides the wallet, while external providers and blockchain networks handle signing, verification and settlement. AWS isn't taking custody of customer money. It is taking a position earlier in the transaction, where software determines whether it has permission to buy something and which payment connection to use. That puts payment authority closer to the AI execution layer. GA Adds More Ways For Agents To Pay During A Task AgentCore Payments already supported Coinbase and Privy wallets, spending controls and x402 payments during preview ...
August 18, 2026 | NCFA Feature | Regulation And Policy, Digital Assets, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure New Offering Rules, Crypto Resales And Investment Contract Exit On August 18, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed Regulation Crypto Assets (download 402 page PDF Proposed Regulation Crypto Assets document), a tailored securities framework for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets. The 402-page proposal would create a startup exemption of up to US$5 million over four years, a larger fundraising exemption with US$20 million and US$75 million tiers, crypto-specific disclosures, new SEC forms, secondary-market provisions, state-law preemption and a process for determining when an investment contract has ended. The scope is narrower than the name might suggest. Regulation Crypto Assets would apply to what the SEC calls a covered investment contract. A crypto asset must be subject to the investment contract, the crypto asset itself must not be a security and no other asset can be subject to that contract. That builds on the SEC's March 2026 crypto interpretation. The March action addressed when transactions involving a non-security crypto asset can create an investment contract and when that relationship can end. Regulation Crypto Assets would add an operating framework around that ...
August 18, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure, SME Finance And Business Banking, Competition And Market Structure Canadian Capital Embraces Private Credit Abroad While Domestic Business Lending Remains Bank Led On August 2026, the Bank of Canada mapped Canada's private credit market and exposed an unusual divide. Private credit remains a relatively small source of financing for Canadian businesses, yet Canadian pension funds, insurers, investment funds and banks have built approximately C$500 billion of exposure to the asset class, much of it outside Canada. Non-bank loans have accounted for about 15% of external funding for Canadian non-financial businesses for roughly a decade. Banks and public debt markets still provide about three-quarters of external business financing. By contrast, private credit has become a much larger alternative to traditional lending in parts of the United States. The interesting question for Canada isn't whether private credit exists. It clearly does. It is why Canadian institutional capital has embraced the asset class globally while Canadian businesses continue to use it relatively little at home. Canadian Capital Is Already Deep Into Private Credit The C$500 billion estimate shows that Canadian exposure to private credit is already material even though the domestic ...
Aug 18, 2026 One word sits at the core of all online casino marketing strategies: ‘engagement’. Casinos continually seek ways to keep customers playing their games for extended periods. They also want players to enjoy the experience enough to return repeatedly. Length of play and frequency of logins are the key metrics for measuring player engagement. It is not enough just to attract players in the first place; casino sites need to retain them if they wish to thrive. The online casino sector is incredibly competitive. This article will take a close look at some of the cutting-edge techniques that are being used to boost engagement levels. Why modern engagement techniques are important to game developers The operators of online casinos have always been aware of the need to attract and retain customers. From the start, they have used quite traditional methods such as bonus offers and loyalty schemes to achieve that goal. Those methods are still very much part of the online casino engagement armoury, but they are being supplemented by modern techniques. This is because there are so many casino sites offering bonuses and promotions – so they are no longer enough on their own. A casino site ...
August 18, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | SME Finance And Business Banking, Banking And Credit, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure US$100M Macquarie Facility Tests Clearco’s Rebuilt Ecommerce Funding Model On August 18, 2026, Toronto-based Clearco secured a US$100 million Macquarie asset-backed facility that it expects will support approximately US$900 million in funding to ecommerce brands over the next two years. Macquarie's New York Fixed Income and Currencies team provided the financing. The facility expands Clearco's capacity to provide qualified brands with up to US$10 million and estimated terms of four to 12 months. Clearco says the funding can support inventory, marketing, major purchase orders and expansion across direct-to-consumer, wholesale, retail, marketplaces and social commerce. The US$900 million target is a scaling opportunity now, meaning Clearco has to convert institutional funding capacity into sustained customer financing while controlling credit performance and capital costs. US$100M Facility Sets A US$900M Funding Test The two headline numbers measure different things. The US$100 million is the size of the Macquarie asset-backed facility. The US$900 million is Clearco's expected customer funding over two years. That expected funding volume is nine times the facility's headline size. The announcement doesn't disclose the borrowing base, advance rate, asset ...
Aug 18, 2026 Markets have a few gauges that traders keep open even when they are not planning to trade them. The Nasdaq 100 is one of those gauges. It tends to get attention before the US session, during earnings weeks, and on days when rates or technology shares move hard. Part of that comes from the companies inside the index. The Nasdaq 100 includes many of the names people already know from software, chips, cloud services, online retail, and consumer devices. When traders change their view on those companies, the index often shows it quickly. That is why the index can be useful even for people who are not trading it that day. Why Traders Watch the Nasdaq 100 The Nasdaq 100 tracks 100 large non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange. Because the index leans toward technology and other growth businesses, it can move differently from broader benchmarks that include more banks, utilities, and industrial stocks. A broad index may look calm while the Nasdaq 100 is already showing stress in growth shares. That mix gives the index a sharper edge. It may rally when traders feel more confident about growth and future earnings. It may also sell ...
August 17, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Banking And Credit, Artificial Intelligence And Data Construction Lending Workflow Modernization In Canada On August 17, 2026, Montréal-based Brdg confirmed a C$850,000 pre-seed round to expand its construction finance platform. One week earlier, Toronto-based Mortgage Automator launched Construction Draw Management, bringing construction budgets, draw schedules and approvals into the active loan file. Brdg organizes project information across developers, cost consultants and lenders. Mortgage Automator brings draw control into the lender's loan system. Brdg Structures The Information Lenders Need Brdg isn't a lender. Its software organizes the documents, budgets and project information used to prepare and review construction financing. The platform accepts documents through email or upload, classifies them and organizes them into a project record. It tracks budgets, project progress and funding information, checks draw readiness across legal, contract, construction and financial categories, and produces lender-ready reports. Brdg provides separate workflows for developers, lenders and cost consultants. Its construction finance platform also shows document ingestion, project dashboards, cash-flow tracking and draw-disbursement readiness. Brdg reports 30,000+ construction-related documents processed, more than C$300 million in development and active construction, and an average 5.5-day reduction in draw cycle time. The document volume and reported time ...
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