Personal Finance

Only half of restaurant tippers fall within the gratuity sweet spot of 16 to 20 percent, according to a new report by CreditCards.com. The study, a survey conducted last month, examined tipping behavior at restaurants, hotels, coffee shops and hair salons. It sampled 1,002 adults who used cash, credit or debit cards.

It found that the most generous tippers in the U.S. are Republican men who live in the Northeast and use a credit or debit card. They generally tip at a median of 20 percent when dining at a sit-down restaurant.

U.K.-based fintech startup Curve has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round. The funding comes from a wide range of global banks, venture capitalists and industry veterans, including Santander InnoVentures, Investec and Henry Ritchotte, former COO of Deutsche Bank.

"In the last 12 months, we’ve established a loyal base of customers who love the way Curve complements and improves their existing financial lives," said Shachar Bialick, founder and CEO.

In late May, Amazon engineer Mike Roberts unveiled Stockstream – an experiment in letting viewers of his Twitch livestream play the stock market with $US50,000 of his own money. Twitch is a live streaming video platform primarily used to stream video game play. It was acquired by Amazon for $970 million in 2014.

A month later, and the experiment is still going strong. Over the course of 2,125 trades, Stockstream players have voted to pick out a diversified portfolio that now includes a handful of shares in Ford, Costco, Apple, and GE, among many others.

Global insurance premiums increased by 3.1% in real terms in 2016, a fairly solid outcome in an environment of moderate global economic growth, Swiss Re Institute’s latest sigma report says.

The main cause of the weaker global premium development were the advanced economies but growth in many emerging markets – excluding China – slowed also.

Global life premium growth fell to 2.5% in 2016 from 4.4% in 2015 as advanced market premiums contracted, while life premiums in the emerging regions together grew by more than double the long-term average.

Monaco, the home of the Grand Prix, was by far and away the leader of cities with millionaires as some 30.6% of people living in the city have a net worth over $1m, according to Business analysis service Verdict and GlobalData WealthInsight. The study calculated millionaire density based on the percentage of residents with assets over $1m, excluding the value of the first home.

Geneva and Zurich ranked in second and third, but density was well under that of Monaco’s, with 6% and 5.2% respectively. They fell significantly on the previous year, however, when Geneva had 17.7% density and Zurich has 24.3%.

Airbnb has changed the way the world travels since its launch in 2008. The company, which is now valued well into the billions, has helped homeowners across the globe become mini-hoteliers, allowing guests to stay overnight in an extra room, or take over their entire home for a set period of time.

To date, the company has helped book more than 160 million guests for its more than three million listings in 190 countries, according to Airbnb’s own statistics.

The gap between the salaries of managers and other staff members continues to grow, according to the Swiss employees’ association, Travail.Suisse published on Thursday.
Between 2011 and 2016, the wages of managers increased by 17% on average, compared to 3.4% for employees showing that for swiss CEO salaries rose by 5%.

Global private wealth gained momentum in 2016, but wealth managers face a host of challenges if they hope to fight off competitors, deepen client loyalty, and put both revenue and profit growth on a sustainable positive trajectory, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Switzerland remains the world’s No. 1 offshore wealth management hub with $2.4 trillion in assets, twice as much as Singapore’s, the report showed. BCG expects this number to rise to $2.8 trillion by 2021.