Digital banks reportedly led Brazilian banks’ profitability improvements during the first half of the year. The country’s digital banks saw their annual return on equity (ROE) rise from 11.45% at the end of December to 19.1% at the end of June, outpacing the banking system as a whole, which saw its ROE rise from 14.23% to 15.11%, Reuters reported Thursday (Nov. 21), citing data from the central bank’s Financial Stability Report. The central bank said the increase among the digital banks was due to “positive effects of operational leverage through the monetization of customer bases by some institutions and lower pressure from provisioning expenses.”

J.P. Morgan Chase Co. has boosted its stake in Brazilian digital bank C6 Bank from 40% to 46%. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Reuters reported Tuesday (Aug. 29), citing a statement released by the banks. This expanded investment comes after J.P. Morgan initially bought a stake in C6 Bank in June 2021.

C6 Bank announces that its new carbon footprint product which launched last month running on Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking technology, Vault Core, has offset more than 900 tonnes of carbon.The carbon footprint offering, built at record speed in under six months, makes C6 the first Brazilian bank to build a product of its kind. The product provides its customers with the option to automatically calculate the estimated carbon footprint of payment transfers and card transactions (credit and debit) and offset usage with forest preservation credit.C6 selected Thought Machine’s technology as Vault Core is real-time and API-enabled. It allows the bank to access data in real time from a single source of truth, and automatically convert payment transfers and debit and credit transactions into carbon emissions.C6 intends to use Vault Core’s Universal Product Engine to configure additional new features and products as the partnership grows.Nelson Novaes, CTO at C6 Bank, says: “As we embarked on our project to build Brazil’s first automatic carbon footprint calculator product in a bank’s app, we needed to partner with a world-class core banking technology provider.“We selected Vault Core for its product quality and modern design: it is highly performant and event-driven. It allows us to access data in real-time, scale quickly, and build a better and more sustainable future.”Paul Taylor, CEO and founder of Thought Machine, says: “C6 has been at the forefront of banking innovation in the Latin American region. It has developed an incredibly popular banking service that is not only well-designed but is also mitigating climate risk.The bank has made a clear commitment to build a robust infrastructure to deliver its long-term vision for the future of financial services. We look forward to working with C6 to deliver on this ambition.”Last year, Thought Machine completed a Series D funding round – valuing the company at $2.7bn