Category: ASX

United States

Behind the Investment Platform: The LendingClub Borrower (LendingClub), Rated: AAA

From 2007 through 2017, LendingClub has matched $31 billion investor dollars with 2 million borrowers’ loans.

Today, outstanding credit card and personal loan balances in the U.S. are approximately $960 billion. Of that, two-thirds, or roughly $600 billion, represents interest-earning balances carried month-to-month —the overall addressable population. About half of the addressable population (more than $300 billion) currently meets LendingClub’s target credit profile—a market that we have only just begun to penetrate.

Read LendingClub’s Marketplace Insights report in full here.

Holiday Finance with Lending Club (ABC News), Rated: A

LendingClub Appoints Former Netflix Chief Talent Officer Patty McCord As New Board of Directors Member (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: B

Online credit marketplace LendingClub Corporation (NYSE: LC), announced on Tuesday it has appointed Patty McCord as the newest member of its Board of Directors, effective December 13, 2017.

McCord spent 14 years creating the unique and high-performing culture at Netflix and as the video streaming giant’s Chief Talent Officer, she helped create the Netflix Culture deck and experimented and cultivated new ways to work.

SoFi Now Offering Six-Month Grace Period for Graduates Using SoFi ReFi (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: AAA

On Tuesday, online lending platform SoFi announced it is now offering a six-month grace period for graduates using its newly launched SoFi ReFi program.

ABS investors could pull back from MPLs in 2018 as cycle set to turn (GlobalCapital), Rated: AAA

Interest in marketplace loan ABS from the buyside picked up in 2017, but some investors are now saying that they could sit things out in 2018 as credit concerns grow and a lack of data presents problems in the late stages of the credit cycle.

ABS volumes doubled from $3.4bn in 2016 to $7bn in 2017, with SoFi issuing more than $3bn in deals this year, according to data from JP Morgan. The introduction of multi-seller platforms from SoFi, Lending Club, Marlette Funding, Prosper Marketplace also drove liquidity for the sector, while new …

Fiserv teams with TransUnion for loan origination system (Banking Technology), Rated: A

Financial services company Fiserv and credit reporting agency and risk information provider TransUnion have joined forces, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (Banking Technology‘s sister company).

Under the agreement, Fiserv will integrate TransUnion’s CreditVision Link to increase precision of scoring and risk modeling in its Automotive Loan Origination System.

Over 65% of students prefer student loan payments over iPhone X or Bitcoin for holidays (TechRepublic), Rated: AAA

LendEDU asked 1,000 people repaying student loans if they would prefer a popular holiday gift or a loan payment of equal value. And, despite the hype surrounding tech trends, they wanted loan payments more.

Voice assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo won’t change banking in 2018 (Tearsheet), Rated: A

Bankers agree voice will be the biggest and most important channel to their business after mobile, only this time, it won’t sneak up on them like mobile did. They’re looking at 2018 as a year to get their companies more involved with voice by adding features to their Alexa skills, creating an Alexa skill if they haven’t done so already or expanding Alexa capabilities to other parts of the organization. But for the most part, they’re looking for a clearer sense of how people even use Alexa.

In 2017, USAA, Ally Bank and U.S. Bank launched Alexa skills. Before this year, Capital One was the only bank with the feature, which it launched in 2016.

Upstart’s First SaaS Partner (LinkedIn), Rated: A

Earlier this year, we announced an initiative to bring the industry’s first Software as a Service (SaaS) lending platform to market, which we call “Powered by Upstart”. Now we’re excited to announce that BankMobile is the first bank to launch their personal loan program on the Upstart platform. Beginning today, BankMobile offers consumers in 43 states personal loans from $5,000 to $30,000, with no origination fees and interest rates starting at 5.99%.

Overcoming the Hurdles of Big Data Start-ups (Big Data), Rated: A

We are an early investor in the company ‘Kabbage” and Kabbage to me is a major disruption in the fund-lending and risk-analysis market. Established in 2009, Kabbage supported the emerging companies that were suffering the blow of a financial crisis. Banks were declining to lend money to small businesses and entrepreneurs had no access to capital to support their businesses. What aggravated the problem is that even if they did get access to money, the procedure for evaluating the risks of money lending were strictly based on scrutinizing the company’s financial background and fico scores instead of probing into the business. Deviating from the established model of risk analysis, Kabbage stepped into the market at a time of financial distress and operated on a completely different strategy. They would evaluate your UPA shipping data, ebay seller reviews, and other bits of information that are generated on different platforms and then assess credit card risks based on these factors and not just credit card fico scores. Kabbage started off by accumulating a ton of third party data which they ingested, analyzed and then created a solution. Over time, the company has gathered a substantial amount of primary data that they can use to tweak and refine their risk-analysis model. The company efficiently leveraged big data to provide an entire new service in the risk-analysis industry.

Anthemis Group’s Jillian Williams on tough times for personal finance apps (Tearsheet), Rated: A

It’s a space that started out with Mint ten years ago, with a new way to look at all of one’s finances in one place. The field has now grown to accommodate an ever-expanding number of direct-to-consumer PFM apps, including apps like Digit, Clarity Money, Penny and Qapital, and banks are now folding PFM capabilities into their mobile apps.

Banks have been folding in PFM features and competing apps are having trouble differentiating. Where do you see the PFM market right now?
A lot of PFM will continue to move to a business-to-business, or business-to-business-to-consumer model. Things [business-to-consumer PFMs] struggle with are being able to monetize and with customer acquisition.

What’s the problem with business-to-consumer PFM?
The market is really crowded and it’s hard to provide that extra value to really distinguish themselves from other platforms in the space.

Instant Loans at Checkout: helpful or hurtful? (MSN News Now), Rated: A

An $800 mattress for your bed. A $600 sofa for your living room. A vintage designer bag as a Christmas gift for your best friend.  They’re all pretty big purchases to buy online, but now you can get an instant loan for any of them right at checkout.

Ingle says the payment plans are different than credit card options. Companies like Affirm partner with certain retailers to offer the loans, which are installment loans with interest rates, and set payments are made over time.

India

Peer-to-peer lending platform Faircent gets $ 4m in Series B (Economic Times), Rated: AAA

Peer-to-peer lending platform Faircent has raised $4 million in a Series-B round led by Belgian impact investment fund Incofin and Muthoot Fincorp.

P2P platform Faircent raises Series B from Muthoot Fincorp, Incofin, others (Economic Times), Rated: A

In a statement Faircent said it will utilise the newly acquired funds towards strengthening the platform’s technology and creating greater awareness about P2P lending’s significance as a new and highly rewarding asset class.

Fintech Startups Seek to Shake Up Money Transfer Industry (WSJ), Rated: AAA

The race is on to become the top global app for international money transfers.

Fintech startups including WorldRemit Ltd., TransferWise Ltd. and Remitly Inc. are pulling ahead of the pack of the dozens of companies trying to disrupt the remittance industry, using the latest technology to send money internationally.

Finvasia gets licence to operate as NBFC (The Tribune), Rated: A

Chandigarh-based Finvasia, a fintech company offering zero brokerage, has received the Certificate of Registration (CoR) from RBI to operate as a non-banking financial corporation (NBFC). This extension will allow the company to offer loan-based products to retail and corporates alike. The company plans to develop block chain technology based P2P (peer-to-peer) lending platform.

Canada

Fintech Select Announces Launch of Physical Bitcoins (GlobeNewswire), Rated: A

Fintech Select Ltd. (“Fintech Select” or the “Company”) (TSX-V:FTEC) is pleased to announce that it will be launching its physical Bitcoin product alongside its Selectcoin closed loop swipe card.

Authors: