Details Title: Internet 3.0: Decentralize everything Internet 1.0 is HTML websites. Internet 2.0 is a social network and user-created content. Internet 3.0 is the decentralization of everything: decentralization of marketplaces, of resources usage and allocation, etc. Is Internet 3.0 the P2P of everything? Examples of decentralization include: Decentralized exchanges (Ether Delta) Decentralize computing power (Golem) […]
Internet 1.0 is HTML websites.
Internet 2.0 is a social network and user-created content.
Internet 3.0 is the decentralization of everything: decentralization of marketplaces, of resources usage and allocation, etc.
News Comments Today’s main news: SoFi hires Noto to be CEO. StreetShares secures $23M in equity to reach military, veteran market. Zopa fills positions for bank launch. Dianrong raises $70M. Yirendai signs onto Internet Finance Industry Credit Information Sharing Platform. Tera Funding sets Korean fundraising record. Today’s main analysis: FT Partners publishes 2017 InsurTech Almanac (a must-read). Today’s thought-provoking articles: […]
SoFi hires Anthony Noto. AT: “This is good news for SoFi, and appears to be a solid career move for Noto, who has quite the pedigree. We’re anxious to see how he brings his experience to the table and how it will impact SoFi’s future.”
SoFi’s new CEO has IPO experience. AT: “This could prove to be valuable as SoFi has had to put its plans for an IPO on hold amid its recent scandal involving former CEO Mike Cagney.”
FT Partners publishes 2017 InsurTech Alamanac. AT: “A must-read report. The insurtech industry is growing and is poised to grow into one of the largest tech industries on the planet.”
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) drops investigation. AT: “The focus of this article implies there is an improper Mulvaney connection to the lender, but this move actually represents the change in direction for the CFPB under the Trump Administration–as does Mulvaney’s appointment.”
In Noto, SoFi has chosen a fast-rising executive in the tech industry. Noto, 49, was one of the most respected bankers at Goldman Sachs before becoming the chief financial officer of the National Football League and then Twitter.
Shares of Twitter slid on Tuesday morning after the online lending startup SoFi announced that Anthony Noto, Twitter’s chief operating officer, will be joining the company as its new CEO, effective March 1.
Twitter has suffered from several departures of key executives in the past two years as the company struggles to bring value to shareholders.
Noto, who worked on technology, media and telecom deals at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. before joining Twitter in 2014, brings to the job a background in tech and finance. Beyond Twitter’s nascent revival, his turnaround abilities are largely untested. But given his history of taking companies public — including Twitter — a SoFi IPO is very much a possibility, according to people familiar with the situation. Furthermore, they say, it’ll be nice to have an adult in the room after all the recent turmoil.
SoFi Wealth, launched last year and harbored ambitions to quickly manage $100 million in assets, Bloomberg News reported in October. It grew slowly until last quarter, when it tripled its assets from September to $42.3 million as of Jan. 18, spokesman Jim Prosser said. The average account holds about $4,300. Other digital wealth startups have north of $10 billion under management.
2017 was a very active year for the InsurTech sector globally, with the most financings ever (over 200) and more than $2 billion in financing volume
While the total announced financing dollar volume for 2017 was lower than in the prior two years, when excluding rounds over $50 million, the volume reached a record high of approximately $1.3 billion
Of the four largest financings this year, two were in the Online Health Insurance space (Bright Health and Clover Health), one was in the Telematics space (Nauto) and one was in Online P&C Insurance (Lemonade)
2017 also featured another wave of mid-range to larger financing rounds for InsurTech companies founded in the last several years, including Next Insurance’s $35 mm Series A, The Zebra’s $40 mm Series B, Health IQ’s $35 mm Series C, PolicyGenius’ $30 mm Series C and Trov’s $45 mm Series D
Europe had significant increases in financing activity, the largest out of any region this year — financing volume and deal count both grew by more than 2x; the region also recorded its largest InsurTech financing ever: BIMA’s $107 million raise led by Allianz X, which was the fifth largest financing globally in 2017
Among the cohort of InsurTech companies founded since 2010, this year marked two milestones:
First IPO: China-based ZhongAn (SEHK:6060) raised approximately $1.5 billion
Largest acquisition: Guidewire acquired Cyence for $275 million
Hippo, the California-based insurtech company that is transforming home insurance for savvy homeowners, announced on Monday it secured $25 million in Series B funding round, which was led by Comcast Ventures and Fifth Wall. The investment comes less than two weeks after Hippo announced it formed a strategic partnership with Spinnaker Insurance Company.
OnDeck (NYSE:ONDK), the leader in online lending for small business, will report its fourth quarter and full year 2017 financial results on Tuesday, February 13, at approximately 7:00 a.m. EST. The company will host a conference call to discuss the results at 8:00 a.m. EST that same day.
The conference call will be webcast live on the company’s Investor Relations website or listeners can access the call toll free by dialing (833) 227-5836 for calls within the U.S., or by dialing (647) 689-4063 for international calls. The Conference ID passcode is 5468078.
StreetShares Secures $ 23 Million Equity Funding to Scale for the Military and Veteran Market (StreetShares Email), Rated: AAA
StreetShares, Inc., the leading small business funding and government contract financing company serving the military and veteran market, announced today it has completed its Series B funding round, raising $23 million in fresh equity capital. The Series B round was led by a $20 million investment from Rotunda Capital Partners, LLC, and included an additional $3 million from existing investors, including veteran-focused venture firm, Stony Lonesome Group.
AutoGravity, a California-based Fintech on a mission to transform car shopping and financing, announced last week it surpassed $2 billion in finance amount requested in 2017.
Honolulu-based Central Pacific Financial Corp. has appointed Christopher Lutes as director of the boards of CPF and Central Pacific Bank.
Lutes has been the chief financial officer of Elevate Credit Inc. and its predecessor company, which specializes in tech-enabled online credit solutions, since 2007.
LD Holdings Group, LLC, parent company of loanDepot, the nation’s second largest non-bank consumer lender, today announced continued expansion beyond its profitable mortgage and personal loan businesses. In Q1, a newly formed venture, mello Home, will connect pre-approved homebuyers with verified real estate agents in their local market, and help consumers find and hire home improvement and other pros.
That’s the idea behind Bond Navigator, a cloud-based digital marketplace for advisers to find and evaluate municipal bonds, that launched Tuesday from startup 280 CapMarkets.
Amazon has already tapped the securitization markets as part of a plan to shift the risk of its business lending programme off its balance sheet.
Amazon has stated in previous quarterly reports that it intends to transfer more of the risk of its seller financing programme to third parties.
Similarly, PayPal has expressed interest in funding its credit portfolio through third parties, including bank lending, securitization, private equity and sovereign wealth funds, although the company told GlobalCapital in August that this would unlikely be a near term project.
Many financial services companies, both startups and incumbents, talk about the importance of customers’ financial education but how they integrate it into their own offerings often manifests as no more than a dedicated content marketing section or blog. Acorns itself has an online magazine called Grow that features news, financial how-tos and interviews with celebrities like Kevin Durant, Ian Kahn and Tony Robbins.
For personal banking customers of First Bank, the largest community bank headquartered in North Carolina, transferring money to family and friends is now as simple as hitting “Cent.”
On January 22, First Bank launched Cent, its new quick-money transfer tool, allowing personal banking users of the bank’s mobile banking application to send money to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the U.S., regardless of if the recipient banks with First Bank or not. And there are no fees.
There is no doubt marketplace lending, by offering speed and flexibility not historically seen in traditional banking, has done its part to foster the “do it yourself” (DIY) era.
Peer-to-peer lending has become one of the most important sources of online financing. Unfortunately, there are some shadowy operators out there, using Facebook Messenger and other less traditional avenues to hook in victims.
The scam works like this: You’ll be contacted out of the blue and offered peer-to-peer financing, then asked to pay an arrangement fee or fork out for background checks. You’ll never see the promised cash and you could lose quite a bit of money, as well as data that can be used for identity theft.
4. The credit repair scam
Most young businesses have an inadequate credit score. It’s a simple fact of life. However, there are plenty of predators out there who’ll be keen to convince you that they have the expertise and tools to transform your score—in return for a hefty fee, of course.
5. The loan broker scam
Loan brokers exist to identify the right products for your business, make introductions to lenders, and prepare the paperwork to ensure a smooth process. There are plenty of legitimate and professional brokers, who get paid a commission from lenders for arranging loans; unfortunately, there are also quite a few sharks, who charge upfront fees for the same service.
Online and Alternative Investing Will Remain Strong: The amount of investors using online investing and alternative options will continue to remain strong, especially for both Baby Boomer and Millennial investors. Online investing exposes investors to a larger number of companies driving innovation, and, many online investors are starting to realize an ROI from their online investing activities. In spring 2017, the number of people who lived in a household that used an online investing/stock trading service within the last 12 months amounted to 15.79 million.
LendingTree®, the nation’s leading online loan marketplace, today released its quarterly list of the top customer-rated lenders on its network based on actual customer reviews for the fourth quarter of 2017. The list features the top lenders in multiple loan product categories, including Mortgages, Personal Loans, Business Loans and Auto Loans, all of which are included in LendingTree’s online loan marketplace.
Payday lending can be a useful service. A two-week loan of $500 at 400 percent annualized interest can make sense if, say, you need to fix your truck to get to work. Unfortunately, the industry has long made much of its money by trapping customers in a series of consecutive loans that can end up costing many times the amount borrowed. A patchwork of state laws has done little to combat such practices.
Payday lender World Acceptance Corporation announced in a press releaseMonday that it received a letter from the CFPB stating that the financial watchdog had closed its nearly four-year investigation into the company’s marketing and lending practices. The company, which is headquartered in South Carolina, has given at least $4,500 in campaign donations to Mulvaney, who represented South Carolina in the House for six years before becoming President Donald Trump’s budget director last year.
Sorry, boomers, but the world of banking and insurance isn’t so interested in you anymore. You’re getting too old to buy insurance and too conservative with your investments. And your time horizons are too short to be very profitable to the investment world. The financial services industry is aiming at millennials now.
–Six in 10 millennials are hesitant to discuss their situation with friends because they are embarrassed that they make less money or are ashamed of poor financial decision in their past.
–Only 12 percent of millennials feel very prepared for their financial future.
–Only one-third of millennials feel like they make enough to pay for bills and also save for the future.
Money360, a technology-enabled direct lender specializing in commercial real estate loans, today announced that effective immediately, Todd Ruppert, former CEO and president of T. Rowe Price Global Investment Services, has joined the company’s Board of Advisors.
According to a report by WalletHub, young people struggle with low credit scores partially because they don’t have the time behind them to establish wealth and experience.
Set Up Automatic Payments
Get A Low-Limit Credit Card – Charging small items to a credit card and then paying it off in full every month builds credit in no time. You can find offers for these at creditcards.com and similar sites, with many offering cards with a $300 limit or so.
Piggyback Off Of Others First – By becoming an authorized user on someone’s credit card, you can start building credit from their payments.
Build A Credit History – It is not uncommon to get a 0% or 2% auto loan these days, and this way of building credit history is brilliant.
P2P lender Zopa has begun building the executive team for the launch of its new challenger bank later this year, appointing a CFO, chief risk officer and chief customer officer.
Chief financial officer Steve Hulme joins from Tandem Money where he was CFO for the last two years. Before Tandem, Hulme served as CFO for PayPal’s global credit business and as CFO for Capital One’s UK and Canadian business.
He will be joined by former TSB man Phillip Dransfield as chief risk officer. Dransfield has a 20-year track record in risk management taking in two of the counttry’s largest high street banks.
The left-field appointment of chief marketing officer goes to Clare Gambardella from health and fitness brand Virgin Active.
Major banks are scrambling fast to not only comply with the regulation by opening up their APIs, but are also looking to leverage the new open landscape to separate themselves from their competitors and avoid being bitten by these fintech startups.
Take HSBC UK, which has proved itself to be an early mover when it comes to PSD2 by announcing a new beta app which will allow customers to see all of their accounts on one screen, even if they are with a rival bank.
However, UK challenger banks like Monzo and Starling, as well as some other fintech startups listed below, have been working towards the idea of open banking for some time now.
Monzo
According to a blog post by Simon Vans-Colina, an engineer at Monzo, the new API, which they are calling the AIS API, “will be made available to particular companies, that have been granted authorisation as AISPs.
Iwoca
As CEO Christoph Rieche explained to our sister site Techworld, real-time access to customers’ transactional data, which the banks have traditionally held onto for current accounts, is very valuable to his company.
Chip
“In a utopia consumers can start to grant affordability criteria to a lender, provide transaction data to a savings mechanism like Chip, or income data to a mortgage lender,” he said. “You can choose exactly which data you want which third parties to access, so it puts control into the customer’s hands.”
TrueLayer
Founder Francesco Simoneschi likes to compare TrueLayer to Twilio or Stripe, two companies that provide simple, secure and regulated access to core infrastructure (be it telco networks or payments infrastructure, respectively) through a core API.
So TrueLayer sits between the new breed of fintech companies looking to deliver value from newly opened customer financial data, and underlying banking infrastructure, charging a small fee for access to the API.
Emma
Cofounder Edoardo Moreni wrote in a blog post at the time: “Emma is currently building the banking app for millennials (iOS and Android), a mobile-only solution that helps consumers avoid overdrafts, find and cancel subscriptions, track debt and save money.
Research among 200 SMEs by recruitment specialist Tindall Perry found while 74 per cent of finance directors describe their knowledge of alternative finance as average or above, only a quarter suggested that they were comfortable with accessing crowdfunding, with P2P lending also scoring less than 50 per cent.
In contrast, 85 per cent of companies said that they understood how best to access asset-based lending, while invoice finance, trade finance and venture capital all saw a positive response rate of between 55 and 75 per cent.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the global elite in the Swiss ski resort, she said: “We have far fewer tools to deal with any event that happens.” Richards predicted an upset could occur “somewhere where none of us are looking”, and highlighted peer-to-peer lending as an example.
Current financial conditions have echoes of the pre-crisis era, according to Jes Staley, chief executive of Barclays, speaking at the same event. While he said he believes banks are much less of a threat to stability than a decade ago, he warned that current benign conditions may not last.
Dianrong today announced additional Series D round funding of US$70 million that was led by ORIX Asia Capital Limited, a wholly-owned investment vehicle of ORIX Corporation, and included CLSA, the overseas platform of CITIC Securities, China’s largest investment bank, which in turn is a part of CITIC Group, one of China’s largest conglomerates.
Orix Corp has invested $60 million in peer-to-peer lending platform Dianrong, in what is the Japanese financial firm’s first investment in a Chinese fintech venture as it looks to tap into the fast-expanding sector, sources said.
Yirendai Ltd. (NYSE: YRD) (“Yirendai” or the “Company”), a fintech company in China, announced today that it has connected to the Internet Finance Industry Credit Information Sharing Platform (“the Platform”) established by the National Internet Finance Association of China (“NIFA”). The Platform was established to serve as an industry wide credit data sharing database in aims of reducing credit risk, improving the credit environment and promoting the healthy development of the internet finance industry. Currently, all leading online lending platforms are required to upload their operating credit data to the Platform’s database and members can only make manual inquiries on the Platform through its webpage. Yirendai has been selected by NIFA to participate in a pilot project to enable automatic queries and the Company expects to launch an automated query function in its system shortly.
Payments company GoCardless Ltd., which employs 170 people in London, will open a Paris office in February, said chief product and technology officer Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas. Online lender LendInvest Ltd. said it will make a “concerted effort” to hire additional engineers in London this year, while Salesforce.com Inc.-backed software company Anaplan Inc. says hiring engineering talent is its current priority.
Faes said about 30 to 40 percent of its hires come from major financial institutions, adding that 100 percent of the team’s small risk and compliance team came from banks. For MarketInvoice Ltd., another British online lender, about three-quarters of its 85 employees — roughly a third of which are software engineers and data scientists — came from a large corporate in the financial services or accountancy space, said CEO and co-founder Anil Stocker.
Europe’s fintech industry, which includes challenger banks and online-only lenders, has rapidly expanded over the past 10 years. Traditional financial institutions have faced intense competition as a result, with former Barclays Plc CEO Antony Jenkins saying in July last year that banks could face obsolescence in five to 15 years.
According to a report published in September last year by Innovate Finance and Magister Advisers, VCs poured around $8bn into fintech startups and early stage companies across the continent between 2010 and 2017 and over the course of that period, deal sizes rose significantly. In London – generally considered to be Europe’s Fintech Hub – figures published in January by London and Partners found that the UK’s fintech sector attracted £1.24bn in 2017 alone.
Established in 2006, the Amsterdam-based company is currently valued at around $2.3bn and has has built a portfolio of more than 4,000 clients, including Netflix, Facebook, Uber and Spotify, plus retailers such as River Island and Superdry.
Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain platform contributed by IBM and provides plug-and-play modular blockchain components. You can see the commit history visualization of fabric project. Fabric runs chaincode which is comparable to Ethereum’s smart contracts. The consensus protocol is pluggable.
Transaction Flow Let’s see how nodes work together to execute a transaction. For now, let’s assume that the chaincode is already installed on the Peers.
Step 1: Transaction requests are proposed by a client. The client must be connected to the required number of peers according to the endorsement policy. A proposed Transaction is forwarded to Peers for Endorsement.
Step 2: Each endorsing peer simulates and validates the transaction. Peers reply with their Endorsement and certificate if they agree that the transaction is permitted.
Step 3: The client receives results from different Peers and can thus verify agreement among the Peers. Upon verification, the client forwards the transaction to the OS.
Step 4: Determining a well-ordered sequence of transactions is the task of the Ordering Service (OS). The OS generates transaction blocks containing validated transactions in the order they are deemed to have occurred, writes them to the ledger and then broadcasts them to all peers that a new set of blocks are now available on the ledger.
All well and good but, in a move that I am fairly sure was carefully orchestrated by the banking community, nearly all of the mainstream media greeted the launch of Open Banking with fear and scaremongering.
Nevertheless, the FinTech community are far more advocates of the new regime:
Note that to find the positive spin on Open Banking, I’ve had to seek out more business or niche news channels than the doomsayers of the mainstream consumer media.
GLOBAL fintech group Longfin Corp is planning to make its Ziddu cryptocurrency smart contracts available for peer-to-peer lending.
Ziddu.com provides smart contracts which are available on cryptocurrency Ethereum’s blockchain and can be used as alternative finance solutions within trade finance and FX markets, without the need for a middleman or underwriter.
Currently, there are over 2 billion people worldwide who find it difficult to access traditional banking services, often because they are new to the country or do not qualify for credit. I, too, was one of those people. When I arrived in the UK, I didn’t have a proof of address and credit history required to open a bank account, and just like many others in a similar position, I was left in a ridiculous catch-22 situation. I needed a bank account to get a job and a place to live but, in order to get a bank account, I was required to have a place to live and a job.
Monese is laying the foundation of how banks will work in the future by bringing the accessibility and convenience to levels that weren’t possible just a few short years ago. You can now bank locally in 20 different countries, in a matter of a few minutes — all you need is a mobile phone and your passport. You can literally open an account in your home country or an international IBAN in another country whilst standing in a supermarket queue.
Over 270,000 people have signed up to Monese and every day 1,000 more are joining us.
Fresh from the success of a well-received ICO that raised $10 million, blockchain start up Karma has now announced open access to its peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform via the use of its native KRM token, which also began trading on CoinLink exchange on January 11th, 2018.
NeoGrowth Credit, a lending startup focused at SMEs has secured Rs 300 crore of equity funding from LeapFrog Investments, and existing investors like Aspada Investment Company and Quona Capital through Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, reports The Economic Times. The report adds that as part of the investment, LeapFrog’s partner Michael Fernandes will join NeoGrowth’s board.
Tera Funding, a real estate P2P lending company in Korea, announced that it has secured KRW10bn (approx. US$9.3M) through its series A funding round from Woori Bank, Atinum Investment, SBI Investment and Premier Partners on 8 January 2018.
It is the largest single series A investment for Korean P2P lending start-ups, and this comes as a pleasant surprise for the industry as such decision to invest in Tera Funding was made after a thorough due diligence amid general public’s increasing worries about the industry with rising defaults and arrears mainly incurred by late-comers who take riskier approach.
Having said that, the advent of cutting-edge technologies is pushing banks to change the way they operate. While they have been able to survive many revolutions in the past, they cannot remain aloof to blockchain, one of 21st century’s biggest revolutions.
Lending Times News
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In just over a decade, alternative lending has evolved from a niche fintech play into a hundred billion dollar industry. 2017 was somewhat of a bumpy ride. Growing competition, shrinking bottom lines, stringent regulations, and traditional banks’ willingness to take on alt-lending using their financial muscle were the key trends that emerged last year. It […]
In just over a decade, alternative lending has evolved from a niche fintech play into a hundred billion dollar industry. 2017 was somewhat of a bumpy ride. Growing competition, shrinking bottom lines, stringent regulations, and traditional banks’ willingness to take on alt-lending using their financial muscle were the key trends that emerged last year. It is difficult to be sure what 2018 will bring, but here is what experts and pundits are predicting.
Marketplace Lending
Ron Suber (Founder and former president, Prosper & chairman of the board, Credible) believes the marketplace lending industry has finally grown up. Companies will focus more on cash flow, profitability, and EBITDA. He encouraged online lenders to look for a lower cost of capital if they want to compete with the like of Marcus. He is also predicting the entrance of big technology companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
Peter Renton (Lend Academy) believes five of the top 25 banks will launch their own platforms. He also believes Congress will pass a Madden fix and the IRS will modernize with its own API. One startling prediction he makes that one of the top online lenders (Lending Club, SoFi, Prosper, OnDeck, or Avant) will be acquired, and he believes a major platform will be hit by a cyber attack. Like everyone else, he believes the tech giants will solidify their positions in alternative lending, and more interestingly, he says messaging apps will integrate with online lending platforms.
Krista Morgan (CEO, P2Binvestor) makes predictions for MPL sector:
Companies will shift their focus on business models and unit profitability as hiring and spending decrease.
Mergers and shutdowns will continue as equity investors remain absent. She thinks it will be a tough year.
Investors believe the market is set for a correction; therefore, they will be looking at short duration assets for deploying their capital. Platforms will have to shift their focus to product development.
2018 will be the year of increased diversity.
Adam Stettner (Founder and CEO, Reliant Funding) predicts a year of instability. He also believes market variables will counterbalance themselves this year. The Fed is expected to increase interest rates, which will have a ripple effect in terms of rates for various types of loans. If unemployment levels remain low, it will lead to wage inflation. So the order of the day for alternative finance and small business funding companies will be adaptability, he says.
Additionally, Stettner sees a year of increased fraud, and companies will have to invest in identification tools and fraud detection techniques.
Two more predictions he points to are increased consolidation as companies overextend themselves and more disruption from big business names entering the space.
Juan Tavares (LendingPoint) predicts balance sheet lenders will take over, there will be more collaboration, and payments and credit will intersect more.
Small Business Lending
Trevor Dryer (Co-founder and CEO, Mirador) made predictions on small business lending:
Banks will continue to increase small business lending and alternative lenders will struggle.
Crowdfunding got a boost last year when Title III of The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) was implemented, opening the gates for crowdfunding. Dryer believes this sector will thrive in 2018.
Alternative lending has removed physical barriers that makes the lending process faster and more convenient. Alternative lending will continue to be more inclusive and encourage more people to start businesses.
Legislative barriers will continue to fall.
Alternative lenders will focus on experience and relationship building. Companies able to streamline and automate the application processes will thrive.
Alternative Lending in India
Rajesh Gupta (Founder and CEO, Cash Suvidha) made the following predictions for the Indian alternative lending market.
A significant increase in alternative lending market share.
Favorable regulations, cash benefits, ease of usage, and increased internet and smartphone penetration.
Investors and venture capitalists will remain optimistic about the Indian alternative lending industry since it is the second most funded segment in Indian fintech.
“2018 will witness a transformation in the Indian financial landscape, all thanks to alternative lending,” he writes.
Traditional Financial Services and Alternative Investing
Kevin McPartland (Greenwich Associates) says 2018 will be the year of digital. He believes product-agnostic investing will be huge, and passive investing will gain on active investing. 2018 will also be the year that alternative data goes mainstream, he believes while data will be more important than trading. He also believes wealth management will “come out of retirement” and, finally, a ton of innovation in the financial markets as banks focus on crypto.
Chris Skinner (The Finanser Blog) writes a lot about banking’s reaction to alternative lending. He believes 2018 will be the year of artificial intelligence for banks and that banks will continue to drive digital technology deeper into their core systems. Not surprisingly, he also predicts that banks will develop more proof-of-concept operations for distributed ledger technology. Finally, he predicts the banks will develop an Enterprise Data Architecture this year to clean up their fragmented systems.
Alexander Prokhorov (FinSight Ventures) made some general predictions for fintech that apply just as well to alternative lending:
Software will converge with financial products in the U.S. and Europe
Insurtech will be more prominent
Artificial intelligence will transform financial services
There will be a lot of innovation in emerging economies such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia
Wealth management will pick up speed
Crypo assets and blockchain will take center stage for retail investing
Don Steinbrugge, CFA (Founder and CEO, Agecroft Partners) is predicting a banner year for the hedge fund industry. He believes hedge fund assets will reach an all-time high for the 10th straight year. He also believes there will be an increase in hedge funds shutting down. And there will be an increase in cryptocurrency funds. Strategies that will gain assets, he believes, include:
Asia long/short equity
Reinsurance
Those that blur the lines between private equity and hedge funds
The Lending-Times Prediction
Allen Taylor (Editor, Lending-Times) believes more U.S. platforms will open the doors to non-accredited investors. Blockchain will feature more prominently in alternative lending with more platforms focused on crypto-lending including a prominent alternative lender adding cryptocurrency to its list of core services. He also believes increased specialization will lead to platforms targeting specific industries, regions/states, and other narrow target markets.
Conclusion
2018 will surely see the alternative lending industry enter a consolidation phase to withstand the changes in market dynamics, and companies best able to cope with these headwinds would emerge bigger and stronger.
Lending-Times recently conducted a survey of our readers to find out more about the types of lending services they offer and how they relate to their customers. The following are the results of the survey. What type of lending services do you provide? (select all that apply) The majority of readers (55.88%) are in the […]
Lending-Times recently conducted a survey of our readers to find out more about the types of lending services they offer and how they relate to their customers. The following are the results of the survey.
What type of lending services do you provide? (select all that apply)
The majority of readers (55.88%) are in the consumer loan business followed by 36.76% involved in business lending. 17.65% are in mortgage lending while 16.18% are in student lending 10.29% are involved in auto lending. Another 25% identify as alternative lenders, a broad category of lending that includes many types of non-bank loans. Because readers could choose more than one category for this question, the survey results do not add up to 100%.
What is your role within the organization?
The largest percentage of survey takers (25%) fall into the digital sales, marketing, and acquisition category. 11.76% fall into risk, fraud, and compliance occupations, and another 10.29% consider themselves a part of product and technology. The majority, 52.94%, chose “other.”
How do you verify the identity of your borrowers?
When it comes to identifying borrower identities, 37.31% said they do so through data bureau checks. Digital identity verification checks are used by 32.84% of those who took our survey, and 23.88% said they verify borrower identities with a manual review of identity documents. Only 5.97% said “other.”
How do you collect supporting documents for underwriting (for example, utility bills for proof of address, W2s for proof of income, etc.)?
Regarding underwriting practices, 69.74% of survey takers said they collect documents through electronic capture and upload, 25% by email, and 5.26% have borrowers deliver to a physical location. No respondents said they receive documents by fax.
Do you think your current process for onboarding new applicants could be improved?
A simple yes or no response on this question revealed that 93.24% of survey takers believe their new applicant onboarding processes can be improved while only 6.58% responded in the negative.
What stage of the digital transformation journey is your organization at today?
Almost half, 42.11%, of survey respondents said they are a fully digital organization, and the same percentage said they are on track to becoming a fully digital lender. Those just starting out represent 19.74% of our readership who said they are working on a full-digital strategy and evaluating vendors. None of the respondents said they have no plans to become a fully digital lender.
What do you think are the main barriers to offering fully digital lending services? (select all that apply)?
The majority of survey takers (53.42%) said the biggest barrier to offering fully digital lending service is mitigating risk while avoid loan application abondonment. Another 52.05% said meeting compliance without compromising the user experience is the main barrier. Almost one-third of survey takeres (27.40%) said they lack the skills, resources, and budget to offer fully digital lending services. Respondents who said they do not see the value of shifting their loan origination practices to digital channels registered at 9.59%, and those unsure of where to begin came in at 5.48%.
Rank on a scale from 1-5, the value of each benefit in the digital lending process (1 being very valuable, 5 being not valuable).
Our readers seem to value regulatory compliance more than any other digital lending benefit. Risk mitigation followed closely behind followed by improvements in operational efficiency. Cycle time and user experience pulled up the rear.
Do you feel your lending user experience is a competitive differentiator?
84% of survey takers said the user experience on their lending platforms are a key competitive differentiator while 16% said it wasn’t.
If you already offer digital loans, which of the following options do you provide?
Among survey takers, the digital lending options provided the most include desktop/laptop (52.11%), mobile-optimized website (50.70%), and native app (15.49%). Over one-third (39.44%) said they offer all three options.
As many have reported, online lending is headed into the next phase of its evolution. As with any industry moving from its nascent stage to its adolescent years, we expect consolidation as the strongest players grow their stature, and opportunities to learn what works and what does not. We also expect a focus on powering […]
As many have reported, online lending is headed into the next phase of its evolution. As with any industry moving from its nascent stage to its adolescent years, we expect consolidation as the strongest players grow their stature, and opportunities to learn what works and what does not. We also expect a focus on powering continued growth in the sector fueled by increasing capital investment.
With this in mind, we wanted to provide our readers with a firsthand account from the leading forces for investment in the online lending space about the trends they’re seeing, the challenges they’re facing, and what they have up their sleeves for the industry’s next stage of development.
On July 21, 2017, we hosted an online lending Meetup event, “Risks and Emerging Solutions for Investor Confidence in Online Lending,” at Global Debt Registry’s New York City headquarters. We were hoping for a meeting of the best and the brightest — and that is exactly what we got with panelists from Citi Bank, Global Debt Registry, and PricewaterhouseCoopers among others.
The conversation largely focused on the online lending industry’s need to take a closer look at infrastructural elements in order to substantially grow and attract more mature capital into the space. Under that umbrella, there were four key takeaways from the evening’s conversations that we found particularly noteworthy:
1. The future lies in scalable investor infrastructure
For online lending to continue along its current growth trajectory, industry leaders are taking a close look at the sector’s infrastructure – in particular the reliability and scalability of that infrastructure. As the space seeks to attract continued capital investment to support a growing network of participants, the right risk infrastructure is key to achieving that goal. An optimum risk infrastructure is one that involves fewer manual processes to reduce errors and improve efficiency, provides the highest degrees of certainty around loan data to diminish opportunities for fraud, and offers robust reporting tools and sets industry-wide standards. A structure that delivers on each of these points and can scale on demand will help spur investor confidence that in turn supports broad industry expansion.
2. Investing in online lending is broadening oversight professionals’ scope of work
As online lending increases in popularity as an asset class, auditors and trustees are increasingly being asked to handle a greater breadth of tasks. Exposure to a wider range of investors and an increased level of complexity in the types of players involved in lending activities has caused due diligence to become the tip of the iceberg for compliance professionals. This trend is likely to continue upward as the online lending industry matures.
3. Bolstering the back end can’t take a backseat
The initial focus of the online lending industry was on innovation in the borrower experience — bringing the dream of virtual lending into reality and exploring newly available data sets to support underwriting (e.g. social data and spearheading the total disruption of the preexisting lending paradigm). The less exciting requirement of readying the back end, investor management systems was pushed to the back burner. But if the online lending industry is to continue its growth trajectory, the nitty-gritty details of building out a back end to allow for scalability must become a priority.
4. Blockchain could be big — but it’s too early to predict its full impact.
While blockchain has great potential to become a safe and secure way to keep track of loan ownership and asset integrity, using a single consistent source of core loan data to create an immutable audit trail, it’s still in the nascent stages of development. As such, there is still much debate on which technology platforms will win out. There will also likely be some industry stumbles early on, as there often are when new technology is first adopted. However, the significant need for distributed trust, a single version of the truth, and immutable record keeping make for a compelling blockchain use case across the online lending ecosystem.
“The value of open dialogue among major players in the online lending space is immeasurable,” said Charlie Moore, president of Global Debt Registry. “The entire industry benefits when leaders in the space come together to share and develop industry solutions. Conversations like this help us determine the most effective ways to open more loans, attract more capital, and secure the emerging risk infrastructure requirements — and that’s a very positive thing.”
The event provided a rare and valuable inside look at what online lending industry leaders are really thinking about the state of the rapidly evolving industry.
News Comments Today’s main news: SoFi loses another senior executive. Prosper performance update for June 2017. Lending-Times listed as #3 P2P lending website. Zopa’s lent 2.46B GBP since March 2005. Zopa sees 35% rise in home improvement loan originations. Revolut partners with robo-advisor. Today’s main analysis: A closer look at Amazon’s lending business. Today’s thought-provoking articles: 5 ICO platforms in China. A […]
Sofi loses another senior executive. AT: “There’s no evidence executives are leaving due to problems with the company. They are likely leaving because their own personal reputations have risen along with the company’s. Having been instrumental in driving SoFi’s success, they are getting better offers and going out on their own. Remember, the same thing has been happening with Google employees for years. This is a sign of SoFi’s success and a boon to the entire fintech sector.”
A close look at Amazon’s lending business. AT: “There is a lot to be said about Amazon as a small business lender. This is just the beginning. But there are some interesting insights in this analysis.”
Top 100 P2P lending blogs and websites. AT: “Lending-Times is proud to be among the ranks of Lend Academy, P2P Banking, and others. We made No. 3 on this list.”
The Amazon model of technology + the personal touch. AT: “It’s no secret that consumers of financial services want a personal touch. The challenge for startups is to offer that touch alongside the efficiencies of modern technology.”
Online finance startup SoFi has lost yet another senior executive, the company has confirmed. Chief revenue officer Michael Tannenbaum is the latest exec to leave, following a string of departures in the company’s senior ranks.
Tannenbaum joined SoFi as VP of finance in 2014, but quickly moved up the ranks over the last few years. After the company moved beyond its student loan refinancing business to also include mortgages, he took over that business.
Most recently, Tannenbaum served as CRO, where he was responsible for driving the company’s growth strategy across all of SoFi’s core lending products, including student loan refinancing, mortgages and personal loans.
Tannenbaum is reportedly looking to work on his own startup in the finance space, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Amazon (AMZN) has disbursed more than $1.0 billion in small business loans in the past 12 months, implying that the company has supplied about $2.5 billion in loans to sellers on its marketplace since it launched its credit business in 2011. These loans, in the range of $1,000 to $750,000, have gone to more than 20,000 sellers in the United States (SPY), the United Kingdom (EWU), and Japan (EWJ).
The consumer interest in low-cost or free shipping, as highlighted by the survey, could embolden Amazon to add even more perks to Prime to make it more attractive. Prime is vital to Amazon as it fends off competition from the likes of eBay (EBAY), Wal-Mart (WMT), and Target (TGT). According to research company Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, there are more than 80 million Prime subscribers in the United States (SPY).
The weighted average borrower rate for Prosper’s June 2017 vintage is similar to May 2017, a continuation of a platform rate which is the highest since 2013.
Delinquencies for 2017 originations are tracking near 2016 H1 and are in line with expectations based on a materially riskier ratings distribution.
Prepayments continue to edge up for 2016 H2 and 2017 vintages.
When viewing the U.S. consumer through a macro lens and looking more granularly at Prosper’s loan performance, our risk team expects to continue tightening credit over the remainder of the year.
About Blog – Lend Academy is the leading resource for people interested in peer to peer lending. Lend Academy has been bringing you all the news and information about peer to peer lending since 2010. Founded by Peter Renton, Lend Academy not only has the most active news site, but also the largest online forum and the first and most popular podcast in the industry.
Frequency – about 5 posts per week
About Blog – Daily News, Analysis and Data for the Alternative,Peer-to-peer (p2p) and Marketplace lending space. Lending Times provides daily News, Analisys and News Digest for the Peer to Peer and Alternative Lending industry. We also provide data for the industry.
Frequency – about 9 posts per week
U.S.-based platforms Wealthfront and Betterment are joining the green investing trend, giving users the option to invest in socially responsible companies.
The rivals are approaching the green investment options differently. Betterment is investing in ETFs that track socially responsible indexes. Wealthfront will allow users to invest directly in stocks and screen out four areas that might not match their socially conscious criteria, including fossil fuels, deforestation, tobacco and weapons.
Online lending has doubled in size every year since 2010, and the global marketplace lending space is expected to reach $290 billion by 2020, a 50 percent growth year-over-year, according to a Morgan Stanley report.
A SurveyMonkey study released this month found that millennials (defined as 18- to 34-year-olds) tend to adhere to traditional methods of banking. In fact, 80 percent of millennials surveyed say they want to be able to visit a brick-and-mortar bank branch, and more than half reported visiting a branch at least once in the last month. Even the most digitally connected generation in history values personal touch when it comes to financial transactions.
A panel convened by the Federal Reserve has established an ambitious new goal: By 2020, anyone with a bank account in the United States should be able to receive payments that are highly secure and delivered in something close to real time.
The three-year target is disclosed in the final report of a task force organized by the Fed two years ago.
Non-accredited investors have always had fewer investment options than accredited investors. That is starting to improve as some companies take advantage of a law called Regulation A+, created as part of the JOBS Act, to do offerings to the general public.
In this podcast you will learn:
The story behind the founding of Fundrise.
How the financial crisis shaped the way Ben thought about raising capital.
How Fundrise put together their investor deal before the JOBS Act.
Why the non-accredited investor is core to Fundrise’s mission.
How Fundrise has evolved since doing those early deals.
How their eREITs work.
The differences between a publicly traded REIT and a Fundrise eREIT.
How Fundrise sources their deals.
Details of their successful Reg A+ equity fundraise early in 2017.
Why Ben thinks Fundrise can be the Blackstone of the internet age.
Technology has undoubtedly created, destroyed and changed countless industries in the last 20 years.
The financial services has not been immune to this disruption. In 1980, there were approximately 5,500 people working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Today, that number has dwindled to around 700.
In the United States, there are currently over 200 robo-advisors and more are launching every single day. In general, the fees associated with this new way of investment advice range from free to about 0.75 percent. There is normally not a minimum that is needed to start investing, unlike many financial advisors.
Fintech lender and asset manager Applied Data Finance (ADF) has signed a marketing agreement with iHeartMedia which will see ADF promote its online lender Personify Financialacross the iHeartMedia series of networks.
In a report by the Faster Payment Task Force, fintech companies have outlined how Blockchain technology can be used to make payments faster for the US Federal Reserve.
The companies that submitted their proposals include Ripple, Eccho, Xalgorithm, Hub Culture, Kalypton Group, Nanopay Corporation and Thought Matrix Consulting.
While revealing a “refresher” of its lending policies, UK-based peer-to-peer lender, Zopa, announced that as of July 20th it has lent £2.46 billion and is lending around £80m per month.
Zopa also noted that it believes diversification is a key tool for the individual investor risk mitigation. The lending platform notably spreads investments across multiple loans, starting in £10 chunks, so that no one borrower has more than 1% of the overall investment.
ZOPA said it has seen a 35 per cent year-on-year increase in home improvement loan originations in the first half of 2017, equating to over £92m in funding.
The world’s oldest peer-to-peer lender said on Wednesday that it has now helped over 70,000 people to renovate their home and increase the value of their property.
Lendinvest have issued a 5.25 percent ORB Retail Bond.
Hargreaves Landsdown have decided not to participate in the IPO so unless investors who use that platform set up an account elsewhere, e.g. Interactive Investor, it isn’t possible to buy at launch as the bond has to be in a nominee account.
A forthcoming paper in Law, Innovation and Technology laces payment innovations within a payment system. The payment system comprises the initiation of payments, transfer, as well as clearing and settlement. We argue that existing payment systems are defined by certain institutional tenets that serve commercial objectives, but, more importantly, deliver public goods and public interest objectives for users and policy-makers.
Three types of payment innovations have been hailed to have disruptive potential in recent developments. First, innovations in retail payment interfaces or options at point of sale, such as mobile or app payments, may displace the use of cash and cards. Second, virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, may come to be accepted as legitimate forms of payment by merchants and businesses. Third, new ledger technologies, such as the distributed ledger or autonomous organisation technologies, may replace existing infrastructure in payment clearing and settlement systems.
If you are a start-up, or an SME, you know that money does not come easy. In the early days, you might need to tap up your savings, your family or even friends to get started. Even more established companies can fall between the cracks when it comes to bank loans or government funding. For all of these reasons, peer-to-peer lending was created.
AI-based credit scoring startup Aire has raised $5 million in a Series A funding round and won deals to work with P2P lending pioneer Zopa and the UK arm of Toyota Financial Services.
A report has been released showing the barriers young entrants into farming face in today’s often uncertain times.
The report said that only 13% of farmers were under the age of 45 in 2015, but while fewer young people are entering the sector, their ideas are still needed to harness the technologies that can make farming an up-to-date industry.
Finance is seen as the biggest obstacle to growth; 28% are trying peer-to-peer lending and one fifth have tried crowd-funding to help with projects.
Recently there comes a wave of ICO (Initial Coin Offering) around the world. Many people are enthusiastic about the investment on ICO. So, here is the information of five well-known ICO platforms founded in China, which was collected by Nan Gongyuan, a famous Internet finance columnist as well as special commentator on Xing Ping She.
1. Bizhongchou
Founded time：In 2015
website：Bizhongchou.com
background：Affiliate ICO website of block chain media Babbitt
Registered Capital：$ 1,481,613 USD
Legal person：Zhi-Peng Liu（the well-known science fiction writer, Changjia, a consecutive Galaxy Award winner from 2006 to 2008.）
Location：Zhejiang, Hangzhou Province
2. Bitouzi
Founded time：In 2017
website： />
background： Affiliate ICO website of Blockchain asset trading platform BTC9.COM
Registered Capital：$740,795 USD
Legal person：Liu Jingchao
Location：Nanchang, Jianfgxi Province
3. Icoage.com
Founded time：In 2017
website：Icoage.com
background：Affiliate ICO website of Shanghai Qukuai Information Technology co. LTD
Registered Capital：$ 17,996 USD
Legal person： Fu Xiaoqi
Location：Shanghai
In China there are more than a billion consumers that are generally underserved across a broad spectrum of financial services, making for a diverse and exciting array of opportunities to address. Yet China is dominated by giants – institutions like Bank of China and technology firms like Alibaba –companies that have tens of thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of customers. The scale of the opportunity is enormous, and so is the size of the companies trying to address it.
When 90% of the world’s data were created in the last two years, it is obvious that our ability to create data has far outstripped our ability to measure and analyze it. This is why companies like ZhongAn (online insurance), Phoenix Finance (wealth management), Lexin (green finance), Wedai (car finance), Credit Karma (financial education), Upgrade (consumer lending in the US), and Lufax (consumer lending & wealth management in Asia) all tout AI/ML as a cornerstone of their strategies.
In the end, fintech is leading us to a more inclusive financial system, which is to say that financial services will be more accessible, more comprehensive, more affordable, and more sustainable.
At the FINTalks forum, held on July 17, 2017 at KPMG in Hong Kong, Renaud Laplache, co-founder and CEO of Upgrade, described online lending as a massive improvement over lending as offered by banks and traditional lenders. “Online lending generally helped lower costs by about 400-500 basis points – massive cost reductions coming from the ability to use technology to automate tasks that were manual at many banks and also to do away with the branch network – a very costly infrastructure,” he explained in simplified terms.
Klarna, the Swedish startup that works with e-commerce businesses and retailers to provide financing and other payment services, today announced that it has picked up yet another large investment, its third inside of two months. Permira, the private equity firm and prolific late-stage tech investor, has taken a minimum 10 percent stake in the fintech business. Klarna and Permira are not confirming the exact amount getting invested, or the valuation. But TechCrunch understands that it is more than $225 million, and the FT is reporting a value of $250 million.
Klarna the startup was last valued at $2.25 billion in 2015 and a source confirmed to us that this valuation has gone up as the business has grown. If a $250 million investment works out to 10 percent of its valuation, that would mean Klarna’s overall value has ticked up to $2.5 billion.
Added up, this means that Klarna has raised somewhere in the region of $500 million in the last 7 weeks.
App-based banking disruptor Revolut intends to partner with its first robo-advisor. A report in this morning’s Citywire suggests that Revolut has already partnered with ETFmatic to roll out its wealth offering. Revolut has confirmed that this is its intention.
Revolut, however, is yet to formally announce the ETFmatic partnership, and it is possible that the proposition that ultimately emerges will look somewhat different.
Bank of Finland reports that household debt grew five percent in May on the previous year, with so-called unsecured consumer credit, via international online credit providers and peer-to-peer lending services, up by 13 percent in the same period.
As the selection of loan alternatives grows, increasing numbers of Finnish consumers are now moving beyond traditional new home and housing cooperative loans to secure expensive consumer credit from sources that Finland’s central bank says are difficult to monitor.
Figures show that every fourth Finnish resident now holds some kind of consumer debt. Cars, trips abroad, boats and appliances are the most common purchases behind the loans.
The good news in this scenario is that regulators and credit ratings agencies agree that Finnish banks are very stable.
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Shares of U.K. company Paysafe Group Plc — whose businesses include payments processing, digital wallets and money transfers — are trading at an all-time high after an approach from private-equity bidders Blackstone and CVC.
In December, Paysafe’s shares suffered a nasty blow because of fears about its exposure to China’s crackdown on gambling, although they recovered. This is not your run-of-the-mill Worldpay-style payments giant, even if that may be the goal of its prospective private equity buyers.
The rapid innovation in the financial technology, or FinTech vertical, shows no signs of slowing down. In the past year, global investments in FinTech increased 11 percent to a staggering 17.4 billion USD.
1. The Majority of Executives Are Worried
A recent report from Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PwC) revealed that a staggering 80 percent of executives globally feel their business is at risk due to the rate of innovation in the FinTech sphere.
2. Governments Are Getting Behind FinTech
Per KPMG’s recent report on the pulse of FinTech, governments worldwide are beginning to show visible support for innovation in financial technology. The UK, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand have all debuted sandbox programs for regulatory innovation.
3. Blockchain Is Predicted to Take Over in 2017
4. 30 Percent of Consumers Love FinTech
PwC reports that 30 percent of today’s customers plan to increase their use of nontraditional ways of payments, fund transfers, finance, loans, and saving.
5. Robot Bank Tellers May Not Be a Far-off Fantasy
Robo-Advice, Digital-Advice, Automated-Advice. Whatever you choose to call it, the appetite to access financial advice online is growing, and New Zealand’s legislation is yet to catch up.
The law is currently hindering the development of personalised robo-advice models in New Zealand, as it states financial advice must be given by a natural person.
The Financial Services Federation (FSF) has submitted in support of the Consultation Paper: proposed exemption to facilitate personalised robo-advice, which could accelerate the provision of personalised robo-advice services ahead of law reforms which aren’t likely to take effect until 2019.
There are an estimated 600 fintech operators in Australia. The industry is burgeoning and continues to attract new players, so receiving less than double-digit complaints in 16 months isn’t a bad track record.
“So the growth rate is quite phenomenal and there’s more to come. We know of at least another 20 to 30 that are yet to launch.”
With the Reserve Bank of India guidelines on peer-to-peer lending firms likely to be released in a few weeks, city-based companies are getting ready to increase their registered lenders. They are optimistic that demand for loans will rise significantly as the haze surrounding the lending platforms will be cleared.
For instance, city-based i-lend says there is loan demand of about Rs 500 crore in one year while another firm Oxyloans says there could be a demand for Rs 600 crore in the same time.
Another player, Oxyloans, has 1,300 users including 264 lenders and 1,000 plus borrowers. “We see a loan demand of Rs 600 crore and are hoping to achieve Rs 200 crore in six months or so,” said Radhakrishna Thatavarti, founder and chief executive officer of SRS Fintech Labs, which operates Oxyloans.
Private sector lender Axis Bank has selected three fintech startups from the first batch of its accelerator programme ‘Thought Factory’ whose solutions it will commercially deploy at its business units, it announced at an event in Bangalore on Friday.
Six startups, namely S2Pay, Pally, Perpule, FintechLabs, Paymatrix and Gieom graduated from the first batch. Axis Bank will collaborate with Pally, FintechLabs and Gieom for their tech solutions.
Using AI, Pally enables businesses in the financial domain to deliver better customer experiences. It has created a chatbot that creates an investment portfolio for tax savings when it is fed an image of a salary slip.
S2Pay’s solution forms a layer over any payments app and users can make secure payments from their mobile app, even when they are offline.
A Kalaari Capital-funded startup, Perpule allows users to scan products from their mobile app and pay from within the app once the list is complete.
Monsoon CreditTech Technologies Pvt Ltd, a fintech startup that has been in stealth mode till recently, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from marquee investors, the startup said in its statement.
The investors include independent angel investors Sunil Kalra and Aditya Singh, former senior Microsoft executive Rishi Srivastava, and Google India’s Rajan Anandan, the statement added.
Ron Suber, perhaps the most prominent global Fintech Ambassador and President Emeritus of Prosper Marketplace, is on an extended swing across Asia visiting various platforms and presenting at events. Visiting with CNBC Asia this week, Suber explained how important transparency is for online lending and how both sides win: investor and borrower.
Mitrausaha Indonesia Group, a homegrown marketplace that provides peer-to-peer lending, introduced a new mobile application that will allow individual lenders to offer loans to small businesses using a crowdfunding scheme.
Mitrausaha, which flies the Modalku flagship, offers small and medium enterprises (SMEs) access to non-collateral loans with interest rates ranging from 12 percent to 26 percent.
Modalku had launched a mobile app in January called “Modalku Dana Usaha,” customized for prospective debtors looking to replenish their working capital. The app is available on Android and iOS.
Lenders can start investing with Rp 1 million ($75).
New individual lenders need to deposit Rp 10 million into their account before giving out loans.
Two years ago, the Securities Commission gave out licences to operate equity crowdfunding platforms and last November, it gave out the licences for peer-to-peer lending.
pitchIN, one of the six operators of the equity crowdfunding platforms, has raised the most among the operators since end-2015, raising more than a third of the RM16mil raised by issuers up until this June.
Funding for early stage start-ups has become much harder due to grants becoming bleaker and investors looking for quality deals.
Awareness remains an issue, with entrepreneurs who want to raise funds through either ECF or P2P lamenting the lack of awareness or understanding.
Throughout paradigm shifts, banks’ operations have changed dramatically. Many global lenders are now setting up branchless and digital operations as the way to go ― a move that is in stark contrast to the strategy they took over the past century.
According to a 1932 Federal Reserve report, the Bank of Italy had 25 offices by the end of 1919 and it rapidly increased to 292, 10 years later. Except for 40 branches in San Francisco, home to its headquarters, 252 were out-of-town branches, scattered literally all over California.
JPMorgan Chase is scaling down its branch networks, Citigroup is accelerating its move to transform into a digital bank globally and Wells Fargo is downsizing its branches so it can hire fewer employees and sit in a smaller space.
A CNN Money report said the number of the bank’s branches in the U.S. dropped by 10 percent to 4,789 as of the end of the second quarter of 2015.
Korea’s homegrown banks are also joining global giants’ moves.
According to six banks ― KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Woori, KEB Hana, NH NongHyup and Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) ― the total number of their branches across the country declined to 5,493 at the end of May this year, down 442 from 5,953 at the end of the first quarter of 2013.
California-based mobile app marketing and retargetting platform Liftoff announced its official launch to the Japanese market today with the appointment of Country Manager Kota Amano, former Senior Director of Partner Development, APAC at Criteo.
In a press statement, Liftoff said that it has opened a data centre in Tokyo and is hiring a team of Sales and Customer Success Managers.
Dear Readers, Lending Times has won the Best Journalist Coverage from the LendIt Industry Awards on Tuesday, March 9th, 2017. The other nominees were Reuters, Business Insider, deBanked, Bankless Times and Tradestreaming. The award was earned for “the journalist who has provided the most insightful and original coverage about lending innovation and fintech.” We are […]
Dear Readers,
Lending Times has won the Best Journalist Coverage from the LendIt Industry Awards on Tuesday, March 9th, 2017. The other nominees were Reuters, Business Insider, deBanked, Bankless Times and Tradestreaming. The award was earned for “the journalist who has provided the most insightful and original coverage about lending innovation and fintech.”
We are extremely honored to receive this award only 1 year after debuting Lending Times.
We would like to thank first the entire industry for helping us with sharing the stories, the info and everything we needed in order to do our best coverage possible. We couldn’t have done this without the help and assistance of our colleague journalist as well. We would like to thank them as well. Every story we write is built on top of info and research done our colleagues as well.
We would also like to thank Ron Suber, Peter Renton and Jason Jones for always being encouraging and helpful. We would also like to thank our advisors Hrant Antreasyan, Cyndi Hunter, Dara Albright and everybody who has provided us ongoing feedback on how to improve. We will never stop asking, please tell us how we can do better. And thank you to all the industry colleagues with whom we have ongoing interesting discussions that lead to new exciting articles like Ram Ahluwalia, Bruce Bloomingdale, Gregory Nowak…they are too numerous to list them all here. Thank you!
We believe in our industry. I have built multiple businesses and I chose to focus on the lending industry because I see it as a win-win-win for the borrowers, the platforms, and the investors.
We are here to be objective and we will continue to stay close to the facts, both positive and negative for the industry. We believe that being objective is the best way to help this industry we believe in.
And last but not least, Lending Times is growing. We welcome and encourage submissions for publications following our author guidelines here. And we are also seeking additional writers and journalists. Please reach out.
About where we are going next: we have a lot of ideas. Please stay tuned for new adventures!
George Popescu
Founder, Editor in Chief
Lending Times
