Modern Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) represent a significant part of the global economy, accounting for nearly 90% of all modern businesses. Modern SMEs are large contributors to the creation of workplaces and economic growth, especially in developing countries. Although they’ve become a vital part of the financial ecosystem, these businesses are facing extreme difficulties […]
Modern Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) represent a significant part of the global economy, accounting for nearly 90% of all modern businesses. Modern SMEs are large contributors to the creation of workplaces and economic growth, especially in developing countries.
Although they’ve become a vital part of the financial ecosystem, these businesses are facing extreme difficulties in accessing finances. SMEs are often associated with higher risks, sizeable transaction costs, and a lack of collateral—about 50% of small business loans get rejected.
Many business owners cite this financial exclusion as a key obstacle to the growth of their venture. The common hurdles in obtaining a loan include burdensome processes, low level of transparency, and the high costs associated with searching for a loan. For instance, the research by the Federal Reserve indicates that small business borrowers spend nearly 24 hours on paperwork alone during the loan application process at a bank.
The problem is global: businesses from East Asia and Pacific regions represent the largest share (46%) of the total number of underbanked SMEs worldwide, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (23%) and Europe and Central Asia (15%). In 2018, the finance gap between the needs of global SMEs and available funds reached $5.2 trillion, according to SME Finance Forum.
The Crisis
Following the financial crisis of 2008, with the idea of de-risking their balance sheets, large banks started to avoid lending to SMEs by introducing stricter requirements to receive funds. For instance, in the UK, where SMEs represent a tremendous 99.9% share of the 5.7 million businesses, the value of issued bank loans fell to £55.6 million in Q4 of 2018, a 78% drop from its maximum of £255 million in 2009.
The other reasons include the variety of regulations banks have to cope with, insufficient credit history, and the high transaction costs of underwriting and onboarding customers. All in all, providing loans to small businesses has become less of a priority for banks. “If you look at the great recession, what you’ve seen is a bounce-back of commercial lending, but lending to small businesses really hasn’t come back,” sums up Darrell Esch, Vice President of global credit at PayPal. The majority of banks are not interested in lending relatively small amounts of money on a frequent basis. Some banks have introduced a sort of a loan threshold (commonly around $100,000 to $250,000), and won’t engage in loans below this level. The others will not address requests from SMBs with less than $2 million in revenue.
But technology changed the scenery for many small and medium-sized enterprises. In comparison to traditional financial institutions, digital lending companies provide favorable terms on credits. With low-interest margins, faster approval, and without initial fees, they are scaling up quickly and already capitalizing on new scoring methods.
On the Path to Digitalization
Top decision-makers in the banking sphere are aware of the success of alternative lending companies. However, still slowed down by legacy systems, banks are only dipping their toes in digital lending. The outdated technology at banks isn’t the sole issue. At the recent Lending Fintech Europe in London, lga Zoutendijk, a career banker with several decades of experience, said that “legacy culture is a bigger problem at large banks than legacy tech and a much more difficult challenge to overcome.”
For traditional lenders, fintech is an opportunity to innovate and modernize. However, one can’t fight legacy culture alone: on their path to embrace digitalization, bank institutions need a fintech partner to bring technology, speed, and flexibility to the table.
Fintechs are looking for such partnerships as well. With all the improvements in customer experience, they predictably lack the expertise in areas such as risk management, loan monitoring, and servicing that banks have in spades. This mutual knowledge gap creates partnership opportunities. Denise Leonhard from Paypal is sure that “nobody is going to be able to do it alone. To get to the next evolution of payments, it’s going to be really partnership-driven.”
Addressing the Challenge
But what is the biggest challenge in initiating the loan process for banks? Moody’s Analytics, a financial intelligence provider, conducted a poll among bank institutions. The results revealed that 56% of bankers consider manual collection and data processing to be the greatest obstacle in the process of underwriting.
These outdated methods lack consistency, accuracy, and auditability, not to mention, they are time-consuming. This results in additional work for risk officers at a bank, and assessing an SME’s creditworthiness becomes a challenging and unprofitable task. Traditional players just can’t compete with agile, fast-moving alternative lenders and their “time-to-money” credit decisions which take less than a day.
Lending to SMEs is not profitable for banks unless they change their operational approach. The solution lies in the automation of manual processes. Banks have to adopt such solutions for enhanced data collection, scoring, and further rule-based decisions, and solve the problem of the data’s inconsistency and delay. Igor Pejic, the renowned author of Blockchain Babel, sums it up: “It is simply not possible to offer the customers the speed they need in today’s economy with manual processes.”
But what’s more important for banks, those changes mean investing in the future: alternative lending options make customer experience of SMEs convenient, transparent, and adapted to the way those businesses operate.
The Future of SME lending
Partnerships between banks and fintechs are one of the most-discussed topics in the industry as they have the immense potential to impact long-term growth, customer experience and client retention for both parties. Industry professionals agree that bank-fintech collaboration is evolving as a common industry practice that will shape the future of the lending domain.
By partnering with alternative lenders, traditional players fight the challenges associated with the process of credit risk assessment, increase the quality of the loan portfolio, and stay competitive in the SME lending sector. More importantly, they have the opportunity to offer small businesses a shortcut to finance with fast access to cash, less paperwork, and fewer rejected applications.
In return, alternative lenders benefit from partnerships by getting experience in handling a complex regulatory environment, reaching new markets, and scaling quickly. In regards to this, old-fashioned “collaboration” is the new industry trend, while “disruption” is regarded somewhat as a thing of the past. Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide cooperation and consensus.
The question: is how will banks and fintechs manage their respective strengths to proceed with deeper integration in a newly-formed system? It’s important to note that these integrations shouldn’t be regarded as acquisitions by any means. In other words, the technological vision of fintechs shouldn’t be at odds with the slow processes within banking institutions: one needs to convince multiple stakeholders and departments that the partnership makes sense. Here’s Chris Skinner on the partnerships: “Banks are slow to move, particularly at the beginning. Realistically, you should consider allowing at least 12-months from the moment you engage to the moment you have a partnership agreement signed.”
However, the financial industry holds little pessimism about collaborations: 82% of top executives at banking institutions have plans to partner with a fintech within the next 5 years. That’s only a matter of time before both parties streamline their processes to completely change the dynamics of SME lending.
All in all, given the competitive advantages that come with strategic partnerships, banks and fintechs have better chances to achieve their scale ambitions and reinvent their business models.
According to the CGAP report, the global opportunity for SME credit is estimated to be around $8 trillion. At the same time, more than 50% of overall applications are being rejected regularly. If banks want to take their share of the lucrative market, they need to modernize, and that’s totally good news for small businesses, technological partners, and the whole fintech ecosystem.
Author:
Dmitri Koteshov
Dmitri Koteshov is the digital content marketer at HES (HiEnd Systems), a fintech company behind comprehensive lending and credit scoring solutions. As a seasoned professional, Dmitri maintains a longstanding interest in providing insights on fintech software development and analyzing current technology trends.
News Comments Today’s main news: Judge says OCC cannot issue fintech charters. Kabbage ends Q3 with nearly $100M in revenue. Funding Circle shares up over 10% while loans under management up over 30%. Balboa competes $409M securitization. FundingSecure enters administration. Today’s main analysis: Q3 bank earnings. Today’s thought-provoking articles: 2019 financial fears infographic. Why there […]
Judge says OCC can’t issue fintech charters. This is not a huge surprise, but the fight is not over yet. The OCC still has an appeal option. This could go to the Supreme Court.
Kabbage almost reaches $100 million in revenue in Q3. Kabbage has grown into one of the major players in SMB lending. The number of loans issued is growing, and that means revenues are growing–as long as the economy remains strong.
Q3 bank earnings, Venmo and AmEx cards. Anyone who thinks fintech is not making a dent in traditional banking needs to read this. Fintech and alternative lending platforms are forcing banks to change their business models, or go out of business.
2019 Financial Fears Survey. 78 million Americans refer to their finances as a “horror show.” People are most fearful of medical bills, but credit card debt and car loans also make the list. Oh, and they’re afraid the economy will turn sour, but that’s no surprise.
Financial technology unicorn Kabbage finished the third quarter with just shy of $100 million in revenue as the company continued to grow its small-business lending platform.
The decade-old company told MarketWatch that it generated $99.4 million in third-quarter revenue as loan originations ticked up 43% on a year-over-year basis. The company said it extended $715 million in loans to customers during the quarter.
Kabbage, a US fintech backed by Softbank which uses AI-based algorithms to help work out the terms of small business lending, is launching a payments service which it says will cut the time it takes small businesses to get paid from 90 days to 24 hours.
Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the OCC does not have the legal authority to issue bank charters to non-banks. Judge Victor Marrero ruled on the fact that a clause in the National Bank Act’s business of banking requires that only firms which take deposits can receive a national bank charter.
Fintech firms continue to face a murky path into the banking system after a federal court ruling that threw out the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s special-purpose charter, observers said.
The charter has already been on unsteady ground. No firm has yet applied with the OCC facing legal challenges. But the decision Monday out of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York shines an even brighter light on potential alternatives for fintech companies seeking a national licensing solution.
Investors Bancorp has formed an alliance with a subsidiary of global online small business lender On Deck Capital to use its loan origination platform.
In striking down the OCC’s interpretation of Section 5.20(e)(1), Judge Marrero reasoned that the National Bank Act “unambiguously requires that, absent a statutory provision to the contrary, only depository institutions are eligible to receive national bank charters from the OCC.”
Kabbage Heads to Court (Again)
Non-bank marketplace lender Kabbage joins the growing number of online lenders who are defending Madden and “true lender” claims in New York’s federal courts. Unlike prior lawsuits, such as those recently filed against Capital One and Chase Bank,2 the putative class action against Kabbage targets small business loans, not credit card or other consumer loans.
PayPal is launching a Venmo credit card (expected 2H 2020). Venmo’s credit card launch follows a flurry of launches from Avant, Upgrade, Ollo, Brex and others in recent years. PayPal has a unique edge – the breadth of customers on its payment network. Relatedly, PayPal and Synchrony extending their overall 15-year consumer credit relationship.
Bank Earnings Season Underway
JPM
Industry leading ROE of 18% driven by consumer banking ROE 30%+ [!!]
Source: PeerIQ, JPMorgan Chase & Co
Citi
Strongest 35% YTD share price gain in KBW index (stock trading below book value)
ROE in the 12% range, profit drops 26%. ROE will be low for the foreseeable future while GS pours billions in investing in building a consumer franchise
CEO David Solomon: “In three short years, we have raised $55 billion in deposits on the Marcus platform, generated $5 billion in loans, and built a new credit-card platform and launched Apple Card,” adding “which we believe is the most successful credit card launch ever.”
Bank of America
Profits up 8% YOY; NIM robust at 244 bps just shy of recent peak of 251 bps
#1 in mobile banking and online banking. Digital banking users have increased by 5% over the past year and number of active mobile users has increased by almost 11%. – Number of branches has decreased by 1.9
Online lender Balboa Capital successfully completed a $409 million asset-backed securitization (ABS) of small and mid-ticket equipment loans and leases, its sixth and largest transaction to date.
A Capital One survey conducted at ABS East 2019, a conference convening professionals from across the asset-backed securities (ABS) industry, found more than one-third (38 percent) of professionals plan to engage with new financial partners and implement new technologies, over the next 12 months, to prepare for the changing economic landscape. Additionally, 34 percent of respondents plan on reviewing or reshaping their credit and underwriting risks over the next 12 months.
Of the various challenges facing the industry, ABS professionals elected that regulatory uncertainty (22 percent), increased credit risk (18 percent) and increased competition (18 percent) pose the greatest challenges for their businesses over the next 12 months. Fluctuations in interest rates was listed as the greatest challenge for 15 percent of respondents.
You can get in-person service and online loan assistance for conventional, FHA, VA and refinance loans, as well as first-time homebuyer education.
2. Best for Online Lending: Quicken Loans
There are many reasons to go with an online lender — and a great reason is because you can get pre-approved from the comfort of your sofa. Quicken lets you check mortgage rates among lenders on its site and choose the best option for you.
IIRR Management Services (IRM) claims to be one of the largest crowdfunded real estate investment firms in the world. IRM is owned by RREAF Holdings and iintoo Investments. The company recently took over management of Realtyshares’ portfolio – once a prominent entrant in the real estate crowdfunding sector that unexpectedly collapsed in 2018 stunning the industry. Today, IRM claims over $1.5 billion in combined assets salvaged from RealtyShares.
CrowdStreet indicates a total average annual return rate of 25.5% across all fully realized deals, according to the company website. The company believes markets are stronger when they are more accessible, transparent, and efficient.
Since CrowdStreet launched in 2014, the company has posted over 360 projects on its Marketplace and has raised more than $800 million from thousands of investors, he said.
The platform allows accredited investors to diversify their portfolios by investing in individual projects or funds for as little as $25,000.
Finitive, a NYC-based financial technology platform providing institutional investors with direct access to alternative lending investments, closed a $2m venture debt.
Galen and Larsen, who built the online lender E-Loan together, are both interested in broadening the perspectives of Silicon Valley executives who might otherwise be detached from ways to make an impact on the rest of the world.
Fundbox, the B2B payments and credit network designed to facilitate and accelerate B2B commerce at scale, announced that the company ranked #92 on the 2019 IDC FinTech Rankings.
According to a study published online in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance in June, borrowers unconsciously could be manipulated into choosing a more expensive loan, depending on the calculator’s default settings.
Shares in peer-to-peer lender Funding Circle climbed over 10 percent after its loans under management soared 31 percent to £3.7bn, but the company cautioned of “an uncertain economic environment”.
It said loans under management had grown to £3.7bn compared to £2.8bn the year previous.
Funding Circle reported that loan originations were up from £1.6bn in 2018 to £1.8bn in 2019.
Jonathan Avery-Gee, Edward Avery-Gee and Daniel Richardson at CG & Co have been appointed administrators of the company and are working closely with the FCA.
Stuart Law, CEO at Assetz Capital, claimed that smaller P2P lenders were “clearly struggling to keep up”.
Starling Bank, the UK digital bank, has raised £30 million in a new funding round. Merian Chrysalis Investment Company Limited is leading the round with an investment of £20 million, while Starling’s existing investor, JTC, has added a further £10 million.
Oodle Car Finance has appointed Andrew Lawson as chief product officer.
He joins from Zopa, the world’s first peer-to-peer lender, where he spent five years as chief product officer responsible for business growth during a period of expansion that saw the brand become the UK’s largest online open market lender.
Celsius Network will begin supporting Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin in the market, in its interest-earning wallet. That will enable users to leverage their holdings in order to receive a passive income.
Klarna’s range of flexible payments are available to shoppers online at Wayfair.co.uk, with additional new features on Wayfair.de. Joining Klarna’s partner list, Wayfair customers across the UK now have control over how and when they pay for their purchases, with payments options such as Pay later and Pay in 3.
Six offers have been made for welsh education reseller Gaia, which fell into administration earlier this year.
A number of lenders were also revealed to be owed hundreds of thousands of pounds, with White Oak UK and Funding Circle owed £703,000 and £500,000 respectively. HMRC is owed £866,148.
Capitalise.com, the business funding platform for accountants, has today announced a partnership with small business lender, iwoca, and a high street bank, to launch Instant Offers. The partnership enables accountants to receive instant quotes on funding applications for their clients. Accountants benefit from offering their clients exceptional customer service with instant quotations and eligibility on suitable financial products whilst lenders can onboard high credit quality businesses, faster.
I first wrote about the Chinese p2p lending industry later that year and introduced the west to CreditEase, the company that was the largest p2p lending platform in the world. Over the next couple of years the industry thrived with thousands of platforms launching and the total loan volume skyrocketing to over $150 billion in 2015, which was four times the loan volume of 2014.
China’s Biggest Ever Financial Scandal
We got the first inkling that something was not quite right when China was rocked by the biggest financial scandal in its history. Ezubao, one of China’s largest p2p lending platforms, collapsed as it was revealed the business was nothing more than an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Around 900,000 investors collectively lost $7.6 billion in what was the second largest Ponzi scheme the world had ever seen (Madoff being the largest).
There Will Be No LendIt China in 2019
We have held LendIt China every year since 2016 in Shanghai and I am sad to report that in 2019 there will be no event. While we have expanded beyond online lending it still represented a significant part of our business in 2018 but given the recent challenges we expect no lending companies will be interested in speaking, sponsoring or even attending this year. So, we made the difficult decision to cancel the event. We will regroup in 2020 and hopefully will be able to bring our unique event back to China.
The newly imposed rules by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) will mainly be targeting online P2P lending companies. These companies often entail high-risk lending activities that result in massive defaults, suicide, deaths, and illegal debt collections.
Since 2017, the country has had an estimated $692.8 billion in bad loans. The sector has tried to dispose of these bad loans as best they can through different methods.
The draconian cleanup campaign of China’s scandal-ridden peer-to-peer (P2P) industry has led to a three-year implosion that has put the sector almost back to where it was in 2014.
The number of functioning P2P lending platforms fell to 646 in September, a decline of nine compared with August and the lowest since early 2014 when the industry was booming, data compiled by Wangdaizhijia, an online lending research portal, show. The scale of the drop has been dramatic — at its peak in November 2015, the sector had more than 3,600 platforms.
Roostify, which powers the digital mortgage platforms of JPMorgan Chase, TD Bank, Guild Mortgage, HSBC Bank USA and more, is plotting an expansion in the U.S. and internationally thanks to a new injection of funding from Santander Group and others.
In the countries colored in black the income tax rate is applied on interest earned on p2p lending investments. That means the individual rate of taxation depends on the other and overall income of the investor. For example in the UK the tax bands are 20%, 40% and 45% dependent on overall income. In Ireland tax bands are 20% and 40%.
Days after it was announced that banks across the world are currently in a ‘do-or-die dilemma,’ Accenture’s 2019 Global Payments Survey reveals that 60 percent of the participants believe they will lose up to 15 percent of payments revenue – $88 billion – in the next three years after being displaced by emerging, competing financial services players.
38 percent of respondents said that big technology companies pose a competitive threat and 32 percent of those surveyed feel the same about fintech firms, which makes sense with the latter attracting nearly $11 billion through over 800 deals between 2016 and 2018.
Indonesia’s growing financial technology (fintech) companies have called on the government and legislators to issue a new law to ensure fair business for and better protection of both the industry and consumers. The Indonesian Fintech Lenders Association (AFPI) said that fintech companies, especially those involved in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending or online lending, needed a stricter regulation to ensure that all the stakeholders, such as borrowers and investors, would receive better protection.
According to one recent report, “Indonesia’s fintech industry is in the midst of a period of significant growth. P2P lending recorded a triple-digit increase in 2018, while e-payment services have grown more than six-fold since 2012, prompting a surge of new foreign investment into a vibrant and increasingly diverse start-up community.”
There are 831 financial technology startups headquartered in or operating in Canada, according to data collected by Fintech Growth Syndicate, yet only a handful of venture capital funds specializing in the region and sector.
Luge Capital, a fintech and AI-focused venture capital fund headquartered in Montreal and Toronto, is looking to close that gap. The firm has raised $85 million for its debut fund and plans to make seed investments as small as $150,000 and as large as $2 million.
News Comments Today’s main news: Zopa launches tool to compete with credit bureaus. KBRA assigns preliminary ratings to Marlette Funding Trust 2019-4. OnDeck Capital financial results. ID Finance raises 1.7M euro on Crowdcube in minutes. Canada’s fintech adoption rate has doubled since 2017. Today’s main analysis: LendingClub account performance (A MUST-READ). LendingTree’s Personal Loan Offers Report […]
Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) assigns preliminary ratings to three classes of notes issued by Marlette Funding Trust 2019-4 (MFT 2019-4). This is a $326.27 million consumer loan ABS transaction.
On Deck Capital Inc.’s volatility measures that it’s 85.00% more volatile than S&P 500 due to its 1.85 beta. Consumer Portfolio Services Inc. on the other hand, has 1.53 beta which makes it 53.00% more volatile compared to S&P 500.
In industry news, Upgrade led by CEO Renaud Laplanche released the “Upgrade Card”. The product is a cross between credit card and an installment loan. How does it work? Every month any new charges on the card transition into an installment loan of 12, 24, or 36 months. Customers can select the default payback period when applying for the card and they have the option to change the term for new charges at any time. Upgrade Card offers true risk-based pricing with a range of 6.49% to 29.99%. LendIt Co-Founder Peter Renton has a nice summary here.
In macro news, the Fed is expected to cut rates for a third time later this month to a range of 1.5% to 1.75%.
Source: OECD Interim Outlook Projections, Blackstone, PeerIQSource: WSJ, Cantor Fitzgerald, PeerIQ
In April 2018, LendingClub provided us with $5,000 to open a brand new account. Since then we have been chronicling the status of the account on a quarterly basis. Below are links to the full series of blog posts in chronological order:
At 1,270 basis points, the spread between the highest and lowest offered APRs offered to the same consumers were especially stark for high-score borrowers.
The average spread for those with scores of 760 or higher was 1,270 basis points, amounting to a difference of 58.5% on the average loan amount offered for a three-year personal loan.
Consumers with scores between 720 and 759 saw an average offer spread of 1,145 basis points, representing a 49.9% difference in interest paid.
For those with scores between 680 and 719, the average spread was 971 basis points, representing a 37.3% difference in interest paid.
Borrowers with scores between 640 and 679 had an average spread of 860 basis points, representing a 28.2% difference in interest paid over the three years of the loan.
According to data collected by the Federal Reserve, borrowers who were assessed interest on their credit card accounts paid 16.97% on average during the three-month period ending Sept. 31. But the average rate on personal loans was only 10.07%.
That’s a spread of 6.9 percentage points — an all-time high in Federal Reserve records dating back to 1998.
Apple and Goldman Sachs have yet to start reporting consumers’ payment information for the Apple Card to the major credit bureaus, a source close to Goldman Sachs confirmed to MarketWatch on Monday. The source later said that the companies will begin reporting to the credit bureaus later this quarter.
“In three short years, we have raised $55 billion in deposits on the Marcus platform, generated $5 billion in loans, and built a new credit-card platform and launched Apple Card,” Solomon said, adding “which we believe is the most successful credit card launch ever.”
As online banking threatens to make in-person banking at brick-and-mortar branches as archaic as video rental stores, it may do the same to a 1977 law created to counteract decades of underinvestment in minority neighborhoods.
Fewer branches, more online
While that includes some wholesale banks or limited purpose institutions, like credit card banks, online banking is driving the sector’s growth.
At the same time, the number of bank branches with an obligation under the CRA to provide loans and other services is falling. Branches have declined every year since a peak in 2010, at 99,550, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Banks closed 1,700 branches in 2018, dropping the total number to 86,375.
After steadily rising to a peak of $505 billion in 2016, the number of CRA-compliant loans that banks issued dropped in 2017 to $482 billion, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
nCino, the worldwide leader in cloud banking, today announced that Pennsylvania-based CNB Bank will utilize nCino’s Bank Operating System to digitize its retail lending process from end-to-end to enrich the customer experience.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law Assembly Bill 539 by Assemblywoman Monique Limón, Santa Barbara Democrat. The measure sets an annual interest rate cap of roughly 36% on consumer loans from $2,500 to $10,000 made by non-bank lenders.
For the prior 34 years, under state law, the sky was the limit on rates charged for such loans. Last year, 333,416 non-bank consumer loans in the $2,500 to $10,000 range had annual percentage rates of 100% or higher. That represented 40.7% of such loans. In the $2,500-$4,999 range, the triple-digit APR ratio was 55.5%.
Earlier this month, DrawBridge Lending (DBL Digital), a digital asset lending, borrowing and investment management firm, partnered with Kingdom Trust, a qualified custodian providing a self-directed IRA incorporating several digital assets with property and traditional asset investments.
To be eligible to invest, investors must be eligible contract participants (ECPs), which means they should have a minimum net worth of $1 million. The minimum investment in Drawbridge Lending’s series fund is $1 million, which can be met with the contributions of multiple investors.
There are 618,000 millennial millionaires in the U.S. and their wealth is only expected to grow.
Currently, 93% of millennial millionaires have a net wealth between approximately $1 million and $2.5 million, according to the report. Nearly 60% live in either California or New York and they are investing more in real estate than their elder-millionaire counterparts.
Today’s real estate investors have many financing options at their disposal. There are traditional options like government-backed loans, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), and investment property mortgages. But on top of those, you also have new-age choices like crowdfunding and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms.
The “REIT Rejuvenation” of 2019 has restored the coveted NAV premium for most sectors, giving these REITs the currency to re-open the acquisition pipeline. This valuation premium has allowed REITs to kick-start external growth, which has historically been responsible for more than half of FFO per share growth across the REIT sector. REITs were net buyers again in 2Q19, buying $12.5 billion in assets while disposing of $6.6 billion. The $5.9 billion in net acquisitions was the largest quarterly “buy” since 4Q17, and we expect this trend to continue into 2020 given the favorable valuation environment. We break down the acquisition activity for each of the REIT sectors later in this report.
American Financial Resources, Inc. (AFR) announced today it is working together with Finicity—a provider of real-time financial data access and insights, to provide its business partners and their borrowers with a faster, simpler and more secure way to verify assets and income while originating loans.
Roofstock, the marketplace for investing in real estate, announced the addition of Ketan Babaria to the fintech’s leadership team as Chief Product Officer. Formerly the Head of Product for LifeLock and Capital One’s D3 incubation unit, Babaria will enhance Roofstock’s current offerings and introduce new, creative ideas to accelerate the fintech’s growth and make real estate investing radically accessible.
Des Moines fintech startup company LenderClose has welcomed Andrew Deignan as Director of Operations. Deignan will manage the Operations and Vendor Relationships group, ensuring LenderClose delivers the highest level of service to its credit union and community bank lender users.
Zopa, the first ever peer-to-peer lending platform, is launching the tool, called Borrowing Power, as it says that lending decisions and credit worthiness have been “shrouded in mystery” for too long.
The tool, which is free of charge, works by giving Zopa customers a borrowing score between one and ten. Customers are shown why they are given the score and how they can help improve the score.
We spoke to Mario Lupori, chief investments officer at RateSetter, about whether there is more consolidation to come in the peer-to-peer market and whether forthcoming regulatory changes will hinder the sector.
Samsung.com has partnered with payment provider Klarna in the UK to provide customers service to make purchases from its website and pay later. The customers will get a convenient and hassle-free way to pay later at Samsung.com.
Klarna is perfect in those situations, giving you a ‘try before you buy option’. You can get as many items as you wish, in as many sizes, returning all the items you don’t need before a penny leaves your bank account. There’s no waiting around for refunds to reach your depleted bank account – you only pay for what you actually keep.
P2P lending as it right now stands absolutely no chance in competing with traditional banking, as it requires a bit too much time from the lender’s side.
However, should technology such as Artificial Intelligence be successfully implemented on these platforms, it’s likely that P2P lending will occupy a large percentage of the financial market share.
Today Starling Bank will premiere its first TV ad on ITV and Channel 4 during England’s UEFA Euro 2020 qualifier against Bulgaria, and Jamie’s Meat Free Meals.
Celsius Network, a cryptocurrency lending and borrowing platform, has partnered with TrustToken, the team behind dollar-pegged TrueUSD (TUSD), to offer up to 10 percent interest on four new stablecoins.
By the end of this year, Chinese online shoppers will have a new way to buy things from abroad: PayPal.
Despite the tensions between Beijing and Washington, China’s central bank has allowed the US company to take a toehold in the country’s valuable payments market by buying a majority stake of Chinese payments group Gopay.
Barcelona–based ID Finance, a fintech that operates in Europe and Latin America, has raised over €1.7 million in crowdfunding within minutes of its campaign going live on Crowdcube, amidst strong demand from investors. The data science, credit scoring and digital finance company has a target of €2.3 million.
The company has a well established global team and over 3 million users, with over 40,000 new users joining each week. It is on track to double revenues this year to €90 million – up from €13 million in 2017 – and is targeting over €267 million in revenue by 2021, with the goal of becoming the number one digital lending platform in Hispanic and Latino markets.
The sale of European fintechs via initial public offerings or acquisitions has pulled in €83bn over the past six years, according to a new report by Dealroom.co and Finch Capital. This is twice as much as the next biggest category, enterprise software, and highlights the scale of opportunity for investors as well as the growing maturity of the fintech market.
Some of the biggest exits were the €7.1bn flotation of Dutch payments company Adyen and the sale of Swedish start-up iZettle to Paypal for $2.2bn last year.
The same report also estimates that the continent’s remaining private fintechs have an “unrealised” value of €43bn combined, including companies such as N26 and Starling Bank.
European p2p lending services are growing. And yields of 10+% are achievable on some of the platforms. This attracts international investors.
Here is an overview of 5 services (sorted aplphabetically) that do allow US investors.
Assetz Capital is a marketplace for UK SME and property development loans. The liquid ‘access’ products offer 4.1% to 5.75% interest.
Bondora is an Estonian p2p lending marketplace for consumer loans. The highly liquid Go&Grow product offer yields 6.75%. With other products higher yields of 10+% are achievable.
Estateguru is an Estonian marketplace for property loans. Typical interest rates are 10-12%.
Flender is an Irish marketplace for SME loans. Typical interest rates are around 10%.
Mintos is a Latvian p2p lending market place. A wide range of loan types is offered. The fairly liquid ‘Invest&Access’ product currently promotes around 8% rate. Yields of 10+% are possible with manual and autoinvest.
In 2019 it launched a new $460m fundraising round, giving the company a post-money valuation of $5.5bn and making it the highest-valued private fintech company in Europe. That was a 250% increase on its last valuation at the beginning of the year.
Starling Bank Founded 2014 – London, UK – Rising Star & Female Led
Led by Anne Boden, Starling has made a dent in the UK’s thriving fintech ecosystem. As of August 2019 the bank has just shy of 800,000 customers, including around 60,000 business accounts. The company says it’s on track to pass a million this year and already has £1bn in deposits.
These numbers are not quite as impressive as Monzo, which boasts 3m customers, or Germany’s N26 with 3.5m.
Former British Prime Minister David Cameron is an advisor to the firm, which is backed by Softbank’s vision fund. The most recent funding round of $800m valued the company at $3.5bn — firm unicorn territory.
Its working finance solution is funded through issuing its own bonds, making it one of the largest bond issuers of the world, with an average of 47 bonds a day.
In an increasing trend where African technology companies are finding a global audience, Nigerian digital SME lending platform Lidya has expanded to Poland and the Czech Republic.
Divido, the London-based consumer finance platform which lets consumers take out credit at the point of purchase to help spread the cost of purchases, has signed a deal with US payment company Splitit to offer a monthly instalment option to customers.
Klarna has become famous among the players in many countries since its creation in 2005. This virtual bank is seductive for its fast transactions and its privacy. The gamblers will remain anonymous when they deposit or withdraw funds utilizing Klarna as a method. In fact, this Swedish company does not ask any personal details or private information. What’s more, Klarna is also an excellent service to the mobile casino allowing the users to move funds at their convenience.
Neobanking is a relatively newer concept in India as compared to the West, and is still on a take-off mode. However, market experts observe the gradual and steady adoption of Neobanks and credit their fast growth to its lender and SME-friendly characteristics.
CRIF is an Italian company, based out of Bologna and caters to more than 6K banks and financial institutions across 30+ countries globally. In India, CRIF has two broad arms – one is the 100% subsidiary (called CRIF Solutions India) – which focuses on consulting, analytics and products and the other is the credit bureau where it has major ownership (CRIF Highmark) – which focuses on multiple services on retail and commercial side.
Investors poured a record $735 million into financial-technology ventures in Singapore in the first nine months of this year, according to research from Accenture Plc, which analyzed data from CB Insights, Pitchbook and Tracxn.
That’s up 69% from the same period a year earlier and exceeds the $642 million raised in all of 2018, the study found. Investments in payments startups and those in lending made up the bulk of fintech fundraising, accounting for 34% and 20% of the total, respectively. Insurance technology deals comprised 17%.
Beehive, the region’s first regulated peer-to-peer lending platform announces that it has funded its first SME in Bahrain.
The funding was granted to Bahrain-based Mira Packaging Factory, which manufactures disposable cups in addition to other food packaging solutions for the GCC, and the African F&B industry.
FinTech adoption in Canada has increased from 18% to 50% since 2017, according to the EY Global FinTech Adoption Index 2019. Among the reasons driving consumers to FinTech services are better rates and fees (42%), ease of setting up an account (19%) and more innovative products and services (10%).
News Comments Today’s main news: KBRA assigns preliminary ratings to SoFi Consumer Loan Program 2019-4 Trust. Stripe debuts corporate credit cards. College Ave completes $300M securitization of private student loans. Yirendai issues earnings results. Today’s main analysis: Deregulating Fannie and Freddie (A MUST-READ REPORT FROM THE U.S. TREASURY). Today’s thought-provoking articles: Average FICO scores hit […]
Deregulating Fannie and Freddie. The treasury department has issued a report on reforming the housing sector. This is an important report, which includes a section defining the “limited role for the federal government.” It discusses single-family mortgage lending, multifamily mortgage lending, protecting taxpayers against bailouts, and promoting competition in the housing finance system. This could be one of President Trump’s most significant achievements, with implications for online lenders. A must-read.
Average FICO score hits all-time high. This likely means a diminished market share for alt lenders who target subprime markets, but for alternative lenders who use FICO scores it can be good news.
Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) assigns preliminary ratings to four classes of notes issued by SoFi Consumer Loan Program 2019-4 Trust (“SCLP 2019-4”). This is a $465 million consumer loan ABS transaction.
Preliminary Ratings Assigned: SoFi Consumer Loan Program 2019-4
OnDeck today announced that Chairman and CEO Noah Breslow will be a keynote speaker at the LEND360 Conference in Dallas, Texas on Thursday, September 26, 2019. Mr. Breslow will discuss industry trends in alternative data and how they are improving many aspects of online lending to small businesses.
Last week, when the popular payments startup Stripe made some waves with its first move into money lending through the launch of Stripe Capital, we reported that the company was also soon going to be launching a credit card. Now, that news is official. Today, the company is doubling down on financing with the launch of corporate cards for business customers.
Student loan marketplace, College Ave Student Loans, announced on Tuesday it has completed a $300 million securitization of private student loans, its third securitization and largest to date. According to College Ave, the transaction was oversubscribed attracting a broad and diverse group of repeat investors and new participants. Barclays and Goldman Sachs were joint lead underwriters on the transaction with Barclays serving as structuring agent and sole bookrunner.
For the first time, the average national credit score has reached 706, according to FICO, the developer of one of the most commonly used scores by lenders.
U.S. consumer borrowing swelled in July by the most since late 2017 as Americans carried larger credit-card balances to fund both everyday and online purchases.
Total credit rose by $23.3 billion from the prior month, exceeding all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists, Federal Reserve figures showed Monday. Revolving debt outstanding increased by $10 billion, also the most since November 2017, while the growth of non-revolving credit was little changed from a month earlier.
Global financial service platform Kabbage announced this week the launch of its new Small Business Revenue Index. According to Kabbage, the index has two million live data connections the platform maintains across its customer base of more than 200,000 small businesses.
The companies that I view as pioneers in this space are Kabbage and OnDeck.
Although Kabbage and OnDeck were early to small business lending there are many other names in this space with varying models and scale including Funding Circle, Streetshares, Fundbox, BlueVine, Biz2Credit, Fundation and Credibly to name a few. LendingClub also has a small business lending operation but they primarily work with partners Funding Circle and Opportunity Fund today to originate these loans.
The Challengers of Small Business Lending
Probably the most recognizable name is PayPal and the Working Capital product which, according to deBanked, has surpassed OnDeck in small business lending volume.
Numerated, the loan technology company that incubated inside Eastern Bank and spun off on its own in May 2017, has raised $15 million from bank investment fund Patriot Financial Partners. Existing investors Venrock, Fintop Capital and Hyperplane also joined the round.
TBF Financial purchased nearly $60 million in non-performing loans from a major online small business lender in recent transactions, CEO Brett Boehm announced today.
TBF bought the pools of post-charge-off loans as the highest bidder in transactions arranged through multiple brokers. In most cases, the company purchases directly from alternative lenders, equipment leasing companies and banks.
Total population 17,321
Median individual income $39,045
Median home value $674,600
Affordable housing costs for a median income earner $911
Calculated mortgage payment for a median priced home $2,767
Median rent payment $1,441
Home affordability deficit -$1,856
Rent affordability deficit -$530
The DeFi trend is accelerating and gaining acceptance, with Coinbase joining the fray. The leading brokerage has created the Coinbase Bootstrap Fund, to boost DeFi projects. Coinbase will invest in two projects, the Compound crypto lending scheme, and the dy/dx crypto derivative exchange.
You might not have $30,000 saved up to buy a rental property right now, but do you have $500? The beauty of REITs like DiversyFund is you can start investing for the amount of money you might drop on a new pair of shoes.
There are public and private REITS as well as funds classified as real estate crowdfunding. Compare your options and find the best one that works for you.
Real estate investment platform PeerStreet announced on Tuesday it won first place in CRETech’s 2019 Real Estate Tech Awards (RETAs for the Information & Intelligence – Crowdfunding category.
Balboa Capital, an online lender that specializes in equipment financing and small business loans, hired 125 new employees during the first six months of 2019 to accommodate the company’s rapid increase in new business and acquisition of several new strategic partners.
The digital revolution has had a huge impact on the way new and small companies are financed – and crowdfunding has been at the forefront.
Initially, crowdfunding brought great optimism that it would have a “democratising effect” on finance. On the one hand it would enable entrepreneurs excluded from traditional sources of finance to attract funding. And, on the other, it would provide new opportunities for people with even relatively modest amounts of money to invest. For example, private investors looking for higher returns than those available with high street banks have been attracted to various lending platforms – also known as peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms.
Finance tech provider Sonovate is looking to expand internationally and deploy more working capital to SMEs and mid-market businesses after raising £110 million, reports Jane Connolly.
Over three-quarters of commercial finance intermediaries in the UK expect the number of loans they broker to increase after Brexit, with more than half saying the number will rise “by a lot”.
In July Berlin-based online lender Spotcap asked 132 UK brokers, accountants and advisers about the future of SME finance in the UK, the results of which it published today as part of a report entitled The State of Commercial Finance in the UK.
FIRMS should prepare for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, says the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), as it launches a dedicated helpline for businesses.
The City watchdog, which oversees the peer-to-peer lending market as well as the rest of the financial servcies sector, says firms who have not prepared appropriately for the UK leaving the EU without a deal may see an impact on their business.
REGULATORY consultancy Bovill has reported a steady stream of interest from new entrants to the peer-to-peer lending market, particularly from overseas firms.
Brown attributed the slowdown to the fact that P2P is a more mature market, meaning there was “less of a gold rush” for new players.
Swedish fast-fashion giant H&M has extended its partnership with payment provider Klarna to the UK market, offering Brit shoppers the option to ‘buy now, pay later’.
Digital Risks is an insurance provider for small and medium-sized digital businesses, including cover for specific threats like commercial legal protection, cyber security, management liability, employers liability, public liability and professional indemnity.
While CyberSmart is a platform for SMEs to identify digital weaknesses and achieve their Cyber Essentials Certification, the government-backed accreditation for companies looking to protect against cyber threats.
Yirendai posted its earnings results on Tuesday, September 3rd. The technology company reported $0.24 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.48 by ($0.24), Morningstar.com reports. Yirendai had a return on equity of 32.93% and a net margin of 15.30%. The firm had revenue of $322.89 million for the quarter.
Chinese consumer financing platform LexinFintech announced on Wednesday it has entered into a convertible note purchase agreement with PAG issue and sell convertible notes in an aggregate principal amount of $300 million through a private placement.
Beijing-based online lender Yirendai (NYSE:YRD) and Shanghai-based Paipaidai, or PPDAI Group (NYSE:PPDF), shares have been pummeled down to their lowest levels in the past year. Yet aside from receiving credit lines from large Chinese institutions amid China’s crackdown on fraud lending in their industry, both lenders appear to remain in a healthy state.
PPDAI — the older and bigger of the two lenders — came out strong in its recent quarter, beating earnings expectations. The $1.2 billion online lender reported it had 29% year-over-year growth in loan origination volume to $3 billion, compared to just 1.6% growth a year earlier.
Chinese peer-to-peer lending platform Hexindai (NASDAQ: HX) announced on Tuesday its support for the decision by industry regulators to include the country’s P2P platforms in the central bank’s credit system. The online lender reported that it believes this as a positive move for the P2P industry.
The president of Germany’s powerful savings banks association, community lenders that dominate the country’s shopping streets, joined Dutch bank ING yesterday in criticising the ECB’s loose monetary policy.
Its 50 million customers have increased their savings by almost 5% since last year to €965bn which is roughly the size of the Dutch economy. With lending amounting to about €860bn, the banks are left with a chunky unused surplus.
Fintech Europe, Plug and Play’s fintech-focused innovation platform based out of Frankfurt, Germany, announced today the eight startups selected for its fourth batch. The platform has grown its partner base to 11 Financial Institutions since its inception in May 2018. Together with Deutsche Bank, TechQuartier, BNP Paribas, Nets Group, UniCredit, Aareal Bank, Abanca, Danske Bank, DZ Bank, Elo, and Finablr, it runs two 12-week innovation programs a year.
CashDirector SA is a technology company providing SMEs and banks with a Digital CFO integrated with on-line banking, helping with SMEs manage cash flow and accessing financing.
European banks are spending vast sums on technology—but it may not be enough to defend against the incursions of bigger, richer American rivals.
U.S. lenders already dominate investment banking in Europe. The big risk for the continent’s banks is that slicker tech could give their American rivals a platform to make gains in lending to companies—the Europeans’ traditional stronghold.
This year, Europe’s banks plan to make technology investments worth in aggregate $77 billion, according to consulting firm Celent. That compares with $105 billion for their U.S. rivals. Faster, more seamless trading systems have long been a priority, but tech spending has shifted across business lines and from back office to front office. It can cover everything from maintaining decades-old systems to cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
Germany-based global provider of digital payments and commerce solutions Wirecard announced on Wednesday it is partnering with U.S. business funding fintech Credibly to digitalize funding disbursement. Wirecard claims to be one of the largest issuers of payout cards in the U.S. and is now offering fully digitalize solutions.
The European financial services industry is facing an ‘Amazonisation’ moment, in which those offering consumer-first solutions underpinned by sustainable finance will survive and the others will cease to compete.
That is the headline finding of 52-page report co-authored by PwC Luxembourg and Luxembourg for Finance, which investigated underlying industry trends and indicated that the European market is losing ground on its US and Asian peers when it comes to innovation and assets.
Predictably it was Binance that stole the limelight, with the surprise launch of its eponymous lending platform, which was unveiled on Monday, August 26, and then proceeded to fill its initial lending quota of 200,000 BNB and 10 million USDT in a matter of seconds two days later.
Dharma and Compound have announced new products, while Coinbase has hinted that this will be the next vertical it expands into.
Lenders can enjoy annualized interest of up to 15%, which is significantly better than the negative rates they are currently offered on fiat savings and on negatively yielding government bonds.
On Wednesday New South Wales senator Andrew Bragg successfully moved to secure a senate committee inquiry into the fintech and regulatory technology spaces, paving the way for a year-long review into how competitive Australia is in these sectors.
Chief executive of small business lender Lumi, Yanir Yakutiel, said the inquiry should focus on expanding the regulatory sandbox program, which is designed to help early stage fintechs test their ideas.
This business model boomed in China, but following a regulatory clampdown by authorities on risky financial practices, the number of fintech and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in the country dropped from about 1,900 a year ago to just 900 in May.
It now appears that some of these Chinese P2P lending companies have not necessarily disappeared. They simple ventured into new markets and in particular Vietnam.
According to the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), there were 40 peer-to-peer lending companies operating in Vietnam as of March. Of these, 10 companies are from China.
Through conversations with Lebanese entrepreneurs, business owners, bankers, and politicians, I have had a number of eye-opening discussions into the challenges and opportunities faced by Lebanon’s SME ecosystem. Given the country’s long-standing tradition in financial services and its large banking sector, I believe fintech—with solutions such as peer-to-peer lending, machine learning to personalize insurance solutions, and the use of artificial intelligence for wealth management—stands as a serious contender to unlock the funding challenges faced by Lebanon’s SMEs.
Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) is in talks with venture capital firms in Latin America to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in their funds, a move likely to speed up spending of a $5 billion regional venture capital fund, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
So far, SoftBank has only announced direct investments using the fund’s resources, injecting capital into Colombian delivery app Rappi, Brazilian lender Creditas, gym membership app Gympass and Mexican payments firm Clip, for instance.
Contxto – Not only is the Mexican real estate industry huge but also outdated with many inefficient processes. Counteracting this, a new Mexican startup, Flat, recently raised US$4.5 million in one of Mexico’s largest pre-seed rounds ever.
Canada’s first peer to peer lending platform for SMEs, Lending Loop, has topped CDN $50 million in loans, according to a post by Brendon Vlaar, co-founder and CTO of the company. Lending Loop provides investment opportunities in debt-based securities to both accredited and non-accredited investors.
News Comments Today’s main news: Funding Circle closes $198M ABS for U.S. SMBs. KBRA assigns preliminary ratings to Consumer Loan Underlying Bond Credit Trust 2019-P2. SoFi to create 300 jobs in Jacksonville, Florida. LendInvest postpones IPO until at least 2020. Binance offers crypto lending. Today’s main analysis: The nonbank and alternative lending industry in 2019. […]
Funding Circle closes $198 million ABS to support U.S. SMBs. This is significant in more than one way. One of the best ways is that it signifies the continued encroachment of European alternative finance firms into the U.S. market. Funding Circle is a major player.
Cities with the most swimming pools. LendingTree continues to publish the most interesting reports. This one isn’t trivial. A swimming pool can add significant value to a property. For real estate investors, this is a must-read.
Binance offers crypto lending. Crypto lending is already growing and expanding in popularity. This could catapult it into becoming a larger part of the alternative lending industry. Why? Because Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume.
Funding Circle today closed its first asset-backed securitization (ABS) of US small business loans originated through its platform. The $198 million deal marks the debut of Funding Circle’s US securitization sponsorship capability, and is the fifth securitization of Funding Circle business loans globally.
Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) assigns preliminary ratings to three classes of notes issued by Consumer Loan Underlying Bond (CLUB) Credit Trust 2019-P2 (“CLUB 2019-P2”). This is a $287.80 million consumer loan ABS transaction.
Preliminary Ratings Assigned: Consumer Loan Underlying Bond (CLUB) Credit Trust
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday that two international information technology companies will create a combined 498 jobs in Jacksonville, disclosing the names of Project Quail and Project Liberty.
SoFi, a California-based online personal finance company, has been seeking $1.5 million in state and city incentives through the Qualified Target Industry Tax Refund program as code-named Project Quail to establish its southeastern operations center and create 300 jobs in Jacksonville.
The Harris County Civil Court reported the following activity in the suit brought by Sofi Lending Corp. against Cindy Luu on Aug. 27: ‘Original Petition Citation Issued’.
A new LendingTree study ranks the 50 largest cities by its share of homes with a swimming pool. We found that about 10% of homes have pools, ranging from nearly 33% in Phoenix to 1% in Portland, Ore. We also looked at the values of homes with and without swimming pools to show how much this amenity is worth. Let’s dive in.
Key findings
You’ve gotta pay to play: The median home with a pool is valued at $469,187, while the median home without a pool is valued at $305,152 — a 54% premium. The highest premium is in Memphis at a whopping 157%.
Go West: It’s no surprise that six of the top 10 cities for swimming pools are in the West — four in California and one each in Arizona and Nevada.
Hot, hot, hot: Phoenix, which experiences more than 100 days above 100 degrees a year, leads the way with 32.7% of homes having a swimming pool.
Sunshine State: Florida is not far behind California with three cities in the top 10. Miami, Tampa and Orlando rank second, third and fourth, respectively.
Rain and water don’t mix: Two of the cities with the least swimming pools are in the rainy Northwest. Portland is in last place with just 1% of homes with pools, while Seattle is not far ahead with 1.3%.
Corporate eCommerce card company Brex has announced a partnership with leading SaaS eCommerce platform BigCommerce, according to a release.
Brex’s open credit line, three-month payment terms and interest-free financing are now available to all BigCommerce merchants through the BigCommerce App Store.
N26’s new SoHo office has all the design elements of a tech startup — high ceilings, distressed wood, big windows, a pingpong table, beanbag chairs, community meeting areas.
GOBankingRates found that 25 percent of consumer prefer banking with a mobile app, though nearly half preferred banking in person at a branch or ATM. Yet 76 percent said they wouldn’t open an account with a bank that doesn’t have a mobile app.
According to Fiserv, the preference for digital interactions (online plus mobile) is 58 percent, considerably ahead of the preference for branch interactions (32 percent).
When breaking out online, though, there is a preference for online (37 percent) compared to mobile (17 percent).
Fifth Third Bancorp is building out its renewable energy banking business, highlighting how the alternative power niche isn’t just for the biggest banks.
The $169 billion-asset Fifth Third recently added three new managing directors to its renewable energy investment banking group. With the additions of Timothy Beach, Ari Citrin and Oliver Janssen, the bank intends to offer more specialized capital markets and M&A advisory services to renewable energy firms, most of which are in solar.
According to Oracle’s Digital Demand in Retail Banking study of 5,200 consumers from 13 countries, over 40% of customers surveyed think nonbanks can better assist them with personal money management and investment needs, and 30% of respondents who haven’t tried a nonbank platform said they’re open to trying one.
Business Insider Intelligence’s Online Mortgage Lending Report found that the top five US banks – Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, US Bancorp, and Citigroup – only accounted for 21% of total mortgage originations, which is a huge decline from their 50% combined market share in 2011.
Source: Business Insider
According to a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, in 2016 only 58% of loan requests from small businesses were approved by incumbent banks, compared to 71% approved by alt lenders that same year.
AlleyWatch caught up with Matt Rodak to learn more about the company’s success, future growth plans, and recent round of funding, which brings its total funding to $13M across four rounds.
SimpleNexus makes it easy for loan originators to create co-branded mobile apps for Realtor partners to share with borrowers. The shared platform enhances the borrower experience by keeping partners up-to-speed on loan progress and putting mortgage calculators and other handy tools at partners’ fingertips.
Pagaya, a global financial technology company using artificial intelligence (AI) to reshape asset management, today announced the closing of a consumer credit asset-backed security (ABS) at $115 million. Led by structuring agent Cantor Fitzgerald, the ABS will be actively managed by Pagaya’s AI.
Pagaya has been working closely with Prosper to develop innovative financing solutions for consumers, which will be featured in this securitization.
Blooma, a tech startup that reduces time to revenue for commercial lenders, launches out of stealth with $2.75 million seed funding to transform the lending experience for commercial and private lenders and other organizations. The financing was led by Floodgate, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based investor. Other backers include: Abstract Ventures, Crescent Ridge Partners and Serra Ventures.
Cryptocurrency lending and borrowing startup Cred has hired former PayPal executive as its chief financial officer (CFO), according to an announcement Monday.
Fashion event agency, A-List Communications announces their lineup and new title sponsor Klarna for their 15th year of STYLE360, which will take place during the latter portion of Spring/Summer 2020 New York Fashion Week from September 9 – 11, 2019.
White Oak Commercial Finance (“White Oak”), an affiliate of White Oak Global Advisors, announced today the origination of a new revolving credit facility to healthy meal service company The Good Kitchen. Originally founded as a meal delivery service, The Good Kitchen will use the proceeds of the credit facility to expand its business into packaged meals sold at 1,500 stores across the United States.
Over three-quarters of consumers in the UK use a finance app, according to a new study from Speedie Consultants that surveyed 200 people in the country. Twenty-four percent of those surveyed use their finance apps around twice a week, and 23% said they use it daily. The most common finance app users were aged 25-45, in addition to consumers over 65.
Swedish fintech payments firm Klarna has launched a new campaign focused around the introduction of Video Assistant Referee technology in the UK’s Premiere League.
According to the latest press release, leading crypto lending firm Celsius Network has seen an increase of 2,165% growth in deposits. The network has already surpassed 20,000 BTC through mobile app deposits during the first year of operations.
According to Revolut, the Fintech bank has hired Philip Doyle as Director of Financial Crime Risk, Wolfgang Bardorf as Treasurer and Stefan Wille as Deputy Chief Financial Officer.
The Zurich-based fintech, whose investors include former Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann, raised $40 million at a valuation of over $1 billion, reports Bloomberg. The latest investment brings Numbrs’ total raise to date to almost $200 million, CEO Martin Saidler told the outlet.
Notably, in contrast to many of its peers, Numbrs has joined the unicorn club not by focusing on venture capital and private equity funding, but instead by relying mostly on individuals and families — 50 have invested in the company thus far. The startup’s app enables users to aggregate their various bank accounts and manage their finances, and offers a marketplace for consumers to purchase various financial products.
The £1bn P2P Global Investments has sold one of its largest positions, in Castlehaven Finance, an Irish alternative development and bridging finance lender.
Castlehaven typically provides loans of between €1m – €20m in the property space, an increasingly big proportion of P2P GI’s portfolio.
The investment trust has provided financing in excess of €385m to Castlehaven since 2016.
The University of Oxford received an immense £150 million donation to create a centre studying the ethics surrounding AI in the modern world, whilst global audiences continue to be fascinated by shows like Black Mirror which explore the worst-case consequences of AI accessing personal data.
The project is composed of three distinct, albeit related, parts, run in sequence from January 2019 to December 2020:
Part 1: Application of AI for risk management in bank and peer to peer lending
Part 2: Application of AI for risk management in financial investments and robot advisory
Part 3: Application of AI for risk management in blockchain payments and crypto assets
Binance has launched a lending service allowing its users to earn cryptocurrency without trading, in a passive way. Currently the service is open for only a few tokens – its Binance Coin (BNB), Tether’s USDT stablecoin, and Ethereum Classic (ETC). Annualized interest rates are of 15% for BNB, 10% for USDT, and 7& for ETC.
Ten years after the financial crisis, Alternative Finance continues to exhibit strong growth. The sector is estimated to account for nearly €300 billion of inflows worldwide, a market exhibiting 25% annual growth and largely dominated by the Chinese (75%), which percentage was already recorded in 2015 by a study conducted jointly by KPMG and the University of Cambridge.
The United States takes second place with 19% of the market, while Europe currently represents just 6%, 60% of which comes from the United Kingdom. In France, alternative finance raised €1.4 billion in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 39% according to the annual report of KPMG and the non-profit group Financement Participatif France (FPF).
The global crowdfunding market is estimated to be expanding from 2018 to 2022 to $89.72 billion. From the first recorded successful crowdfunding in 1997, to how the first dedicated crowdfunding platform ArtistShare had come about in the year 2000, crowdfunding has indeed disrupted many industries in different levels.
The problem of investment scammers is much bigger than cryptocurrency though, Wong pointed out, and much bigger than Invest: Asia.
“I don’t think Invest: Asia is big enough to move the needle if you’re running a scam in China,” he said. “That just speaks to the size of the population in China. In general, I think there’s lots of financial scams in general in China, right? For example, a couple years ago there was a big peer to peer lending scandal.”
“The peer to peer lending was legitimately becoming a hot growth FinTech sector in China, but then people were running these peer to peer scams. Because it was so hot, everyone’s talking about it. It creates the conditions for scammers to launch whatever scheme that they want to launch.”
• FY19 loan originations of $501.7 million up 36.6% on the prior year (FY18: $367.3 million), 3.1% ahead of prospectus forecast.
• FY19 revenue of $136.4 million up 31.2% on the prior year (FY18: $104.0 million), in line with prospectus forecast.
• FY19 pro forma EBITDA of $6.8 million, ahead of prospectus forecast by 11.5%.
• Prospa has now delivered approximately $1.2 billion in loans since inception and total customer numbers in Australia and New Zealand grew to over 20,000 in FY19, up 58% on the prior year.
• Customer satisfaction remains consistently high, with Prospa’s annual average Net Promoter Score in excess of +77 in 2019. Prospa also has a rating of 9.8/10 on independent review platform TrustPilot.
• Business expansion has continued with the successful launch of new cash flow products and services and diversification into New Zealand.
• Further investment in executive strength, with new Chief Technology Officer, Chief Commercial Officer and Executive General Manager, Growth Channels appointed.
The 2019 Finder Awards recognise the market’s most competitive offerings across credit cards, home loans, personal loans, car insurance, banking, insurance, technology and superannuation.
Source: FinderSource: FinderSource: FinderSource: FinderSource: Up Bank
P2P lending has also become increasingly popular as an alternative lending route as small businesses find it easier to obtain loans directly from other individuals. Going forward, we can expect more cloud-based services backed by advanced analytics that offer personalized loan limits and payback schedules, based on the borrower’s credit history.
Traditional players will also get into online lending and emulate the strategies of P2P lending companies. More businesses will start adopting work-from-home policies to increase cost savings and productivity. On the tech front, businesses will start investing more in AI and analytics to get a deeper insight into customer behaviour.
– Kewal Kapoor, director and creative strategist of CHAI Kreative and Return of Million Smiles
The fourth-largest mobile phone vendor plans to launch a consumer-lending business, dubbed Mi Credit, in India in the next few weeks, according to Reuters. It will offer loans of up to 100,000 rupees ($1,451), with interest rates starting at 1.8%.
Xiaomi is positioned as a leading smartphone manufacturer in India, with 70 million mobile phones in use throughout the country. It already launched its payment app, dubbed Mi Pay, in the country in March, which is reportedly “doing well,” per Reuters. For context, in China, Xiaomi’s lending business shows a loan book worth $8 billion.
In July 2019, the company secured Rs 1.16 crore from Renaud Laplanche, the Co-founder and CEO of Upgrade, who earlier participated in the startup’s Series C funding round of Rs 77 crore in May, along with Accel Partners, Chiratae Ventures, IDG Ventures, and Bain Capital. At that time, the startup said the funds will be used for accelerating its growth and expansion to new cities.
Loan originations increased 31.8% to US$38.5 million in Q2 2019 compared to Q2 2018.
Total loans under management increased 36.4% to $101.0 million as at June 30, 2019 compared to the same period in 2018.
Adjusted gross revenue increased 25.1% to $5.5 million in Q2 2019 compared to Q2 2018.
Adjusted Operating Expense Ratio decreased to 10.0% in Q2 2019 compared to 11.9% in Q2 2018.
Adjusted net earnings amounted to $0.3 million in the second quarter of 2019, representing the sixth consecutive profitable quarter. Adjusted net earnings amounted to $0.8 million year-to-date.
The linked dangers of an inverted yield curve and a slowing economy have hammered banks stocks in recent months, and profit margins are already compressing. But the banks’ worries pale in comparison to challenges confronting the peer-to-peer or “market place” lenders — the start-ups that have set out, over the past decade or so, to upturn the banking industry.
News Comments Today’s main news: Prosper reports Q2 results. Figure to raise $1B. Funding Circle shares rise. RateSetter to stress test provision fund. LendInvest raises 200M GBP. Two more Chinese P2P firms shut down. N26 eyes IPO. Today’s main analysis: Gen Z’s credit market activity. Today’s thought-provoking articles: Radius Bank’s rebranding to banking as a […]
Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending platform connecting borrowers and investors, today reported financial results for the second quarter of 2019. Personal loan originations increased 27% compared to the first quarter of 2019, and the company has now generated positive adjusted EBITDA in eight out of the last nine quarters.
Financial summary:
Total Net Revenue, which includes the non-cash impact related to warrants to purchase preferred stock, increased to $42.9 million in Q2 2019 compared to $31.7 million in Q2 2018.
Core Revenue(1), which excludes the non-cash impact related to warrants to purchase preferred stock, decreased to $50.7 million in Q2 2019 compared to $52.3 million in Q2 2018.
Net Loss decreased to ($0.6) million in Q2 2019 compared to a Net Loss of ($12.6) million in Q2 2018.
Adjusted EBITDA(1) decreased to $5.3 million in Q2 2019 compared to $8.8 million in Q2 2018.
Key Operating and Financial Metrics (Unaudited) (in thousands)
Mike Cagney, the former embattled chief executive officer of Social Finance Inc., is raising more than $100 million for his new startup Figure Technologies Inc. at a $1 billion valuation just less than two years after its founding, according to people familiar with the matter.
San Francisco-based Figure uses blockchain technology to provide home equity loans online in just a few days, with approval happening in minutes. The company made its first loan in 2018, and is on pace to provide more than $80 million in loans this month alone, according to one of these people, who asked not to be named because the details are private.
Gen Z, those individuals born in 1995 or after, increasingly took part in the consumer credit market during the first half of 2019. The newly released Q2 2019 Industry Insights Report from TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) found that growth is coming from the entire Gen Z demographic who are 18 years or older – not just those who became credit eligible for the first time.
Approximately 14 million Gen Z consumers (44% of this group) were carrying a balance as of Q2 2019, up from 11 million in Q2 2018, according to the report. The number of Gen Z consumers who were credit eligible (18 years or older) increased by 4.5 million in the last year, rising to 31.5 million in Q2 2019. Over the next three years, it is anticipated that another 13 million Gen Z consumers will become credit eligible.
Gen Z Consumers Carrying a Balance Rising at High Rates
Credit Product
Q2 2019
Q2 2018
YOY Growth %
Auto
4,376,000
3,072,000
42%
Credit Card
7,746,000
5,483,000
41%
Mortgage
319,000
150,000
112%
Personal Loan
746,000
534,000
45%
Credit cards are the most popular product among Gen Z consumers, with 55% carrying a balance—though they still only constitute 5% of the U.S. population carrying card debt. Mortgages had the largest year-over-year growth rate spike with Gen Z consumers (112%), but from a low base. Mortgages are still the credit product Gen Z consumers are least likely to have, with only 0.5% of mortgages held by members of this generation.
The Percentage of Gen Z Consumers Carrying a Credit Balance is Growing (Data as of Q2 2019)
If Klarna is a threat to the online payments pioneer Paypal, it’s very much the challenger, with the latter enjoying 30 times greater revenue. Notwithstanding this, Klarna is making impressive gains, increasing transaction volume by 36% in 2018.
According to a recent press release, Klarna is now serving the needs of 60 million consumers and 130,000 merchants. It has achieved transaction rates in the region of 1 million transactions per day and believes it can generate an annual revenue of $1 billion in the foreseeable future.
Lendio Franchising, Lendio’s marketplace lending franchise program, announced on Tuesday it has facilitated $50 million in loans to over 1,800 small businesses around the U.S. According to Lendio, the loans through the franchise provide a boost to small businesses in industries ranging from healthcare to trucking, with an estimated economic impact of $165,505,834 across local economies.
Inc. Magazine today ranked commerce platform LendingPoint No. 17 on its 37th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. LendingPoint joins companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names who gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000. LendingPoint has hit successive funding records year-over-year and is on pace to reach $100 million per month in loan originations by the end of 2019.
OppLoans has been named to Inc. magazine’s prestigious 2019 Inc. 500 list for the fourth year in a row. Only four companies on this year’s list, including OppLoans, have placed on the Inc. 500 at least four or more times. With a three-year annual revenue growth of 1,435%, OppLoans placed #321 on the annual ranking of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., 19 spots higher than the firm placed in 2018. OppLoans has achieved rankings of #340 (2018), #219 (2017) and #445 (2016).
Finicity, a provider of real-time financial data access and insights, announced today the rollout of its Student Loan Account Verification product, which will simplify employer benefit repayment programs, where employers are looking to contribute to or help repay employee’s student loans.
One firm’s dominance over the credit scores used to vet many U.S. mortgages is getting a shake-up.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two mortgage-finance firms that back nearly half of U.S. mortgages, will have to consider credit-score alternatives to Fair Isaac Corp.’s FICO score when determining a mortgage applicant’s creditworthiness, under a new rule issued on Tuesday by the mortgage-finance giants’ federal overseer.
By going through a simple online application process, you have the chance to obtain between $300 and $1,000 – all of which can be funded the very same day.
HSBC USA partnered with Amount, a tech provider for financial institutions, to launch a digital lending platform that streamlines online personal loan applications. Consumers can evaluate loan options, submit applications online, and receive a credit decision within minutes.
HSBC will initially lend up to $30,000 with terms ranging from two to five years and it says funds will be available as quickly as the next day. The bank will charge fixed monthly payments starting 50 days after customers receive the loan. Amount’s platform — which has cumulatively originated $6 billion in loans to 800,000 customers — has been customized to HSBC’s preferences, including its proprietary risk models.
In the past decade we’ve seen a new financial movement take shape: a focus on giving more investors a seat at the table. More and more people and organizations are realizing that investors of all income levels and backgrounds could (and should) have the opportunity to access more asset classes. In this technology-enabled age of access, data and transparency in investing, there is an opportunity to update our laws to ensure that smaller investors are not excluded from the opportunity to create wealth — opportunities that have emerged under the financial ethos of fintech: crowdfunding, peer-to-peer, financial literacy and inclusion.
Tricolor, the used vehicle retailer focusing on the sale and financing of vehicles to the Hispanic consumer, today unveiled a groundbreaking new affordable auto insurance option for low-income and credit invisible customers through its affiliate company Tricolor Insurance. After testing the product earlier this year, Tricolor will begin rolling out the new insurance offering throughout all of its markets in Texas and California.
To date in 2019, Artivest, a multi-billion-dollar alternative investment platform, has achieved exponential organic growth across nearly every aspect of the business, greater than any previous full calendar year in the company’s history. The firm has attracted more new investors, allocations, investment managers, and—most importantly, in regard to how the wealth management industry gauges the success of digital platforms—has surpassed $1 billion in new investments transacted online by high-net-worth investors into private funds, at low minimums.
Last week, online lender Funding Circle (LSE:FCH) released its 6-month report and the shares have responded positively to the numbers. Six-month Revenue was reported at £81.4 million versus H1 2018 at £63.0 million – up 29%. Loans under management rose 37% to £3.54 billion and originations jumped 14% to £1.19 billion.
RATESETTER is planning to introduce stress testing to its provision fund over the next financial year.
The ‘big three’ peer-to-peer lender’s provision fund is a buffer that protects investors against losses should any of its loans default. Borrowers pay cash into the provision fund in accordance with RateSetter’s assessment of their creditworthiness.
LendInvest has now raised over £1.8 billion of debt and equity from investors, making LendInvest one of the largest non-bank mortgage lenders in the country.
This new funding expands LendInvest’s capacity to lend in the UK Buy-to-Let market. LendInvest launched its first Buy-to-Let mortgage product in late 2017 after agreeing a substantial funding line with Citigroup. LendInvest has already lent more than £370 million in Buy-to-Let loans and is taking market share in the bank dominated market. In June this year, LendInvest also become the UK’s first Fintech business to securitise its own portfolio of assets worth £259 million, which received a AAA rating from Moody’s and Fitch.
Small online fashion retailers in the UK are open to embracing innovative technologies, but various challenges are preventing widespread adoption, according to research by Klarna.
In terms of challenges, 53% said the cost of introducing flexible payment options was the biggest barrier to adoption.
The research — conducted across 100 UK SME decision makers at online retailers in 2019 — shows the UK’s SMEs understand the need to embrace flexibility and innovation. Over the next 12 months they plan to prioritise investing in flexible payment options (49%) and e-commerce capabilities (48%) to meet consumer demand for a frictionless shopping experience.
Mobile bank Tandem is developing the UK’s first crowd-designed mortgage for those hoping to get on the property ladder, allowing priced-out consumers to share their personal mortgage must-haves with the digital challenger.
Starling was said to be courting an Irish banking licence—Ireland being a market that Starling CEO Anne Boden knows well— and preparing to launch as far back as 2017.
Last November, when Starling actually filed its return, the bank reported a lending balance of £8.9m, or an average lending balance per active customer of £429.
That compares to Monzo which posted a total of £19.2m of lending by February 2019, along with an expected credit loss of £3.1m.
3. Marketplace revenue is tough to come by
For 2018 Starling reported just £35,000 of revenue from Marketplace commissions, versus the £1.47m it took from the interchange paid by retailers for customer card transactions.
4. We’ll have to wait until 2020 for Banking as a Service revenue
RATESETTER alumni Brian Cartwright has launched new alternative property lender Nexa Finance, with a focus on the East Midlands.
Cartwright (pictured), managing director at Nexa, previously worked as head of business finance at ‘big three’ peer-to-peer lender RateSetter.
His new venture, which bills itself as a regionally-focused business lender, aims to connect East Midlands-based small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) property developers and house builders with funders.
MEMBERS of the Personal Finance Society (PFS) have been showing an increased interest in peer-to-peer lending, leading the PFS to produce its own ‘good practice’ guide to P2P.
The financial planning trade body has partnered with Octopus Investments to create the guide, which tells advisers that recommending P2P products could help them to increase their own assets under management, adding that “for suitable clients, it could prove a useful vehicle for excess cash holdings which may currently fall outside of the adviser’s view.”
I worked for Wonga.com in 2010, back when you couldn’t even go to the bathroom without hearing their jingle on the radio. Like most offices today, everyone put in £10 to play in the office fantasy league and with Van Persie and Rooney in their prime, this was my year.
After doing some calculations, my £160 owed to me in 2010 would now be worth £2,752. (based on £24 per month for 9 years)
Without the price cap, you have 4 of those years at £30 per month. Making the total figure £3,040.
But again, I am being kind. This does not include default charges of £25 per month for every missed payment.
Zendai Group, a closely held private investment company in Shanghai, abruptly shut down two peer-to-peer lending units valued at 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion), as Chinese financial regulators ratchet up measures to clean an industry fraught with frauds and defaults.
Laocaibao, a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform ultimately owned by private conglomerate Zendai Group, is the latest casualty of the troubles that have engulfed the scandal-hit industry over the past three years.
Laocaibao has stopped providing loans and Zendai’s investment and consulting arm, which directed clients to the platform, has fired employees, according to statements from the companies and investigations by Caixin.
Fincera Inc. (OTCQB: YUANF), a China-based peer to peer lending platform providing access to capital for SMEs, has become the target of a local government attempt to shut down P2P lenders.
According to a note from Fincera, the Hebei provincial government, where Fincera is based, has requested that Fincera “cease P2P business operations.”
To protect the interests of all its stakeholders-investors, borrowers, brokers, and employees, Fincera has announced its intent to sell the Kaiyuan Finance Center, which has an estimated valued of over RMB4.0 billion.
Fincera is the largest Hebei-based company operating in the peer-to-peer lending industry, comprising over 90% of the province’s market with approximately RMB9.0 billion in unpaid principal balance.
Fincera Inc. (“Fincera” or the “Company”) (OTCQB:YUANF), a provider of internet-based financing and ecommerce services for small and medium-sized businesses (“SMBs”) and individuals in China, today announced that businesses operating within the P2P (peer-to-peer) lending industry in Hebei province, including the Company, have received requests by the Hebei provincial government to cease P2P business operations. The Company vehemently disagrees with the request and is taking steps to protect its many stakeholders, including initiating the process of moving its business registration to Beijing where local regulators are supportive of the P2P industry.
Senmiao Technology Limited (AIHS) (“Senmiao”), a provider of automobile transaction and related services and an operator of an online lending marketplace connecting Chinese investors with individual and small-to-medium-sized enterprise borrowers in China, today announced its unaudited financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2019.
First Quarter of Fiscal 2020 Highlights
Total revenues increased by 3,975% year-over-year to $5,094,440 from $125,026
Gross profit increased by 758% year-over-year to $1,072,128 from $125,026
Loss per share decreased by 50% year-over -year to $0.02 from $0.04
N26 today announced the appointment of Thomas Grosse as Chief Banking Officer. The newly introduced role is yet another step towards realizing N26’s ambition to become the first truly global and fully digital retail bank. As Chief Banking Officer, Thomas will oversee the set-up of regulated N26 banks and bank partnerships within the N26 Group, thus ensuring the highest standards in product, processes and customer experience across all markets.
Thomas will begin his new role at N26 this October, reporting directly to N26’s co-founder and CFO, Maximilian Tayenthal.
Its latest fundraising gave Klarna, which facilitates online installment payments, a $5.5 billion valuation. European fintech companies raised $3.3 billion in venture capital in the first half of 2019, up from $1.9 billion in the same period last year, according to data compiled by CB Insights. In contrast, an index of European Union banks has dropped 39% the past 18 months.
Tech.eu Podcast hosted by Natalie Novick and Andrii Degeler is a show in which we discuss some of the most interesting stories from the European technology scene and interview leading entrepreneurs and investors from across the region.
EstateGuru, a crowdfunding platform based in Estonia, is out with a release predicting it will claim €3-5 billion of the European real estate financing by 2025
EstateGuru adds that approximately 70% of SMEs lack access to credit and this is a major constraint to their growth. The company claims that 12% of all loans are set to be financed by alternative providers, including crowdfunding platforms, by 2025 as it appears to be interested in expanding into other financing verticals.
New research released by Barclays has revealed that over half of the UK’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have woken up at night with a new business idea (57 per cent), while the most popular time for an idea to be dreamt up is between 2-3 am (28 per cent).
Analysis revealed that almost half (48 per cent) of SMEs said that they are more creative at night, with over two fifths saying they are more productive outside of 9 – 5 working hours and keep a note pad and pen by their bed so they can jot down ideas. Half attributed this to having extra time to think away from daytime pressures.
In a High Street banking first, Barclays has launched £100,000 unsecured lending for SMEs on its award winning app and online banking platform, with thousands of SMEs set to benefit from access to faster finance.
FinLeap, the fintech start-up platform behind Germany’s SolarisBank, announced on Wednesday the launch of its new business unit, FinLeap Connect. According to FinLeap, the fintech platforms finreach solutions and infinitec solutions will become part of this business unit.
Today, more than $15 Tn in sovereign debt trades at a negative yield. In Germany, for instance, bond investors have moved from charging 75 bps last year to a willingness to pay for the privilege of providing < 0% money for 10 years.
Source: PeerIQ
GreenSky shares sank ~37% after a strong earnings report was paired with news that the marketplace was exploring a potential sale or merger.
Alternative data has come into the spotlight in financial services, and it presages a significant shift in credit availability for unbanked and underbanked consumers. There are about
Celsius Network (work/), the industry-leading cryptocurrency platform, announces updated terms for borrowers aiming to provide millions of users with increased accessibility to low-interest crypto-backed loans. In addition, Celsius has reduced its minimum requirement for loan requests to $1,500. Recently Celsius announced it will expand its lending operations throughout Europe.
The latest updates to Celsius Networks lending service include:
Lowered minimum requirement for loan requests from $3,000 to $1,500
Up to 30% discount for CEL token holders paying loan interest in CEL with yearly rates as low as 3.47%
Borrowers can request a loan in USD or supported stablecoins
Loans are issued the same day
Members can apply through the Celsius mobile app or on the Celsius Network website
Ontology (ONT), a project offering linking and bridging solutions for multiple blockchains, has announced five new partnerships with companies operating in various geographical locations within the decentralised finance (DeFi) arena.
The latest handful of businesses to be attracted to Ontology’s framework of compatibility are Hong Kong registered Babel Finance, USA-focused crypto loan specialists SALT Lending, cryptocurrency services provider LendChain, Hong Kong-based Fountain Financial, and Chinese trading platform HOX.
CBA FY19 underlying net profit for the year to end June falls by 5% to A$8.49bn ($5.75bn). The bank’s overall results do not quite match analyst forecasts. But there is a strong argument that in all the circumstances the results represent a resilient full fiscal.
Release of the CBA FY19 earnings also serve to highlight the bank’s success in upping its digital strategy.
Operating income is 2% lower on margin pressure.
Net interest income is down by 1.2% on lower retail mortgages margins and higher funding costs.
Business lending increases by 4% while retail mortgage growth is also strong delivering 4% volume growth for the year.
Faircent.com, a P2P lending company, has recently raised capital in a funding round. The latest funding, led by Singapore-based Das Capital and Gunosy Capital, also saw participation by existing investors Starharbor Asia Pte Ltd, and M&S Partners Pte Ltd (Sin Growth Partner Pte Ltd).
Overspending is a big problem for many. “They buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t like. Not passing a judgement here, but money does buy some kind of happiness for many,” said Rachit Chawla, chief executive officer, Finway, a registered non-banking financial company (NBFC).
Payday loans, digital lending platforms, and P2P lending have evolved, so has the penetration of credit card, personal loans, and the like. At a behavioural level, de-linking debt with shame has also made it easy for people to borrow.
Hexindai Inc. (HX) (“Hexindai” or the “Company”), a fast-growing consumer lending marketplace in China, today announced that its invested Indonesian online lending platform, Musketeer Group Inc. (“Musketeer”), has completed registration for its peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform with the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK).
Musketeer’s P2P platform, PT Technology Indonesia Sentosa, is among the early batch of lending companies in Indonesia that have registered with OJK.
The Overseas Filipino Bank was launched in January to cater to overseas Filipino workers, who will more easily be able to access digital-only services.
Venture capital investments in LatAm startups quadrupled to a record $2 billion in 2018 from $500 million in 2016, according to an annual review by the
VEF made a follow-on investment in FinanZero, a Brazilian online consumer loan marketplace, who closed a Series B investment round of SEK 100 mln (USD 10.5 mln).
News Comments Today’s main news: Funding Circle debuts U.S. ABS platform for small biz loans. LendingClub to pursue national bank charter, reports Q2 losses. SoFi sues unnamed defendants over Consumer Loan Program 2015 Trust. DigiFi launches first open-source loan origination system. BlockFi raises $18.3M for crypto lending. Funding Circle posts higher revenues, bigger pre-tax losses. […]
LendingClub to pursue national bank charter. LendingClub announced it is pursuing a national bank charter even as it discusses Q2 losses. But it’s not all bad news. Loan originations hit a record $3.1 billion.
BlockFi raises $18.3 million for crypto lending. That’s not a huge raise, but it’s a decent raise for such a small market. I do expect the crypto lending market to grow, however. The battle lines are being drawn.
LendingClub envisions a marketplace bank. There is a lot of interesting news today. LendingClub’s news is top billing. More on why they want to be a national bank.
Funding Circle is securitizing its first pool of U.S.-based small business loans.
According to Kroll Bond Rating Agency, the online business-loan lender is marketing $198.45 million in notes backed by loans made to small- and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. Funding Circle has previously issued notes for asset-backed pools of small-business loans in its native UK.
The transaction consists of four classes of notes, including a $142.8 million Class A tranche with an initial A- rating from Kroll, and benefiting from 32.5% credit enhancement.
A topic that has been coming up more often is the potential of a national bank charter. Last week we learned that small business lender OnDeck was pursuing a charter and LendingClub is doing the same.
Today LendingClub reported their Q2 2019 earnings. Highlights include record loan originations of $3.1 billion, up 11% from the prior year period and record net revenue of $190.8 million, up 8% year over year.
Source: LendingClub and LendAcademy
GreenSky Q2 2019 Earnings
David Zalik, GreenSky Chairman and CEO included this statement in the press release:
Notwithstanding the Company’s solid operating results, in light of the complexity of the Company’s operating model, we do not believe that the Company’s current market value is reflective of the Company’s strong record of cash flow generation and intrinsic value. Accordingly, GreenSky’s Board of Directors, working together with its senior management team and legal and financial advisors, has commenced a process to explore, review and evaluate a range of potential strategic alternatives focused on maximizing stockholder value. In connection with this review, GreenSky has retained FTP Securities LLC (“FT Partners”) and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC as its financial advisors, and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Troutman Sanders LLP as its legal advisors.
The news sparked Christopher Donat, an analyst Sandler O’Neill to speculate that Square or Goldman Sachs could be potential buyers according to this article in American Banker.
Peer-to-peer lending platform LendingClub is exploring the possibility of obtaining a national bank charter as it adjusts its strategy following a $10.6 million loss in the second quarter.
Shares in LendingClub (NYSE:LC) are rising during another down market day as the trade war with China has no end in sight and political tempers flare. Shares are currently trading over 10% higher following yesterday’s Q2 earnings report where LendingClub said it expected to finally report a positive net incoming in Q3 following years of losses.
Second, LendingClub has hardened its lending model with years of fine-tuning. Unlike some other digital-only banks, LendingClub has been providing credit to consumers for more than a decade having originated over $50 billion in loans.
By the numbers, net loss came in at $10.66 million or $0.12 per share — a lower loss than last year when Lending Club reported a loss of $60.86 million or $0.72 per share. Adjusted loss per share narrowed to $0.01 from $0.08 a year earlier.
Net revenue increased 8 percent from year-ago revenues of $176.98 million in 2018 to $190.8 million in 2019, driven by the higher volume of loan originations Sanborn mentioned. Loan originations during the quarter were at $3.1 billion, up 11 percent year over year. While the revenue number is an improvement, it came in very, very slightly below analysts’ estimates.
LendingClub said it now expects smaller loss for the year than it had previously forecast. Adjusted net loss is expected to be between $5 million and $20 million, from $9 million to $29 million.
Apple Card, a “new kind of credit card” launched by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in partnership with Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) is expected to be made available to the public within the next few days. In fact, it has been reported that invitation emails have already gone out to a small group of iPhone owners. More will follow during August.
One detractor is LendingClub.
Anuj Nayar: Americans don’t need another credit card. They need the right tools to help them build their financial futures and pay down debt without the opportunity to accumulate more at high-interest rates. Goldman Sachs tried to pursue building a helpful consumer tool with Marcus but now has slipped back into its old ways, looking to make money by getting consumers hooked on revolving, high-interest debt on Apple’s credit card.
The Superior Court of California for San Francisco County reported the following activity in the suit brought by Sofi Lending Corp. against Jaime Daric and other unnamed defendants on July 12: ‘Declaration Of Non Service (transaction Id # 63543270) Filed By Plaintiff Sofi Lending Corp., As Attorney In Fact For Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Trustee Of Sofi Consumer Loan Program 2015 Trust’
This week, we discuss the Fed rate cut to the 2 to 2.5% target range, and provide market color on OnDeck earnings.
Fun fact #1: It has been 3,878 days (10.5+ years) since the FOMC last cut rates.
This is the second longest streak on record behind the 4,115 days that passed between cuts in the discount rate since 1954. Markets are speculating on additional rate cuts before year-end although Fed Chair Powell positioned the rate cut as an “adjustment” rather than a change in trend.
DigiFi, an enterprise SaaS company building the future of lending technology, announced today the launch of its open-source loan origination system (LOS). The free-to-use platform, which was built over 45,000+ development hours and has been operating in-market with top lenders since late 2018, provides an end-to-end suite of modular capabilities that can be used individually or together to drive digital transformation.
DigiFi’s open source release underscores the lending industry’s dissatisfaction with the closed-loop systems available from existing LOS providers, which force lenders into onerous long-term contracts for inflexible systems.
Crypto lending startup BlockFi received $18.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Valar Ventures, the company announced Tuesday.
Valar, which was founded in part by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, was joined by Winklevoss Capital, Galaxy Digital, ConsenSys, Akuna Capital, Susquehanna, CMT Digital, Morgan Creek, Avon Ventures and PJC. Valar’s investment was its first in the cryptocurrency industry following prior investments in other fintech firms like Transferwise, a press release said.
Like millions of her peers, Nicole Read graduated with thousands of dollars of debt. Unlike most of them, she’s getting direct help from her employer to pay it back.
In Read’s case, it’s $100 a month.
Such plans are spreading. They were on offer to staff at about 8% of U.S. employers in 2019, more than double the 2015 level, according to an April survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Another study by business adviser Willis Towers Watson found that 32% of firms are considering introducing a similar benefit by 2021.
Verishop Inc. is excited to announce a partnership with financial technology company Affirm Inc., giving customers more choice at checkout to pay for their purchases over time.
To see if they qualify, customers only need to provide five simple pieces of information2 and a credit decision is made within seconds. Monthly payments are shown in real dollars instead of hard-to-calculate percentages so customers will know exactly what they owe with no hidden or late fees. Customers never pay a dollar more than they agree to at checkout. The pay-over-time option is available for purchases ranging from $50 to $17,500 with a 30-day payment deferral available for smaller amounts.
Klarna, an alternative payment platform, announced Monday that Asos shoppers in the United States will now be able to use its services, according to a press release. The announcement comes after Klarna also publicized its partnership with Toms on Thursday.
Lendio today announced it has facilitated more than $1.5 billion in financing to small businesses across the U.S.
According to the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2019 Small Business Credit Survey, “applications to online lenders continued to trend upward” last year, with 32% of applicants turning to online lenders, up from 24% the previous year.
Lendio’s 15-minute online application gives business owners access to multiple lenders with offers suited to meet their capital and business needs.
In just a few years, PayPal’s business financing solutions has serviced over 225,000 small businesses around the world with funding. Between PayPal Working Capital and PayPal Business Loans, the company has recently surpassed $10 billion of capital it’s leant out to SMBs
Earnin, which is also backed by tech investor Andreesen Horowitz, discovered in February that a third-party security firm had accessed customers’ bank transactions — including all their debit card purchases and payment statements going back for months, the company confirmed to The Post.
Approval rates for small business loan applications rose to another post-recession record (27.7%) at big banks ($10 billion+ in assets), while also climbing above 50% at small banks in July, according to the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index released today.
Smallbank approvals of small business loan applications inched up one-tenth of a percent to 50.1% from 50% in June.
Small business loan approval rates among alternative lenders dropped three-tenths of a percent to 56.8% from 57.1% in June.
Krista Morgan, the founder and CEO of the crowdfunding fintech P2Binvestor, always understood that funding small-business loans through investors would be challenging. But when the firm launched in 2014, she quickly recognized it wasn’t lining up the investors or capital that was the difficulty.
“Finding capital through our investor platform has been relatively straightforward,” she said. “Finding businesses and winning the business and being competitive in market and building the technology that supports the lending has been the harder side of the marketplace.”
Citing reports, as per the terms of the deal, the shareholders of Credible Labs will reportedly receive A$ 2.21 in cash per CHESS depository interest (CDI), representing A$55.25 per share of common stock of the company.
Fox says it will commit up to $USD 75 million ($AUD110.8 million) of growth capital to Credible over the next two years.
We last had Al Goldstein, the CEO and Chairman of Avant and Amount, on the show back in 2015. So much has changed since then not just in the personal loan space but in the banking space as well. And Avant has evolved to meet those challenges.
Mall landlords accustomed to offering rent reductions to ailing retailers are mulling a new strategy to forestall the industry’s collapse: positioning themselves as lenders to tenants struggling to stay afloat.
The boutique bank PJ Solomon has organized discussions with several mall owners about pursuing such a strategy with the troubled retailer Forever 21, according to people with knowledge of the matter, in what could serve as a model for future transactions within the sector.
Rogers is far from the only person to have used this debt-consolidation strategy with success. At the end of 2018, nearly 11% of adults in the U.S. held a personal loan, according to data from Experian. EXPN, +1.84%. The number of personal loans has risen 42% since 2015, making them the fastest-growing category of debt in the country.
Around 61% of personal loans are used for debt consolidation, said Ezra Becker, senior vice president of research and consulting at TransUnion.
For some consumers, the use of unconventional sources of information, or “alternative data,” to evaluate creditworthiness may be a way to increase access to credit or decrease the cost of credit. Alternative data includes information not typically found in core credit files of nationwide consumer reporting agencies and may indicate a likelihood of meeting obligations on time that a traditional credit history may not reflect.
The Bureau remains committed to using all of the tools at its disposal under the Dodd-Frank Act to help address these important issues around access to credit. Toward that goal, the Bureau is currently reviewing comments to its proposed No-Action Letter, Trial Disclosure, and Product Sandbox policies.
The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning poses both opportunities and risks for financial institutions.
While using such predictive techniques may mitigate consumer lending credit risk, financial institutions should be cognizant of the potential impacts of bias and its implications on fairness.
Dharma, the San Francisco-based crypto lending startup behind the open-source protocol of the same name, has announced via Twitter that it is “pausing new deposits and loans” on its platform.
And in 2012, I finally retired at 34. By the time I quit my job, I had amassed a net worth of about $3 million that generated roughly $80,000 in investment income per year.
If I worked a few extra years before retiring, I would have had the financial confidence to buy more real estate in 2012, right before prices began to take off. (A rental property in San Francisco that cost $900,000 in 2012 would be worth roughly $1.6 million today.)
Source: Bay Area Market Reports, Compass
I also could have leveraged my interests in real estate and technology to start a real estate crowdfunding company — or, at the very least, join one. I still believe that real estate is one of the most straightforward ways most Americans can build wealth over the long term.
One such lender that is looking to capitalize on this space is OppLoans. The US-based lender offers loans to those with poor credit, ranging from $500 up to $5,000.
DrawBridge Lending (DBL), a digital asset loaning, borrowing and investing company, has received an investment from merchant bank Galaxy Digital with the aim to greatly expand DBL’s institutional investment and lending capacity.
Less than two years after being conceptualized, Minneapolis-based digital lending & borrowing platform DeFiner.org has beat out 17 other Fintech startups to win one of the industry’s most coveted prizes.
UK-based marketplace lender Funding Circle is set to issue its first US securitization, a $198.45m deal backed by loans made to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The rivalry between U.K. challenger banks Tide and Starling continues to heat up as Tide signs on its 100,000th small business customer.
Reports in The Telegraph on Monday (Aug. 5) said the companies continue to compete for the small business customer base. Tide has on-boarded 100,000 small business customers, described by the firm’s chief executive Oliver Prill as a “very significant milestone.”
UK small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are fairly satisfied with their current banking situation, which leans heavily in favor of major incumbents: 88% of financial decision makers at UK SMEs say their main account is with an established high street bank and 86% are either “very happy” or “fairly happy” with the service they receive, per a report from Finastra and YouGov. Further, just 29% of SME respondents said their business would be likely to switch its main bank account in the next five years.
Digital wealth management, or robo advice as it used to be called, has been around for more than a decade and launched into the UK in 2011 with the arrival of Nutmeg. Things started to get really interesting around 2016 and 2017 when a flurry of companies were founded to attack the space dominated by traditional wealth management, an industry looking after £1trn of investors’ assets.
OakNorth has today announced the appointment of Jackson Hull as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO). With over 15 year’s C-suite experience in London and San Francisco, Jackson is a leading expert in building high-volume eCommerce applications, global SaaS platforms, mobile and IoT platforms, as well as award-winning products and services in finance, fintech, travel, accommodation and retail.
Jiayin Group Inc. (Nasdaq: JFIN), China’s online lending platform, announced it has solved more than 12,000 cases of overdue payments and attempts to escape debt as of May.
Shanghai-based Jiayin runs a peer-to-peer lending marketplace, known as Niwodai, which connects borrowers and investors. The company has established a tailored legal department for post-loan management to handle online arbitration. As it reported on its website, as of the end of May, it has closed more than 12,000 cases in more than 30 provinces in China.
Online payments firm Klarna, which has attracted a growing following with its “buy now, pay later” service for shoppers, said on Tuesday it had raised $460 million in a funding round that makes it Europe’s most valuable fintech startup.
Investors led by San Francisco-based Dragoneer Investment Group put new money into the Swedish company, giving it a valuation of $5.5 billion and additional financial firepower to expand in the United States.
Penta, the business banking provider for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that was recently acquired by fintech company builder Finleap, has raised “over” €8 million in new funding.
The startup raised a €7 million Series A round in late 2018, and is thought to have had more than €18 million investment since being founded in 2016.
This week some investors on the p2p lending marketplaces Viventor, Grupeer and Mintos are affected by issues that hinder the normal procedures on these marketplaces.
(Screenshot from Viventor.com)
Update 14:02: Apparently Mintos has now suspended trading of Aforti loans on the secondary market.
EstateGuru, an online marketplace for secured, short term loans, has launched in Portugal, according to a note from the company. EstateGuru is now providing crowdfunding services in six different countries including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Spain. EstateGuru said by opening in the Portuguese market the company had achieved its next milestone in its long term strategy.
DeFi protocols such as Compound, Dharma, and Uniswap are among the most advanced tools of Ethereum-based P2P lending solutions. Another interesting use case built on Ethereum is the decentralized prediction market platform Augur (REP).
At the same time, there’s been a remarkable increase in the impact investment market — investments made with the intention to generate positive social and environmental impact alongside a financial return — with the Global Impact Investing Network valuing the global market at $502bn.
Commonwealth Bank has invested in Klarna, a Swedish rival to Afterpay, and will bring the European buy now, pay later provider to Australia. The deal accompanies the bank’s continued investment in its digital capabilities.
CommBank invested US$100 million in the fintech’s US$460 million funding round, announced yesterday, which values the company at $5.5 billion. The bank will also become Klarna’s exclusive partner in Australia and New Zealand.
Online lender Prospa Group Limited (ASX: PGL) has established its first warehouse facility specifically to fund New Zealand small business loans. According to a note from Prospa, the 3-year facility has an initial capacity of NZ $45 million.
Australian challenger, Judo Bank, has completed the biggest single funding round in the country’s history by raising $400 million, writes Jane Connolly.
StartupSmart reports that the finance – which is double Judo’s original target for the round – came from new institutional investors, including Bain Capital Credit and Tikehau Capital, along with existing investors.
Indifi, a Gurgaon-based startup that offers loans to small and medium-sized businesses and also operates an online lending marketplace, has raised 1,450 million Indian rupees ($21 million) in a new financing round to expand its business in the country.
Indifi, which has raised about $34 million in venture capital to date, has also relied on debt to grow and finance loans on its platform. Currently, it’s in about $21 million in debt, Alok Mittal, co-founder and managing director of Indifi, told TechCrunch in an interview.
A typical loan processed by Indifi is of about $7,000 in size. Overall, the startup offers between $1,400 to $70,000 in capital to businesses.
According to a recent survey, in Singapore digital banking has some pent up demand. JD Power has published a brief retail banking satisfaction study and, according to their numbers, 65% of consumers are interested in opening digital bank accounts. This is an increase from the year prior where 52% of surveyed individuals expressed similar digital banking interest.
News Comments Today’s main news: SoFi has raised $500M. Morningstar accelerates acquisition of DBRS. PayPal hits $10B in small business loans milestone. Lendy goes into administration. Klarna launches installment loan app for all retailers. New York overtakes London as financial hub of the world. Today’s main analysis: LendingClub’s advance shareholder meeting presentation (A MUST-READ). Today’s […]
Morningstar accelerates acquisition of DBRS. This is an interesting acquisition. Consolidation in the credit ratings business means fewer ways to analyze a potential investment. It will strengthen Morningstar’s reputation and analysis technology, but investors will lose in the long run since analysis information will come from fewer quarters.
Who’s lending to small businesses? Alternative lenders continue to take more percentage of small business lending. Banks have all but handed this sector over to Kabbage, OnDeck, and the rest.
New York overtakes London as world’s financial hub. This is based on a survey, not actual objective statistics or data. But it’s still interesting. There is a lot of anxiety surrounding Brexit. The Big Apple can now be known for something else.
Online lending startup Social Finance, better known as SoFi, took another tack this morning, quietly announcing in a press release that it has closed half a billion dollars in a single funding round led by Qatar Investment Authority, a Doha, Qatar-based private equity and sovereign wealth fund.
The company said it will use the capital to invest in growth and add some muscle to its $2.3 billion balance sheet. The company’s valuation will stay about the same as with the last funding round two years ago, which was led by Silver Lake.
Social Finance Inc., a financial technology startup, is close to signing a deal that would put its name on a new NFL stadium under construction in Inglewood, California, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The deal for the stadium, which would be home to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers, hasn’t been signed so figures could change. But currently the agreement would have SoFi pay $20 million a year for 20 years, these people added.
Morningstar, Inc. today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire DBRS, the world’s fourth-largest credit ratings agency, for a purchase price of $669 million. The combination of DBRS with Morningstar Credit Ratings’ U.S. business will expand global asset class coverage and provide an enhanced platform for providing investors with leading fixed-income analysis and research.
The small business lending market is booming and it’s not the traditional banks that are benefiting. Fintechs are leading the way. Case in point: PayPal. It hit a milestone, announcing it has provided more than $10 billion in loans to more than 225,000 small businesses around the globe.
The $10 billion mark comes a little more than five years after PayPal made its first loan. Today it has issued more than 650,000 loans through financing programs in the U.S., UK, Australia, Germany, and Mexico.
Now they are hitting some impressive quarterly milestones, originating $1 billion per quarter, so their next $10 billion is surely to happen even quicker.
deBanked recently highlighted the leading small business originators which showed that PayPal is solidly the leader when it comes to originations in the US. OnDeck which is second to PayPal reported originations of $636 million in Q1 2019. According to data provided by Funding Circle on their website, which includes their lending globally, they have originated $9.5 billion in loans.
LendingClub (NYSE:LC) has posted a presentation apparently in preparation for its annual shareholder meeting which is scheduled to take place on June 5, 2019.
Mortgage fees in the first quarter had a median of $2,059 for purchase loans and $1,807 for refinancing.
The more offers a borrower receives, the greater the potential for savings. For people receiving five offers, the median spread between the highest and lowest fees offered was $2,045.
7% of new purchase borrowers and 8% of refinance borrowers were offered $0 in fees.
15% of new purchase borrowers and 19% of refinance borrowers paid less than $500 in fees.
28% of purchase borrowers paid less than $1,000 in mortgage fees, with 35% of refinance borrowers also paying less than $1,000 in fees.
At the high end, 13% of purchase borrowers were hit with fees over $5,000, 3% over $10,000 and 0.21% over $20,000.
For refinance loans, 12% were offered upfront fees over $5,000, 1% over $10,000 and 0.02% over $20,000.
TopConsumerReviews.com recently gave their highest rating to LendingTree, an industry leader among providers of Home Loans, for another consecutive year.
First, a quick summary of headlines. The Fed agreed to keep interest rates on hold for longer according to the minutes of the April meeting. The decision is expected to help inflation pick up towards the Fed’s 2% target. The Fed’s latest ‘dot plot’, shown below, indicates Fed governors on the margin expect lower rates in the 2019 to 2021 timeframe suggesting lower growth expectations.
Source: PeerIQ, US Federal Reserve, Bloomberg
“…what we see is right now the fundamentals of the economy in the U.S. on a global basis and the fundamentals of consumers and unemployment being low as you mentioned, means that credit is in good shape and we just don’t see that changing a lot.”
Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America
Kroll also released a report on the Evolution of the Consumer Loan Marketplace Sector to lay out how the sector has matured over time. The report comes on the heels of a Fitch report that said that declining credit enhancements in MPL deals is unwarranted.
Small business clients are increasingly looking to alternative lenders for financing. There are numerous draws for SMB clients: a fast and easy application process, quick funding, and a higher chance of being approved for a loan.
According to the Federal Reserve’s Small Business Credit Survey, the main reason clients applied for funding from an online lender was the speed of decision / funding (63 percent) followed by a better chance of being funded (61 percent).
The number of small business owners who turn to alternative lenders for funding has increased steadily since 2016.
RedWeek.com, the largest online community for timeshare rentals and resales, announced a new partnership with Affirm that will give travelers the flexibility to pay for their vacation rentals in simple, monthly installments.
Travelers can check eligibility for a loan online before booking their next trip and, after entering five simple pieces of information, receive a real-time decision without impacting their credit scores.
Once upon a time, if you wanted to borrow money for your business you had to make a trip down to your local bank branch or credit union to see if you could qualify for funding. However, a new generation of business lenders has since emerged to offer business owners an alternative way to secure capital.
2. Invoice Financing
Is your business structured in a way so that it gets paid after delivering services or goods to customers? If so, invoice financing is an alternative lending option that might work for you.
3. Microloans
Microloans are issued through non-profit organizations aptly named microlenders. Although the maximum loan size is generally $50,000, the average microloan issued to a small business or startup is a much smaller $6,000.
CoreLogic today launched the new CoreLogic Teletrack platform, offering lenders and credit issuers superior access and greater insight into alternative credit data through one of the industry’s largest alternative credit databases. The new platform and solution combine upgraded services, data, products and an analytics engine to help users discover new market segments, make smarter risk decisions and grow their business throughout the credit lifecycle.
Intuitsaid Tuesday it had agreed to buy analytics company Origami Logic, effectively doubling down on the use of customer data to enhance its marketing.
The company can cross-sell its own products as well as products and services from third parties — like a Capital One Platinum Credit Card or a loan from Lending Club — based on what it knows about you.
US online banking platform Azlo and online small business lender announced the launch of Mission Street Capital, a new program that provides small businesses banking with Azlo access to loans through Kabbage up to $250,000.
Small business lending marketplace BitX Funding has struck an alliance with transportation equipment finance company Pelagic Capital, the companies said in a press release Tuesday (May 28).
On the Dark Web, your social security number is only worth (CB Insights Email), Rated: A
Not many know this discount bulk retail giant also provides a loan marketplace to shop for the best mortgage rate. While open to all, Costco members can access discounts on lending services. Loan options include home equity, fixed and adjustable rate, FHA, VA, USDA, and jumbo. Note, this lender’s services are strictly digital so you will not be able to meet up with someone face-to-face.
Though P2P lendings are not low investment choices; with Fast invest, it is possible. You can start investing here with just 1 pound to accelerate cash flow. The website allows investors to deposit amounts and based on that suggests loans. After you choose the loan pack as an investor, the site assigns borrowers. Once the borrower takes the loan from you, the site starts increasing your invested amount with the applied interest rate of up to 14% till the payback period. It also comes with buyback guarantee if the borrower fails to return your loan in the payback period.
Real estate crowdfunding sites provide you the opportunity to invest in third-party properties. Fundrise is the best crowdfunding platform to go for that lets you start investing with only $500. With a year’s saving, you can start investing in this crowdfunding site and gain 8.7 to 12.4% annual returns based on your deposited amount.
BFS Capital today announced the appointment of Fred Kauber as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer. As a member of the management team reporting to CEO Mark Ruddock, Kauber will be responsible for leading a customer-focused product and technology organization whose mission is to help BFS re-imagine financial services for small businesses.
Damian Webb, Phillip Sykes and Mark Wilson of RSM Restructuring Advisory have been appointed as joint administrators of three companies within the Lendy Group: Lendy Limited, Saving Stream Security Holdings Limited and Lendy Provision Reserve Limited.
Before administration, over £90 million of loans defaulted out of £160 million of outstanding loans. The collapse of Lendy means investors had lost millions of pounds.
BondMason, an online savings and investments platform that sources investments from across the peer-to-peer (P2P) market for its clients, has reportedly announced it is officially shutting down its P2P lending business.
Peter Briffett, CEO of U.K. FinTech Wagestream, told PYMNTS in a recent interview that the cash flow constraints of having to wait for a single day to receive wages every month can be dangerous to the financial wellness of professionals. A single, expensive incident can force these professionals into debt via bank overdrafts or credit cards — or worse, Briffett said, into the payday loan cycle.
The company recently announced a $51 million funding round for its solution — led by Balderton Capital and Northzone, which provided equity, and Shawbrook, which provided debt.
And that is where microfinance is moving – to an era where individuals and businesses can get financial services from other individuals and business entities. Technology is providing tools for matching borrowers and lenders. And even more important – the tools for creating contracts that execute accordingly.
Announced Tuesday, the Klarna app presents the retailer’s site with a footer containing a Pay with Klarna button. When selecting that option, the shopper can pay for purchases in four equal installments with no interest or fees. The app is open to any merchant, not just those already affiliated with Klarna, the company says. These could include retailers without an alternative-payment option or that use a competitor’s program.
Stabelo’s model is to pool capital from institutional investors in exchange for fixed-income securities and uses the money raised to lend mortgages directly to homebuyers. The firm offers mortgages in conjunction with Avanza Bank, which is the biggest online lender in Sweden, and owns just under 20% of Stabelo.
A survey by consultancy and advisory firm Duff & Phelps, involving 180 executives in asset management, private equity, hedge funds, banking and brokerage, found that confidence in the UK capital has plummetted in the last year.
Just 36 percent ranked London as the foremost global financial hub— a year-on-year drop of 17 percent. With New York rising 10 percent, ranked by more than half (52 percent) as the world’s new financial powerhouse, the two cities have “switched places”.
Major crypto exchange Binance has partnered with decentralized crypto lending platform Cred to bring its services to the Binance ecosystem, according to a press release publishedon May 29.
As part of the agreement, Cred will migrate some of its ERC-20 LBA tokens to Binance’s mainnet, Binance Chain, and become the official lending and borrowing platform for the decentralized financial ecosystem.
Cryptocurrency asset management company BlockFi announced that its interest-bearing accounts now support the gemini dollar (GUSD) in a post published on May 29.
Per the announcement, GUSD deposits will see a yearly yield of 6.2%, paid in the stablecoinin question. BlockFi notes that it also offers GUSD as a U.S. dollar funding option and as collateral from institutional cryptocurrency borrowers.
São Paulo
Brazil has more fintech start-ups than any other Latin American country, and most of them are consolidated in the country’s financial centre, São Paulo.
Lithuania
One country poised to see an explosion of opportunities after Brexit is Lithuania. In February of this year, the country saw around 100 British financial companies apply for a licence in the country.
Estonia
Estonia has one of the highest rates of start-ups per capita in Europe. According to Startup Genome, 29 percent of all jobs created by these start-ups are within the country’s fintech industry.
Frankfurt
Home to the European Central Bank and more than 200 banks – most of which are foreign – Frankfurt plays an important role in the EU’s financial system.
Bengaluru
Bengaluru (previously Bangalore) is anticipated to become one of the next big tech hubs. One of Asia’s fastest growing start-up ecosystems, the city is home to 438 fintech start-ups and has been dubbed the ‘Silicon Valley of India’.
Nexo claims their key business model “is unchanged” but that the company is:
“actively exploring new avenues to maximize token utility and investor value.” The company also claims their ultimate goal is to become “a multi-billion dollar financial institution.”
Apolitical, a peer-to-peer lending platform for governments, unveiled its list of the world’s 100 most influential individuals on gender equality on Wednesday. It recognized politicians, activists and academics, among others, who were shaping gender policy in 2019.
According to Adrienne Church, General Manager at small business lender Prospa, venturing into an unfamiliar type of lending may be worrying – but it is also necessary as the lending market expands, and the property market remains as unpredictable as it inevitably always is.
Agritech startup TaniGroup, which operates agriculture e-commerce TaniHub and peer-to-peer lending provider TaniFund, today announced it raised a US$10 million Series A round of financing led by Openspace Ventures with participation from Intudo Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, and The DFS Lab.
In February of this year, the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or “OJK”) issued an updated checklist for peer-to-peer lending (“P2P lending”) platform providers (“Checklist”) registering with the OJK or applying to the body for a business license or change of ownership. The new Checklist introduces several changes to the previous checklist issued in October 2018. We highlight the key material changes and new requirements introduced by the Checklist.
Qatar Investment Authority has led an investment of more than $500 million in SoFi, a mobile-first personal finance firm. The investment values the company at $4.3 billion on a pre-money basis, according to a release from the fund.
We all know that Kenya revolutionized mobile payments for the developing world and brands like M-Pesa continue to lead the market, but what about mobile lending? According to Creditinfo Kenya, 93 percent of all mobile loans originate from regulated financial institutions, and there are around five million borrowers and each has an average of 5.89 loans.
Home Capital is a specialty finance company that primarily deals in mortgages. The company typically deals with borrowers who don’t meet normal bank requirements. It offers traditional mortgages and consumer lending as well as securitizing insured mortgages and offering home equity lines of credit.
News Comments Today’s main news: Affirm raises $300M. LendingClub charged with privacy violation. Funding Circle issues 187M GBP securitization. Zopa legacy portfolio drags. Fellow Finance facilitates 18.2M euros in March loans. Today’s main analysis: March 2019 debt report from LendingTree (A MUST-READ). Today’s thought-provoking articles: Interview with SoFi CEO Anthony Noto. The slowing U.S. economy. […]
PayPal invests in blockchain startup. Is this dipping the toe in the water? Will we see PayPal taking crypto payments any time soon? Or is this a one-time investment?
Earnin under investigation in New York. Given the sentiments on payday lenders, whether or not you consider Earnin in that category, this was bound to happen.
Affirm, the consumer credit startup led by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, has raised around $300 million in Series F funding at a $2.9 billion post-money valuation, Axios has learned from multiple sources.
Flush with a monstrous funding round, this San Francisco-based fintech company plans to ramp up its hiring from 580 employees to 850 by the end of the year – and the bulk will be in the Bay Area.
LendingClub, a peer-to-peer lending company, was charged with failing to deliver adequate privacy notices to consumers required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s Privacy Rule and Regulation P. The FTC’s complaint alleged that “LendingClub violated these rules by failing to provide its customers with clear and conspicuous notice before collecting consumers’ financial data and by failing to deliver the notice in a way that ensured that consumers received it.” Customers were instead forced to follow a series of links before being able to review the privacy policy, a method the FTC deemed to be improper.
After a brief respite in mid-2018, the debt-to-income ratio for consumer debt rose once more, reaching 25.41% by the end of 2018. That falls just shy of the all-time high of 25.49% set one year earlier.
Household wealth saw a $5 trillion decline last quarter
Losing $5 trillion of wealth may sound disastrous, but that’s what happened to American households last quarter. According to the Federal Reserve, total net worth of U.S. households fell from $108 trillion to $104.3 trillion in the last quarter of 2018. The loss was the biggest quarterly drop since the depths of the great recession of 2008.
Announced today, PayPal has joined the extension of a Series A funding round in Cambridge Blockchain, a startup that helps financial institutions and other companies manage sensitive data using shared ledgers.
Neither PayPal nor Cambridge Blockchain disclosed the investment amount, but recent filings with the SEC indicate that Cambridge Blockchain has raised a total of $3.5 million in new equity from several investors over the past nine months. That follows the $7 million close of its Series A in May of 2018, and brings the total capital raised to $10.5 million.
As early wage access programs such as Even, PayActiv, FlexWage, ZayZoon and DailyPay gain traction, some other apps are copying their style while using a more traditional payday-loan model — sparking attention from law enforcement agencies in the process.
That’s what happened to Earnin, which is often referred to and bills itself as an early wage access provider, which give employees access to their paychecks before they are deposited. The New York Department of Financial Services launched an investigation of the firm over concerns it may be skirting state lending laws by, among other things, requiring tips from users in lieu of disclosing fees.
Leading crypto lending platform BlockFi recently announced that their Interest Account customers received their first interest payment for their Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH] deposits.
Since their public launch on March 5, BIA has grown by over 400% and counting. Approximately 75% of BIA clients have a balance of less than 5 BTC or 150 ETH. Their median account balance is $7,000 USD.
Former Wall Street trader Edgar Fernandez used some of his bitcoin as collateral to borrow nearly $100,000, a move that let him keep his cryptocurrency and avert a tax bill on the newly acquired cash.
Genesis Capital, a cryptocurrencies lender in Jersey City, New Jersey, an affiliate of Genesis Trading, says it handed out more than $1.1 billion in cash loans and borrowed virtual cryptocurrencies in 2018. That total volume doubled in the last quarter of 2018 from the volume of the previous two quarters. Other lenders have also said they are doing more transactions, including Nexo, a cryptocurrencies lender that says it has loaned $330 million since launching last April.
The asset tokenization company, Atomic Capital, is making a very aggressive loan offer in the crypto lending field. Back on Wednesday, the firm will be giving USD loans for 85% of the value of the Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) used as collateral. In this way, the firm will be offering the most generous loan-to-value (LTV) in the space.
Just to put it into comparison, BlockFi offers a maximum LTV of 50%. Celsius Network, meanwhile, is giving customers 25%, 33% or 50% LTV.
Atomic will be charging interest rates of 11% and 13%. This is much more than the 4.5% or 8.95% that other competitors offer.
Novo has raised $4.8 million in venture seed financing to make banking accessible for small businesses by launching no-fee FDIC-insured digital banking.
Blend is aiming to expand its customer base of banks and credit unions with a digital account opening product that it says takes some customers as little as two minutes to complete.
The account comes in addition to the mortgage products the digital loan origination fintech already offers and can stand on its own or be integrated as a package, the company said Tuesday.
Success Member Inc.: It is the leading online loan marketplace that connects consumers with banks, credit partners and multiple lenders both nationally and internationally. They offer training with an expert to this industry of 33 years, along with a lifetime one-on-one dedicated support.
Tradeweb Markets Inc. raised $1.1 billion in the second-largest U.S. initial public offering this year, after again increasing the number of shares it was selling and then pricing them above the marketed range.
Tradeweb’s IPO is also the biggest for a financial services company in the U.S. since online lender GreenSky Inc. raised $874 million in May.
A class action lawsuit has been filed in California against Direct Lending Investments, LLC (DLI), Brendan Ross, Bryce Mason, Frank Turner, Rodney Omanoff, and Quarterspot Inc. alleging breach of contract, breaches of fiduciary duty, aiding and abetting breaches of fiduciary duty, and fraudulent inducement.
Pagaya, which manages money using algorithms created with artificial intelligence, has raised $25 million in a series-C financing round led by Oak HC/FT, a health care and financial technology venture firm.
The fund raise will support the company’s move into real estate, corporate credit, mortgages, and other asset classes.
White Oak Commercial Finance (“White Oak”), an affiliate of White Oak Global Advisors, today announced the appointment of Andrew Bae to Director of ABL Originations, concentrating on Texas and the Southwestern U.S. region. Mr. Bae brings nearly 20 years of experience in commercial finance, most recently leading the establishment of the Dallas office for ExWorks Capital, a senior secured debt fund.
FUNDING Circle has entered the securitisation market for the third time, with a £187m portfolio of UK loans originated by the peer-to-peer business lender.
Alternative asset manager Pollen Street Capital is the equity sponsor of the deal, having backed Funding Circle’s last securitisation eleven months ago.
While Funding Circle operates in the UK, the US, Germany and the Netherlands, the loans included in the securitisation are just from the UK.
P2P GLOBAL Investments (P2PGI) has blamed its poorly-performing legacy Zopa portfolio for its latest net asset value (NAV) dip.
The alternative finance-focused investment trust generated a NAV of just 0.31 per cent in February 2019, down from 0.45 per cent in January, and 0.75 per cent in December. This brings the trust’s annualised NAV to 3.7 per cent.
Starling Bank recently raised £75 million to fund a European expansion. As part of that announcement, the UK-based challenger said it had signed on three new clients to its banking as a service.
According to Starling, it has 20 institutional clients on its BaaS platform, which it launched in August 2018. Payment volume through the service is doubling month over month.
Digital challenger bank Monzo crowned a bumper year in 2018 by coming first for customer service in an independent survey, stealing the title from regular winner First Direct. But will its growing legion of coral card-carriers ever pay for its expanding array of services?
The bank, which is now testing a new paid-for premium offering, thinks they might just do so. ‘Monzo Plus’ – as it is being called – even allows users paying a monthly fee to have Monzo cards in colours other than its famous ‘hot coral’ colour.
There are now just over 48 hours left to make the most of the annual tax breaks on offer in an individual savings account (Isa). This year’s £20,000 allowance expires at midnight on April 5 and you can’t carry it over so it’s a case of use it or lose it.
Through Monevo, you’ll be matched with loans of up to $100,000 with interest rates ranging from 3.99% to 35.99% APR; finding this many competitive options could take you hours to do individually. With Monevo, you can do it in about 60 seconds.
The administrators of WageDay Advance, which went under in February, have started contacting thousands of former customers owed compensation through being mis-sold loans by the company to urge them to join a growing list of creditors.
Compared with Wonga, WageDay was more of a piranha fish than a shark – but the problems it has created aren’t all that different.
THIS WEEK is the busiest of the year for ISA providers and ISA savers alike. As the end of the tax year approaches, investors and savers are rushing to make the most of their annual ISA allowance, while ISA managers scramble to convince them that theirs is the right product.
People are still making money from property and always will, sometimes lowering their exposure by jointly investing with friends and family, or looking at peer-to-peer lending. Investing locally can give first time investors more confidence as they know their own postcodes, and can keep an eye on what’s going on.
Finastra today announced the appointment of Sharon Doherty, as Chief People Officer. Doherty joins from Vodafone, where she held the position of Global Organization and People Development Director. In her new role at Finastra she will have global responsibility for making Finastra the most loved and inclusive employer in the Fintech industry.
China is expected to start piloting a registration program for online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in the second half of this year. Regulators plan to start requiring P2P lenders in pilot cities, located in more developed regions, to register with the monitoring system. Regional and national players will have to meet certain requirements on registered capital, risk reserves, and lender risk compensation in order to be registered in the system. Regulators aim to roll out the national registration system by 2020.
In March Fellow Finance investors funded business and peer-to-peer loans worth around 18,2 million euros. Cumulative loan volume grew over 415 million euros and the total number of investors grew to 12 031. You can always check the real-time peer-to-peer lending statistics on our website: www.fellowfinance.com/for-investor/statistics.
In a Nutshell: In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending arose as an alternative to credit offered by traditional banks. At the same time, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin also emerged. Now, CoinLoan is bringing the two together through its P2P lending platform that lets borrowers use cryptoassets as collateral for obtaining fiat (or traditional) currency. Lenders provide capital with a guarantee from CoinLoan that they will be repaid in full. Borrowers gain access to funds without needing to dispose of their cryptoassets or prove their creditworthiness.
Valerie Kay, Chief Capital Officer at LendingClub, is responsible for overseeing LendingClub’s Investor Group. She addresses the need for diversity, inclusion, mutual respect and collaboration. She emphasizes the vital importance of diversity to drive better workplaces, happier customers and more profits.
Andrea Gellert, Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of online small business lender OnDeck, says she sees good progress being made by Fintechs in finding female candidates at all levels including C-Suite and board positions. She points out, “There are more female founders than there used to be. We are moving at a much more accelerated pace than previous industries did in terms of female management.”
Onfido, the global identity verification provider, today announced it has raised $50M in funding, bringing the total investment in the company to over $100M.
Sydney-based digital bank Volt promises to offer a faster more personalised service than the country’s big four incumbents – National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and Westpac.
Melbourne-based small business bank Judo launched last June lends between A$250,000 to A$5,000,000, and is process of applying for a banking license from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
According to research from small business lender OnDeck Australia, which involved a survey of 331 business with an annual turnover of less than $5 million, 25 per cent of SMEs plan to seek additional finance over the next 12 months.
India currently has about 30 online P2P lending platforms. Some of these are Faircent, i2ifunding, Lendbox etc. In 2018, as many as 11 P2P players received the RBI licence to operate as an NBFC – P2P company. RBI in its master directions has defined NBFC – P2P as a non – banking institution which carries on the business of a peer – to – peer lending platform. The estimated P2P lending to be generated in India over the next 5 years is pegged at around $ 4 bn. Whereas in China, the P2P lending book currently is around $ 100 bn.
SINGAPORE-based leading SME lending platform Validus Capital (Validus) and Lighthouse Canton, an independent asset management and family office advisory services firm, jointly announce the reopening of the LCV Trade Finance Fund (the Fund) with additional capacity of US$14.8 million (S$20 million; RM60 million).
OnDeck (NYSE: ONDK), the leader in online lending to small business, today announced it has completed the transaction combining its Canadian operations with Evolocity Financial Group (Evolocity), a Montréal-based online small business lender. The combined companies are majority owned by OnDeck.
In the past few years, over 300 fintech startups have been born in Mexico alone, coming in just second to Brazil, which boasts nearly 400 startups in its own fintech sector.
News Comments Today’s main news: SoFi to roll out crypto trading with Coinbase. Walmart now offers Affirm loans. Funding Circle fund ups the ante on buyback strategy. Orca launches IFISA. LendDenClub cross 1 million borrowers, lenders milestone. Today’s main analysis: 2019 securitization update. How marketplace lending is a growing and dynamic global market. (A MUST-READ) Today’s thought-provoking articles: The 2009 […]
SoFi to offer crypto trading through Coinbase partnership. This is the most interesting news story of the week. The largest cryptocurrency exchange partnering with one of the largest marketplace lenders to offer cryptocurrency trading will be a huge feather in the cap for both companies.
Walmart now offers Affirm loans. We saw this one coming. In fact, I wonder why it took so long. Affirm snagging Walmart as a customer will catapult it to PayPal status fast.
The housing market of 2009 compared to today. A LendingTree analysis showing the markets where median home values have increased the most and the least. California is hot. The Mid-Atlantic and Eastern states are not.
Why a small bank launched a separate digital-only branch. I think we’re going to see more of this. As more consumers demand digital banking, and Millennials are all over it, more brick-and-mortar banks will see the opportunity to launch digital-only branches as separate entities. It’s actually a smart move.
Fintech startup SoFi — known for its online lending services — is partnering with major United States-based crypto exchange Coinbase to roll out crypto trading support, according to a CNBC report Feb. 26.
The race to zero-fee exchange-traded funds has found an unlikely competitor: Online lending and personal finance platform SoFi, which has filed for two index ETFs that will waive management fees for the first year. In making the move to zero-fee ETFs, the online lender is crashing an ETF party dominated by Vanguard and BlackRock‘s iShares.
The new company founded by Mike Cagney, the former embattled chief executive of Social Finance, plans to announce a $65 million funding round on Wednesday, bolstering firm’s expansion into other financial services, including wealth management.
With the new venture, Cagney is using some of the strategies from his tenure at SoFi — like diversification into areas typically only occupied by traditional banks. However, the new company, Figure, is focusing on different customers, and it’s taking steps to avoid scandals similar to the ones that saw Cagney step down from the SoFi helm.
Walmart will offer its customers point-of-sale loans for the first time — both on its website and in nearly 4,000 U.S. stores — under a partnership with the Silicon Valley lender Affirm.
Under the deal, Walmart shoppers will be able to get Affirm loans of three, six or 12 months to finance purchases ranging from $150 to $2,000. The loans are already being offered in Walmart stores, and they will be available to Walmart’s online shoppers in the coming weeks.
The companies announced this morning that Affirm’s financing options would be made available in more than 4,000 Walmart Supercenters across the U.S., and will roll out to Walmart.com in the weeks ahead.
The offering will go live across Walmart Supercenters nationwide, except in Iowa, West Virginia and Puerto Rico, and will be soon available on Walmart.com.
In regulatory news, Square’s ILC charter application has received opposition from 37 community groups. The groups are concerned about Square’s CRA activities and have asked the FDIC to bolster Square’s CRA requirements. Before this letter from community advocates, nearly all of the 15 letters the FDIC received were in favor of Square’s bid. Square is the furthest along the path to getting an ILC charter and its experience will determine whether other FinTechs follow its lead.
Structured Credit Investor magazine explores the challenges facing the maturing marketplace lending sector. Issuers need to distinguish between the borrower experience that they provide and manage liquidity. The article also makes the point that the sector is ripe for consolidation, although we haven’t seen any M&A yet.
2019 Securitization Update
The first two months of 2019 saw 5 securitization deals totaling $1.7 Bn in new issuance. The issuance volume represents a 23% drop over that seen in the first two months of 2018, as the market recovers from the volatility in equity and credit markets seen at the end of 2018. Total securitization issuance now stands at $46.2 Bn, with 147 deals issued to date.
When the real estate bubble burst in late 2008, many Americans saw their home values fall drastically, but a lot has changed in the 10 years since — housing prices have rebounded from their lows during the Great Recession. And though prices are now starting to cool, in many cases, home values have even exceeded their 2006 highs.
On average, median home values have increased by nearly $50,000 across the 50 largest metros in the United States since 2009.
Metros where housing prices have recovered the most since 2009
San Jose, Calif.
Median home value 2009: $638,300
Median home value 2017: $957,700
Median home value change: $319,400
Median unemployment rate change: -6.4%
Median household income change: $32,991
San Francisco
Median home value 2009: $591,600
Median home value 2017: $849,500
Median home value change: $257,900
Median unemployment rate change: -5.4%
Median household income change: $27,889
Los Angeles
Median home value 2009: $463,600
Median home value 2017: $617,100
Median home value change: $153,500
Median unemployment rate change: -5.0%
Median household income change: $11,467
According to the loan comparison website, the median balance of Gen Xers who have auto loans is $18,741 is higher than other age groups. It is 9% more than baby boomers’ $17,185 median balance. This is higher than millennials’ $16,200 and 37 percent more than the lowest median balance of $13,666 held by Gen Z.
Personal loan interest rates, whether you’re considering a loan from a bank, credit union or online lender, generally range from about 6% to 36%. The actual rate you receive depends on factors such as your credit score and history, annual income, existing debt and where you get the loan.
Online lenders offer the lowest starting interest rates on personal loans to borrowers with good to excellent credit.
Source: Nerdwallet
LightStream and Marcus both require a minimum credit score of 660. LightStream accepts joint applications, and one applicant can have a credit score lower than its minimum. SoFi has a slightly higher credit score requirement and requires at least $45,000 in annual income.
Elevate Credit (NYSE:ELVT) announced its quarterly earnings results on Monday, February 11th. The company reported $0.09 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, meeting the Zacks’ consensus estimate of $0.09, Bloomberg Earnings reports. The business had revenue of $207.29 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $212.42 million. Elevate Credit had a return on equity of 15.72% and a net margin of 1.59%. Elevate Credit updated its FY 2019 guidance to $0.55-0.65 EPS.
Hunt Real Estate Capital, which offers financing for all types of commercial real estate, will soon have a new underwriting system to help it originate those loans, as the company is buying a proprietary loan underwriting system from RealtyMogul.
Elevate Credit, Inc. (“Elevate”) today announced that Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer Joan Kuehl has been named the Large Enterprise CIO of the Year by the Dallas ORBIE CIO of the Year Awards. The award honors chief information officers who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership.
The world is bracing for a recession, with the latest data showing in the U.S. expect it to occur by the end of 2021
If those predictions prove true, it will be the first major economic downturn for some of the nation’s leading fintechs. Born out of the ruins of the recession, these startups have enjoyed nearly a decade of success buoyed by strong economic growth, a bull run in the stock market and low unemployment.
Kabbage has been named to the list for five consecutive years and this is its first year in the top five. The private financial technology company, founded in 2009, has 489 global employes and 367 at its U.S. headquarters in Atlanta. Flexibility at work and perks, such as a daily catered lunch and snacks, are among reasons employees appreciate working for Kabbage. Wellness benefits include fitness classes, health equipment onsite, biweekly meditation classes, CPR training, an annual flu shot clinic and sponsoring sports clubs. It also fully pays health benefits for individuals and provides annual bonuses and a 401(k) match. Through its sabbatical program, employees of five years can receive six weeks of paid time off and an additional $6,000. In 2018, Kabbage participated in the Atlanta PRIDE parade and also took a stand against gun violence after the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School. Workers in 2019 will build a Habitat for Humanity home as part of its Kabbage Kares program, which also has supported PAWS Atlanta, Easter Seals and the Epilepsy Foundation.
CrowdStreet, an online marketplace for direct equity investment in commercial real estate (CRE), today launched a streamlined, investor-friendly approach to investing qualified retirement account funds into commercial real estate offerings. This new option makes it easier than ever for individuals to access CRE investments with their self-directed IRAs (SDIRA), thus reducing their investment exposure to a volatile stock market and achieving more independence in managing their investments.
Liquid P2P and Interest Radar are pleased to announce that they have entered into a strategic partnership. The two third-party investing services for online peer-lending giant Lending Club will combine strengths under a single platform to deliver a more comprehensive automated tool with a patent-pending liquidity solution.
Earlier this month Brendan Ross, the CEO of Direct Lending Investments, Inc., sent a letter to investors notifying them that they have suspended withdrawals and redemptions effective February 8, 2019. Lend Academy was able to obtain a copy of this investor letter, dated February 11, that provides some color into what happened. The reason given was the delinquency of a large holding, VOIP Guardian, a telecom receivables factoring company.
Add HSBC to the list of banks partnering with commercial online lenders.
The bank on Tuesday announced a partnership with Neptune Financial, a San Francisco online lender that focuses on businesses with $10 million to $100 million in assets. The bank estimates that, with the access it will get to Neptune customers, the deal represents a $1.5 trillion opportunity.
Venmo, the PayPal-owned peer-to-peer (P2P) giant, debuted a limited-edition rainbow-colored version of its physical card product. The card will function the same as regular Venmo cards, allowing customers to pay wherever Mastercard is accepted, split costs and tips, withdraw funds from select ATMs, and manage their Venmo balance, but it will only be available for as long as supplies last, according to Venmo.
The pace with which we are moving toward the internet of things is “very rapid” but we “can’t have the internet of everyone without the inclusion of everyone,” according to the vice chairman of payments giant Mastercard.
“You have to start focusing on how does the human get involved, and that’s going to be through having a digital identity,” Ann Cairns told CNBC’s Karen Tso on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Today’s marketer on the hot seat is Dana Marineau, Credit Karma’s vice president of brand, creative and communications. People love Credit Karma for its free credit scores, but the company provides so many other free tools. Dana’s team is tasked with elevating the brand beyond just free credit scores, as a place to get help with financial decisions and achieve financial progress. She brings a 15 year experience at EA, working on many of the top sports games in the business.
When Midwest BankCentre, a community bank in St. Louis, launched the digital-first Rising Bank in February, it joined the ranks of other financial companies —generally large players such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and MUFG Union Bank — that have created separate, digital-only brands. Unlike them, the $1.9 billion-asset Midwest hopes to keep a community bank feel at the internet-only unit.
Brex, a San Francisco credit card startup that reached a valuation of $1.1 billion late last year, 22 months after its founding, is launching its second product, a physical credit card for e-commerce companies. Its first card, targeted to venture-backed tech startups, has attracted more than 3,000 customers by providing higher spending limits and simplifying the application process.
YieldStreet — which provides a platform for making alternative investments in areas like real estate, marine/shipping, legal finance, commercial loans and other opportunities that in the past were only open to institutional investors — is today announcing that it has raised $62 million in a Series B round of funding.
For the seventh consecutive year, Guaranteed Rate has the most loan originators of any lender on Mortgage Executive Magazine’s annual list of the “Top 200 Mortgage Originators in America,” including the number one originator.
Guaranteed Rate led the way with 36 originators ranking within Mortgage Executive Magazine’s Top 200, including three of the top five. Shant Banosian of Boston, Mass., was named the nation’s 2018 Top Originator by funding $536 Million in total loan volume.
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has asked a Manhattan federal court to dismiss a lawsuit by a New York financial regulator over its plan to issue banking charters to fintech companies, saying the lawsuit is premature.
Blockchain’s usage is no longer limited to digital crypto currencies, as blockchain databases may be deployed in innumerable circumstances and scenarios, including, for instance, within the financial services and insurance sectors for money transfer, peer-to-peer lending and transfer of securities, as well as automatic execution of contracts.
LoanStreet positions for growth with new hires (LoanStreet Email), Rated: B
After the launch of LoanStreet’s commercial lending product and the announcement of their $6.5 million funding round, LoanStreet – the first fully-integrated platform that streamlines the process of sharing, managing, and originating loans – has appointed three credit union industry veterans to support LoanStreet’s aggressive growth.
These new hires include Mike Doherty, Managing Director and Head of Credit Union Sales; Tony Harter, Business Development Director; and Joe Parvin, Business Development Director.
White Oak Business Capital, Inc. (“WOBC”), an affiliate of White Oak Global Advisors, LLC, has announced that Carol Apicella has joined the firm as Senior Vice President and Senior Business Development Officer. Apicella will be responsible for expanding the firm’s markets in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
The portfolio, an investment trust, of loans originated by Funding Circle lowered its dividend expectations amid lower projected returns last year prompting a discount to its net asset value.
Following a move to a more than 10 per cent discount last year it started share buybacks in a bid to narrow its discount. It has now made additional capital available from its free cash flow to be deployed into share buybacks, the fund said yesterday.
Orca Money is finally launching its long-anticipated Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA). Orca’s spin on the savings vehicle allows investors to spread their money across multiple peer-to-peer lenders (P2P) thus providing a heightened degree of diversification. Additionally, Orca Money conducts due diligence on behalf of IFISA investors.
Currently, the Orca IFISA allows access to 5 P2P platforms: Lending Works, Assetz Capital, Landbay, Octopus Choice and Lending Crowd.
Experian Plc, the world’s biggest credit data firm, said on Wednesday that it had agreed with rival ClearScore to abandon their proposed merger, after Britain’s competition watchdog indicated that it may block the deal.
It’s been a long time coming, but Open Banking is finally spreading through the traditional banking industry, this week with the launch of account aggregation for NatWest customers.
The RBS subsidiary becomes the UK’s 4th bank to let customers connect rival current accounts.
It has been over a year since the Open Banking UK initiative under the Competition and Markets Authority order and Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) was launched and has become one of the industry’s biggest technology and regulatory shake ups in recent years. It is no surprise that the initiative’s first year has seen a relatively low consumer uptake. This has been coupled with reports that consumers’ knowledge of the scheme appears to be markedly low.
In an attempt to bring crypto closer to the mainstream, the London-based fintech startup has announced the launch of Aave Pay.
The app will allow its users to pay their utility bills using digital coins by converting crypto into fiat in real-time using bank transfer facility. The company is claiming that the platform can be used to business expenses as well including employee salaries, income taxes, and other commercial or corporate expenses.
You can invest in peer to peer development loans for the short term or in an Innovative Finance ISA for a longer commitment period, but with the potential to earn tax free returns.
By comparison, a peer to peer lending platform with its own development company will have much more control over its projects and be able to give you more detailed and trustworthy updates.
Failed payday lender Wonga is damaging the finances of thousands of customers “from beyond the grave” because they cannot seek redress for allegedly missold loans as the company was not covered…
It may not feel like it, but some corners of banking are suffering as badly as they did during the depths of the financial crisis. Global volumes of initial public offerings and share placings in January and February have been nearly 60 percent lower than in the same period last year. The numbers are worse than the first two months of 2009. If activity doesn’t pick up soon, it would be worrying evidence of the fragility of investor sentiment.
The hope is that the lull is temporary, and technical. The government shutdown in Washington has gummed up U.S. IPOs. Uncertainty over the U.K.’s future relationship with Europe just drags on. And the December stock-market wobble probably killed off deals that were being planned for the window that traditionally opens between January and the start of the full-year earnings season in late February.
Marketplace Lending – A Growing and Dynamic Global Market (DBRS Email), Rated: AAA
I wanted to share with you a new joint report from our U.S. and European structured finance teams. The new report, attached to this email, analyzes the growth of the marketplace lending market around the globe.
The commentary includes the following topics:
— The evolution in finance, from traditional banking to FinTech.
— FinTech’s influence on marketplace lending around the globe.
— Growth hurdles.
— Securitization considerations.
That’s the case for a large part of the world’s population who can’t get access to a loan from a traditional credit provider — like a bank — creating a world in which the hardest working people don’t always get access to the credit they need. Enova, however, believes it has a solution. The fintech company draws on the power of machine learning and data to offer products that expand access to credit for consumers and small businesses.
Blossom Capital, which has already backed five startups including rental marketplace Fat Lama, today raised $85m which it will use to lead Series A rounds of between $5m and $10m in Europe.
Earn Bitcoins as the interest payments: If you have earned some Bitcoins already, you can put the Bitcoins to earn for you. Lend them out at particular interest rate. You can lend the Bitcoins directly to someone known at a greed interest rate and repayment period. You need to assess trustworthiness of borrower. Peer to peer Bitcoin lending is another way to let the earned Bitcoins earn for you. There are many peer-to-peer lending websites where the borrowers post the borrowing requests. Over these websites, you can act as a lender. It is also possible to fund the small portion of numbers of loans to reduce the risk.
One of the largest providers of peer-to-peer loans in the State has shut down a key part of its business aimed at smaller investors, blaming an absence of regulation in the crowdfunding space.
Grid Finance, which is backed by Enterprise Ireland, wrote to holders of its “Brick” accounts – that facilitate the investment of up to €100,000 – in recent days stating that it would withdraw the offering from the marketplace.
In recent years as China winds down its industrial and manufacturing powerhouse growth, it’s looking to other developed nations to determine which platforms it should invest in and pave the way to sustained economic growth. As most other major developed nations have done over the past century, financial services and engineering have been a very profitable platform and companies in China are quick to launch their own services to capitalize on the triple-digit growth in online financial services exhibited since 2003.
Similar to Hexindai (HX), which I’ve previously covered as a leading online lender which is capitalizing on the middle class appetite for debt to finance their lives and vacations, Dragon Victory International Limited (LYL) is taking on the crowdfunding segment in the People’s Republic of China. Similar to countless other platforms around the world, the company’s services are around financing new companies and capitalizing entrepreneurs through public funding and they already have over 4.5M users who use their services, a number nearly doubling each year.
More companies will die: As of February 17, only 60 percent of online lending institutions had disclosed their operational information for January 2019, including five problematic platforms.
However, the current asset quality of the online lending industry has improved significantly according the data from firms that did report.
As of the end of January 2019, the accumulated amount of the online P2P online loan industry was about 7.78 trillion yuan ($1.16 trillion). The total loan amount in January was 91.4 billion yuan ($13.61 billion), down 55.1 percent year-on-year and down 1.3 percent from the previous month.
Further consolidation of industry players is certain. Some experts quoted in media reports predict that the scale of future online loans will continue to shrink because of regulation.
Aoma Electric issued a letter of concern to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on February 14, attributing the decision to the broader economic slowdown, and a high number of overdue loans.
Panda Gold Control in 2018 was also dragged down by its P2P business, and expects a net loss of 41.16 million ($6.13 million) to 57.63 million yuan ($8.58 million) in 2018. Faced with the uncertainty of the P2P sector, Panda Gold Control chose to divest.
Launched on Dec. 2, BHB claims to offer an ethereum-based solution for peer-to-peer lending, but by Jan. 18, local media reports were already accusing the project of operating an illegal pyramid scheme. Now, CoinDesk is able to reveal inconsistencies in the information provided about its founding team that further suggest something may be amiss at the China-based project.
However, the image of Bobby White used in BHB’s marketing materials is identical to that of an economics professor at China’s Tsinghua University named Alexander White. Meanwhile, the image of Gregory Moss is the same as one used by a philosophy professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, who is also named Gregory Moss.
Tencent-backed online brokerage firm Futu Securities has set the terms for its US initial public offering (IPO) to raise up to $130 million, which will value the company at more than $1 billion. The company previously set its target at as high as $300 million when it filed for the US listing in December.
Chinese tech behemoth, Tencent, owns over 38% of the company, has shown interest in purchasing up to 25% of the new shares issued.
Like the ombudsman’s office, ASIC has also made information available to educate consumers and advisers, including on its MoneySmart Borrowing Basics and Peer-to-Peer Lending sites.
Is any flexibility possible, Shiel wonders, with a peer-to-peer lending model in which the borrower likely doesn’t know who is providing the funds?
LenDenClub, one of India’s fastest growing peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, recently crossed an important landmark with more than 1,00,000 borrowers and lenders on its platform. The breakdown of borrowers to lenders is 83,300 and 16700, respectively. The company crossed this milestone by keeping up with latest market trends, and saw an increase in the use of its product InstaMoney, which was launched in June 2018.
Today, thanks to the ongoing digitization, borrowing has become as easy as it can get in India. For contrast, all it takes now is the touch of a few buttons, answers to a few verification-related questions, and anyone can receive a loan in a matter of hours or days, if not minutes. And all of this is without any collateral and while enjoying the comfort of your home. Now, compare this with taking a day off to go to the bank, doing extensive paperwork, visiting frequently to check the progress of your loan application, and ultimately, getting your application rejected because of the loan officer’s misjudgement. All while wasting two months of time in the constant to and fro and taking multiple days off from your office.
It is beyond doubt that the advent of fintech startups has altered the game of lending in India. It has become both simpler and convenient to borrow using their revolutionary approaches driven by state-of-the-art technologies. Currently, more than 1,500 fintech startups (of all shapes and sizes) are catering to the Indian market, and more than half of these startups have been launched over the last 3 years. This gives us a clear picture of how lucrative the sector is becoming for our startup ecosystem. But what is essentially fuelling this trend? Let’s find out.
The latest ordinance of the Banning of Unregulated Deposits (UDS) 2019, was passed by the government to provide a comprehensive mechanism to ban UDS as well as to protect the interest of depositors. This is in line with the Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines on the NBFC-P2P sector, issued in October 2017 to regulate the unorganized lending business in the country.
US$102.2m of the total funds raised went to lending fintech companies such as the homegrown Funding Societies.
Fintech investments in Singapore more than doubled to US$365m in 2018 from US$180m in 2017, putting the country amongst the top five fintech markets by funds raised last year in Asia Pacific, behind China, India, Australia and Japan, according to Accenture’s analysis of CB Insights data. The number of deals in the country rose to 71 from 61 in 2017, making it the third busiest market in the region, behind only China and India.
Validus Capital, a Singapore-based SME financing platform, has raised SGD 20.5 million ($15.2 million) in a Series B funding round, led by FMO, a Dutch public-private development bank.
Online payment giant PayPal launched its Working Capital initiative in 2013 as an alternative method for business to access working capital much faster than through traditional means. Many small and medium-sized business (SMB) clients embraced the program and since then the company has advanced more than $6 billion in loans to over 170,000 businesses in the UK, US, Germany and Australia.
PayPal also recently revealed that it has partnered with Konfio, a Mexican online lender that utilizes unconventional data sources to facilitate fast credit assessments, in a deal that will allow PayPal to extend its Business loan and working capital programs to Mexican businesses.
ID Finance, the fintech company operating in Europe and Latin America, saw revenue of $49m in 2018. This represents growth of 236% for the business, which was formally separated from its operations in Russia and CIS region last year.
The company is enjoying particularly strong growth in Latam, one of the world’s fastest growing markets for fintech adoption thanks to high mobile penetration and a sizeable underbanked population – according to the World Bank 61% of Mexico’s population is excluded from the traditional banking system, while 40% of Brazil’s 207m population are blacklisted. The company now has 141 employees in Latam and saw revenue growth of 403% in the region last year.
With the potential for rapid growth and job creation, FinTech firms in Africa have caught the attention of global investors. According to the London Stock Exchange Group’s 2019 “Companies to Inspire Africa” report, which highlights these firms, the FinTech sector has the second highest growth rate representation of technology and telecoms as well as financial services. As it stands, companies in this space represent more than a quarter of 360 featured firms from 32 different countries. Pan-African payments firm Cellulant is among the companies that appeared in the first and second editions of the report.
