Category: PennyMac

United States

Elevate to Collaborate with Mastercard on Credit Card Product for the ‘New Middle Class’ (News Channel 10) Rated: AAA

Elevate Credit, Inc. (“Elevate”), a leading tech-enabled provider of innovative and responsible online credit solutions for non-prime consumers, today announced an agreement to collaborate with Mastercard on the development of a new credit product to expand financial opportunities for the approximately 160 million Americans with low or no credit scores.

Elevate is committed to advancing growth and economic opportunity for these households that it has dubbed the “New Middle Class.”

Marketplace Lending Securitization Tracker Q1 2018 (PeerIQ), Rated: AAA

Seven marketplace lending securitizations priced this quarter totaling $4.3 Bn, the 2nd highest level of quarterly issuance, representing 34% growth YoY. To date, cumulative issuance equals $33.4 Bn across 114 deals.

We observed an unprecedented 21 months of non-stop issuance. Markets remain in a “risk-on” mode and MPL investor appetite continues to grow.

Spreads tightened this quarter, amidst rising rates and increased
volatility, and we saw deals price at record tights. Average spreads at
issuance are tighter in the consumer and student spaces across credit tranches. New issue spreads in the Consumer MPL space on As were tighter by 27 bps and those on Cs were tighter by 107 bps on average. New issue spreads in the Student MPL space were also tighter across the stack, with the Cs seeing a nearly 100bp tightening on average.

SoFi issued the largest consumer and student deals ever seen in the MPL space. SoFi continues to increase deal sizes every quarter with a billion-dollar student deal in 1Q18.

View the full report here.

Inside a Kabbagehead (Banking Exchange) Rated: AAA

Frohwein noted that there are multiple ways that companies can fail when trying to expand their offerings.

1. Trying too long a stretch.

By way of example, Frohwein pointed out that Prosper Marketplace, which offers three- or five-year personal and business loans, tried an expansion in 2016 called Prosper Daily.

2. Cheaping out on brand promotion.

Another error is failing to spend money on the company’s brand. Interestingly, given that the fintech fraternity is a crowd attuned to social media, Frohwein urged listeners to invest real money in their brands. (@KabbageInc, the corporate Twitter handle, has 23,400 followers, while @KabbageRob, Frohwein’s own account, has fewer than 2,000 followers.)

3. Developing customer knowledge.

Frohwein said that all those data connections referred to earlier give Kabbage a strong idea of what its customers look like. Few online lenders have that depth of customer knowledge, he said.

 

How JPMorgan’s CIO decides which startups to partner with, invest in, to buy (Business Insider) Rated: A

Here’s Beer:

“In some cases, we saw in the fintech ecosystem that one of their challenges is the size, scale and complexity of a company like JPMorgan Chase. If you’re trying to build out something in the wholesale payment ecosystem, you’re talking about 200 regulators, $5 trillion dollars we process a day, over 120 currencies and countries. There are multiple layers of complexities considering anti-money laundering rules, fraud requirements and new sanctions. How do you understand that complexity if I’m a startup in the payment space in wholesale?”

These companies could later wind up with an investment from JPMorgan if all goes well.

Here’s why banks need to prioritize digital platforms (Business Insider) Rated: A

With bank earnings season upon us we have seen a continued growth among mobile users at some of the biggest banks; JPMorgan Chase saw active mobile customers jump 13 percent and Wells Fargo saw total active digital users jump 3 percent; mobile banking has become a priority for all banks as the focus has shifted from just offering mobile to increasing engagement on mobile.

99,000 Investors and $ 5.8B in Commercial Properties Now on CrowdStreet (PR Newswire) Rated: A

This fintech partnership could serve as template for small banks (American Banker) Rated: A

New Resource Bank in San Francisco is working with a fintech firm to reach underserved small-business clients.

The $349 million-asset company has been offering asset-based loans to companies with at least $1 million in annual revenue through a partnership with P2Binvestor in Denver, known as P2Bi, since late 2017.

Family Offices: Beware of These Startup Investing Pitfalls (Wealth Mangement) Rated: A

According to PitchBook Data, family offices did $100.6 billion in deals in 2016, compared with $25.1 billion in 2011. These family offices are seeking opportunities that offer better returns than the public market and, therefore, investing in startup companies through longer-term private equity deals.

What Family Offices Get Wrong When They Try to Invest in Startups Alone

In emerging markets, family offices can face a number of challenges when they try to invest in startups.

Most family offices don’t possess specialized knowledge of startups, because the startup ecosystems in emerging markets are very different from the traditional business climate that family offices are used to. Because of limited experience and exposure, they may not always have a comprehensive list of questions or resources at their disposal that would aid them in the decision-making process or to evaluate a deal.

Best Oregon Mortgage Lenders of 2018 (Nerd Wallet) Rated: B

• Flagstar Bank: Best for low down payments
• Bank of America: Best for low down payments
• CitiMortgage: Best for first-time home buyers
• Guild Mortgage: Best for first-time home buyers
• New American Funding: Best for low credit scores
• J.G. Wentworth: Best for low credit scores
• Rocket Mortgage: Best for online experience
• PennyMac: Best for online experience
• U.S. Bank: Best for home equity lines of credit
• Chase Mortgage: Best for home equity lines of credit

United Kingdom

Funding Circle opens IFISA to new investors (Peer2Peer Finance) Rated: AAA

FUNDING Circle has opened its Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) to new investors.

The peer-to-peer business lending platform opened its IFISA to existing users last November but has now said that the tax wrapper, offering projected returns of 7.2 per cent, is open to the wider public.

Mid-sized P2P platforms taking bigger market share (Peer2Peer Finance) Rated: AAA

The peer-to-peer investor’s 2018 Direct Lending Report found direct lenders – which include P2P platforms – facilitated more than £4.5bn of lending in 2017, with the ‘big four’ – Zopa, Funding Circle, RateSetter and LendInvest – making up two thirds.

But loanbook growth at the biggest lenders was up just six per cent last year, while mid-sized lenders saw their lending grow 50 per cent to £1.6bn, according to the report.

The report also looked at the performance of P2P and alternative finance-focused investment trusts, finding that if you had invested the same amount in the main funds – P2P Global Investment, Ranger Direct Lending, VPC Specialty Lending, SQN Secured Income Fund and Honeycomb – last year, you would be down 1.69 per cent.

P2P Lender ArchOver Bridges Finance Gap with New Research & Development Advance (Crowdfud Insider) Rated: A

ArchOver, the UK P2P business lending platform, aims to bridge the funding gap to enable businesses to continue to grow while waiting for their R&D tax claim to be repaid. ArchOver’s Research & Development Advance (RDA) service is reportedly the first provided by a P2P lender funding advances upward of £100,000.

According to ArchOver, only 1.67 percent of national income is currently being spent on R&D compared to an average of over 2 percent across the EU. Government initiatives have been put in place to encourage further investment in innovation in the UK. Under the current system, UK businesses can claim cash repayments of up to 33 percent of their R&D expenditure, but it can take up to six months to receive payment from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). ArchOver aims to help qualifying companies to bridge this gap, and connect them with the money they need to invest in the products and services of the future.

 

Update: Landbay is Set to Close Latest Seedrs Funding Round After Securing More Than £1.6 Million (Crowdfund Insider) Rated: A

UK-based peer-to-peer lender Landbay is set to close its latest equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs later this evening with more than £1.6 million from nearly 285 investors. The funding round was launched last month and quickly secured its initial £1.25 million funding target.

All funds from the latest funding round will be used for lender’s growth, which are:

• Technology – 50%.
• Marketing & Brand Development – 25%.
• General Operating Expenses – 25%.

 

More awareness of Open Banking benefits needed (London School of Business and Finance) Rated: A

The study surveyed 2,000 UK consumers and identified some of the barriers that Open Banking will need to address in order for the initiative to be adopted on a wide scale.

Implications

Security was found to be one of the main issues for UK consumers, with 69% citing this as a top reason for being against the idea of Open Banking, whilst more than 45% cited security issues such as data breaches and identity theft as the main implications of the initiative.

Seedrs: £500 Million in Crowdfunding by 2021 (Crowdfund Insider) Rated: A

Seedrs has raised more than £330 million for smaller firms so far but according to CEO Jeff Kelisky they expect growth to ramp up rapidly by 2021. While 2017 was their best year ever, Seedrs is just getting started.

He expects that before 2020 deals will get larger. In 2017, twenty four crowdfunding offerings were over £1 million. Some of these deals are starting to approach the € 5 million hurdle. In the UK, the European directive on doing a prospectus at € 5 million has become a regulatory speed bump of sorts for crowdfunding platforms. But raising that limit to € 10 million, or perhaps € 20 million, is currently under discussion.

China

Ant Financial’s $ 150bn valuation belies glaring risks for investors (Financial Times) Rated: AAA

Ant Financial’s $150bn valuation belies glaring risks for investors. Alibaba founder Jack Ma and his trusty advisers have pulled off a coup in gaining a $150bn valuation for Ant Financial ahead of a mooted listing next year. It is easy to see how the pitch to investors went.

Chinese P2P Players Yirendai And Hexindai On Making It In China’s Lending Industry (Forbes) Rated: AAA

Yihan Fang: The P2P lending industry is in a different stage now, it went from being very wild to heavy regulation, and after that it will be a more rational industry. Yirendai is in compliance with regulations, implementing minor modifications along the way. Compliance was always the highest priority, and from day one we had a very good business model and didn’t change it along the way. We have high quality customers. We have a good business platform and have used a bank as custodian since 2015, even before the regulations came out. Yirendai also strives for transparency. Regulations are good, because the industry has been quite chaotic since other companies don’t do the same things as we did.

Johnson Zhang: Hexindai has had no negative impact of regulation. The new regulations are focused on petty loans. We don’t touch the petty loans market so we have no impact. In this market, all of the borrowers lack the capacity to repay loans, they just borrow more money to repay existing loans. Unlike these other firms, we offer loans in the range of 20,000 to 200,000 RMB to middle class consumers with a stable income. These are borrowers who are upgrading their social class for a better life. The second part of the regulations restricts financial institutions like banks from providing funds to fintech companies, but we do not rely on any financial institutions. All of our fund sourcing is from individuals. Our company is part of the Beijing Internet Finance Association, which alerts us to upcoming regulations. The China Banking Regulatory Commission governs the P2P industry. Government registration for P2P companies is mandatory this year. Those that fail the process will be shut down. The number of competitors will become smaller.

China Looks to Implement Credit Scoring System Without Giving Top Players too Much Power (Financial Times) Rated: A

China has been looking to create a credit scoring system seen in many developed economies like the U.S. and the U.K.; initially asking 8 top companies to be involved, though they found it hard to form as companies were unwilling to share proprietary data with competitors; the PBoC is now tasked with having a industry wide system that does not favor giants like Alibaba and Tencent.

PPDAI Group: China’s ‘Lending Club’ Is In A Buy Range Now (Seeking Alpha) Rated: AAA

• Net loss was RMB 507.1 million (US$77.90 million) for the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with a profit of RMB 266.0 million in the same period of 2016. More specifically, the loss was due to:
  • Net interest income/(expense) and loan provision losses for the fourth quarter of 2017 was an expense of RMB 13.2 million (US$2.0 million), compared to an income of RMB 3.6 million in the same period of 2016. This was primarily due to a one-time provision of RMB 107.7 million (US$16.3 million) for expected discretionary payments to investors in investment programs protected by the investor reserve funds caused by the increase in delinquency rates.
  • Other income recorded a loss of RMB 694.8 million (US$106.8 million)for the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with income of RMB 124.7 million in the same period of 2016. The loss was caused mainly by an expense of RMB 271.9 million (US$41.8 million) related to the quality assurance fund and an expense of RMB 460.4 million (US$70.8 million) from a fair value change of financial guarantee derivatives due to increased credit risks across the industry which led to upward adjustments to the company’s expected default rate for loans protected by the quality assurance fund and underlying loans in investment programs protected by the investor reserve funds.

Indeed, when we look at the delinquency rate by balance at each quarter, there was a significant jump in every delinquency bucket at 2017 Q4:

As of	15-29 days	30-59 days	60-89 days	90-119 days	120-149 days	150-179 days
March 31, 2015	0.79%	1.75%	1.10%	1.01%	0.87%	0.67%
June 30, 2015	0.88%	1.06%	0.67%	0.54%	0.89%	0.67%
September 30, 2015	0.67%	0.89%	0.61%	0.54%	0.44%	0.35%
December 31, 2015	0.80%	0.93%	0.51%	0.49%	0.39%	0.32%
March 31, 2016	0.62%	0.93%	0.72%	0.61%	0.48%	0.32%
June 30, 2016	0.82%	1.01%	0.63%	0.43%	0.47%	0.44%
September 30, 2016	0.83%	1.11%	0.80%	0.63%	0.49%	0.39%
December 31, 2016	0.63%	0.91%	0.75%	0.79%	0.69%	0.57%
March 31, 2017	0.57%	0.95%	0.79%	0.59%	0.54%	0.51%
June 30, 2017	0.86%	1.11%	0.79%	0.51%	0.55%	0.52%
September 30, 2017	0.89%	1.40%	1.15%	1.02%	0.79%	0.60%
December 31, 2017	2.27%	2.21%	1.72%	1.63%	1.36%	1.20%

European Union

Homelend ICO (HMD Token): Blockchain Mortgage Crowdfunding? (Bitcoin Exchange Guide) Rated: A

Homelend is a mortgage crowdfunding platform built on blockchain technology.

What is Homelend?

Yes, just like we have P2P lending platforms for smaller loans and offers, we now have lending platforms for larger loans – like home mortgages.

The goal of Homelend is to disrupt the $31 trillion global real estate lending market. As of April 2018, Homelend is still preparing to launch. They’ve published a whitepaper online and appear to be preparing for a token sale in the near future.

Spotcap Opens Fintech Fellowship Applications (Crowdfund Insider) Rated: B

Spotcap, an SME focused online lender based in Berlin, announced on Tuesday it has opened applications for its Fintech Fellowship. According to the lending platform, this program offers a £8,000 award to a postgraduate student studying a fintech related course at a UK university. Applications will be open for four months and close on August 1st.

International

HOLD ICO: Cryptocurrency Lending & Investing For Instant Cash? (Bitcoin Exchange Guide) Rated: A

HOLD provides members with unique P2P lending and borrowing capabilities. The platform allows users to leverage their existing cryptocurrency holdings for instant cash advances from other willing users. Through their mobile app and prepaid card, they enable online and offline purchases with over 45 million retailers worldwide and over 3 million ATMs.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin can be used as collateral for cash advances at a competitive rate of 8%, not requiring a good credit history and without geographic restrictions.

HOLD cardholders earn HOLD tokens every time they use their card. On almost all purchases, the HOLD platform will provide a 1% cashback in HOLD tokens, directly into the user’s wallet. The platform will progressively match provided liquidity with cash advances, producing lucrative and low-risk returns of up to 7.5% p.a. for lenders, representing a lucrative money-making opportunity.

Australia

 

Mortgage trust sector has nearly doubled over the past year (Australian Financial Review) Rated: AAA

The size of the mortgage trust sector has nearly doubled over the past year but the quality of underlying loans are healthy with low arrears, research group SQM Research says.

Australian millennials have taken to robo financial advice (Business Insider) Rated: B

In Australia, robo-advice has gained significant recognition among the Australian online share investor population, with 22% saying they are familiar with these services.

Only in the US, where the bulk of innovation in robo-advice is taking place, is familiarity with robo-advice significantly higher (39%).

India

Mumbai-based P2P Lending Platform PaisaDukan Raises $ 650K Through Angel Funding Route (Indian Web2) Rated: A

PaisaDukan.com a P2P Lending marketplace solely owned by Mumbai based FinTech start-up BigWin Infotech, today announced a secured seed funding of USD 650K through Angel funding rout. The fund will be used for marketplace platform and mobile app development.

 

Asia

Homegrown P2P lending platform Funding Societies raised US$ 25m (Singapore Business Review) Rated: AAA

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform Funding Societies has raised US$25m in its oversubscribed Series B funding round, which was led by Softbank Ventures Korea, along with Sequoia India, Alpha JWC Ventures (Indonesia), and Golden Gate Ventures. Qualgro and LINE Ventures also participated.

Its Series B funding round was led by Softbank Ventures Korea and Sequoia India.

Ex-law firm boss fined $ 10,000 for failing to report suspicious deal (The Strait Times) Rated: A

The former director of a Singapore law firm decided to find out more about a “high net worth client” who was buying a house in Sentosa Cove – and discovered she was linked to one of China’s biggest Ponzi schemes involving $10.8 billion.

Kang Bee Leng, 56, failed to notify the authorities that a sum of almost $5.5 million involved in the purchase could have been benefits of criminal activities.

Kang, who was a managing director of Sterling Law Corporation during the offence but has since left the firm, was fined $10,000 on Tuesday (April 17) after pleading guilty to the offence last month.

MENA

Why unbanked Egypt is ripe for a FinTech revolution (ZDNet) Rated: A

World Bank data reveals that the Middle East has the lowest level of bank-account penetration in the world, averaging 14 percent of adults, in line with the in-country figure for Egypt.

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