On Sunday night LendIt 2014 kicked off with a cocktail party on the 46th floor of the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco. sponsored by Lending Club. Then yesterday we had a full day of educational sessions that began with a fascinating keynote presentation by Renaud Laplanche, CEO of Lending Club. In this speech Laplanche made the big announcement that Lending Club has entered into a partnership with Union Bank, a large bank with over $100 billion in assets. This was significant for many reasons, not the least of which is it confirms that Lending Club views banks as partners not competitors essential to their growth.
There were many major announcements yesterday from leading companies in the online lending industry – here is a list of some of them:
Lending Club and Union Bank Enter Into Strategic Alliance
Prosper Marketplace Announces $70 Million Investment Round Led by Francisco Partners
Kabbage Closes $50 Million Series D Led by SoftBank Capital
Freedom Financial Network Secures $110 Million From Aequitas Capital for Growing FreedomPlus(TM) Personalized Lending Platform
Patch of Land Announces Three Partnerships at LendIt
There was also some coverage of LendIt and the industry in the press and blogosphere yesterday:
Banks, hedge funds push into peer-to-peer lending from San Francisco Chronicle
Lending Club teams up with Union Bank as capital floods into online lending from San Francisco Business Journal
Dozens of P2P lenders will hand out $1 trillion in 2025, VC predicts from Venture Beat
LendIt 2014 from Lending Club
LendIt Conference: The State of Alternative Business Lending from Merchant Processing Resource
Day one of LendIt 2014 ended with a bang yesterday with a fantastic presentation from the president of Prosper, Ron Suber. It was an inspirational speech imploring all of us in the industry to do more to spread the word. Our competition is not the banks or each other, he said, it is Education, Awareness and Understanding…EAU. We need to work together to educate the world about the benefits of online lending. Here is a photo of Suber in full swing yesterday afternoon.
Watch Day Two of LendIt 2014 Live on LendIt.TV
Yesterday, we had thousands of people watch LendIt 2014 live from around the world. Today, our live broadcast will begin again at 8:30am PT. Just go to www.lendit.tv to tune into the live broadcast on Ustream. Also, I encourage you to tune in on Twitter by following the hashtag #lendit2014.
You can also check out many more photos of the day yesterday that were uploaded to Twitter. There will likely be many more today.
I am looking forward to another great day at LendIt 2014. I will have a more complete report of LendIt later this week.
