China-based, QuantGroup, has raised $73 million in a Series C funding round led by Sunshine Insurance Group Corporation, Fosun Capital, Guosen Hongsheng Investment Co., Ltd. and other undisclosed investors; QuantGroup is an online financial services platform offering credit products; it evolved from the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator and is led by Zhou Hao with experience at Morgan Stanley, Capital One and Barclays. Source
SmartFunding has raised S$700,000 in a seed funding round led by Fintech Asia Group; the firm is marketing 20% to 30% annual returns for invoice financing investors; the invoice financing business seeks to capitalize on the Singapore market's small and medium-enterprise businesses which account for half of Singapore's GDP and approximately 70% of the country's jobs. Source
The London-based startup that focuses on millennials raised 450,000 British pounds in seed funding from Passion Capital, with participation from Jason Butler; the funds will be used to build out the team and continue product development on Finimize MyLife; the company's Finimize MyLife product is a free online financial advice platform for millennials that provides anyone with a detailed and personalized financial plan guided by research and algorithms. Source
Calypso, a fintech firm that develops software for capital markets, has struck a deal with blockchain consortium R3 to develop applications on its Corda platform; Corda is a distributed ledger platform for managing financial contracts which will be released later this week; Calypso will first build a trade confirmation app to function on Corda; according to Calypso CEO Pascal Xatart, "Our current matching solution is only the beginning." Source
Speaking at StartCon in Sydney, Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of Atlassian, shared his thoughts on the inefficient banking industry in Australia; some of the major problems are the lack of ability to access the data and the ease of being able to switch banks; Cannon-Brookes stated, "The lack of a banking API in Australia is crazy."; Australian banks make approximately AU$1,000 in profit per person, per year and their profits equate to 2.9% of GDP; this is due to the lack of competition and heavy regulations in the banking sector, according to Cannon-Brookes. Source
Capgemini's "World Fintech Report" provides insight on fintech and its current collision with traditional financial service providers; report says that fintech is both overhyped and underestimated; Capgemini points out the success of fintech while noting the industry's small percentage of business versus traditional firms; provides details on how fintech firms are partnering with traditional firms and how fintech is evolving to become a more significant part of traditional firms; highlights the growth potential ahead for the fintech industry; notes how traditional firms are approaching fintech partnerships and investment; says 59.2% of traditional finance firms are developing their own in-house capabilities and 60% are establishing partnerships with innovative fintech firms. Source
eOriginal has added Ron Suber, Prosper Marketplace president, to its advisory board; the digital transaction document management company has been steadily expanding its business in the marketplace lending market; Ron Suber will help support the company's growth as an advocate for its unique digital documentation products also advising the company on the marketplace lending market overall; eOriginal is currently growing and expanding, also adding Jon Barlow, founder and former CEO of Eaglewood Capital Management, to its advisory board and raising $26.5 million in a recent funding round. Source
An investigation regarding fraudulent fundraising from Chinese peer-to-peer lender, Ezubao, has been underway since February 2016; regulators have reported all of the fundraising projects on the site were fraudulent and that the firm collected $7.6 billion from approximately 900,000 investors; Chinese regulators have recovered $1.5 billion in assets which include real estate, jewelry, stocks, cars and helicopters bought for company executives of the parent company Yucheng Group. Source
Orchard published its Weekly Online Lending Snapshot with data through Tuesday of the Thanksgiving holiday week; commentary focuses on increased lending to small businesses and highlights Small Business Saturday which occurred on November 26; the Weekly Snapshot shows publicly traded marketplace lending company returns led by LendingClub with a monthly gain of 22.38% and LendingTree with a monthly gain of 16.09%; UK listed funds all reported losses on a monthly return basis with the VPC Specialty Lending Fund leading losses at -10.38% followed by the P2P Global Investments Fund reporting a monthly loss of -7.12%; the US listed, River North Marketplace Lending Fund has reported a positive monthly gain of 0.83%; in securitizations, SoFi is the latest issuer with the SoFi Professional Loan Program LLC (SOFI-2016-E) priced on November 17. Source
