Legion Capital, a venture capital and advisory firm, has launched a subsidiary called Stage 1 Funding, LLC; the new firm will look to address the demand for small business finance; Joseph B. Hilton of the Hilton Hotel Family will serve as President and they will focus on accounts receivable finance, equipment finance and venture debt or equity. Source
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Initiative Ireland is a new peer-to-peer lending platform; they are planning to raise 2 million euros for startup operations through Ireland's Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme; the firm hopes to provide returns of 5% to 7% per year to investors and total loan savings of 20% to 30% for borrowers versus traditional bank lenders. Source
Chinese regulators raided over 40 companies in China to investigate for illegal activities pertaining to the country's newly disseminated laws; investigators found property agents listing homes that owners had not agreed to sell and providing false information about properties; with a focus on real estate property investing, the investigators also found P2P lenders offering down payment loans after they were recently restricted by regulators. Source
Applied Blockchain has been trialling a system for companies to process their invoices on blockchain and in turn will allow the companies to tap the securitization markets; the current trial is with a UK SME called Emplas that makes windows; "Our platform may now allow for securitization of invoices as the underlying for bond issues," Ben-Ari, Founder of Applied Blockchain, tells Euromoney; "It brings transparency as to the ownership and establishes the provenance of invoices for bond buyers in ways that the existing processes and technology simply did not allow." Source
IRA Financial Group, a New York provider of retirement plan solutions, is offering a self-directed IRA for P2P loan investors; the firm has designed the IRA for P2P lending; loan investments in the self-directed IRA would be tax deferred. Source
Student loan marketplace lender, Earnest, has completed its fourth securitization; Goldman Sachs and Barclays were the lead arrangers; portfolio valued at $174.44 million; the October securitization is the fourth for the year with previous securitization deals in February, May and July. Source
A new association has been formed in the marketplace lending industry with a focus on fraud prevention; the Online Lending Network was launched this week at Money 20/20 and will work with ID Analytics on loan tracking and fraud risk solutions; Lend Academy provides more details in their article; focus is on technology from ID Analytics that helps to prevent loan stacking and predict a borrower's intentions. Source
The Innovative Lending Platform Association (ILPA) has released SMART Box for small business lending disclosure and transparency; Lend Academy provides more details and insight from Kathryn Petralia of Kabbage in their article; the SMART Box is intended to provide standardized pricing, cost of capital and verbiage that borrowers can use for credit analysis and comparison. Source
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) will use Borrowell's technology to offer loans to their existing clients with one click of a button; the loans can be up to $35,000, involve a streamlined online application and will be funded within 24 hours; they will only be offered to a select group of CIBC clients to start; David Williamson, Group Head of Retail and Business Banking, CIBC, says, "Our partnership with Borrowell is based on our shared view that the process for borrowing money for personal banking clients could be improved in the digital age, while retaining all of the prudent risk management criteria you would expect from a major bank." Source
Prosper is lowering rates for higher credit quality borrowers and increasing rates in the lower credit quality segments; borrowers with loan ratings AA through C will see a rate decrease of as much as 79 basis points while borrower ratings D through HR could see an increase of as much as 74 basis points; in total, across all ratings, rates will be lower by approximately 39 basis points; Prosper says the rate changes are a result of the credit market environment, interest rate expectations and competition for consumer loans. Source