UK mortgage loan marketplace platform, LendInvest, has released its 2016 earnings; originations on the platform increased 84% to £320 million for the year ending March 2016; company grew revenue 133% to £32 million with a profit of £3.4 million; leads most of its competitors who have been consistently reporting losses. Source
Bondora has reported that it will not be opening an office in London due to post-Brexit effects; instead it will open a new office in Germany; Bondora CEO, Partel Tomberg, says he is uncertain about European market access in London; Bondora CFO says German regulators including Bafin are increasingly opening up to supporting innovation in the financial sector. Source
Funding Circle is considering more securitization deals with demand currently high for asset-backed securities with marketplace loans; Funding Circle was the first to securitize its loans in the UK with its £130 million securitization deal in April 2016; Samir Desai of Funding Circle says the firm has plans to do more securitizations in the near-term. Source
The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, a leading research/academic group (that has spoken at LendIt events), has announced a new study focused on the global use of blockchain technology; the first targeted research will address crypto-currency protections versus recent cases of data/currency theft; upcoming surveys will touch on blockchain protocol variations, currency mining, cross-border transactions and emerging regulation. Source
Ant Financial announced at Money 20/20 a partnership with payment processor First Data and hardware provider Verifone; new move will expand scope of their wallet product, AliPay, into North America and Europe for wealthy Chinese travelers; AliPay has 450 million active users, totaling nearly 70% of the third party payment market in China. Source
Stress testing from Funding Circle has reported its loan platform would still provide investors with a net return of 6.4% given a worst case market scenario; while effects from Brexit continue to be debated, market skeptics are not as optimistic as the UK platforms; they foresee stagflation in the UK characterized by higher unemployment and slowing GDP growth; they are also concerned about a lack of skin in the game which has prompted parliament member, Chris Philp, to request from the Financial Conduct Authority that a portion of each firm's loans include balance sheet capital; while marketplace lending executives are against this approach, policy makers are considering it. Source
A development agency for the Scottish government, Scottish Enterprise, and its investment arm, the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), have agreed to fund loans on the LendingCrowd platform; they will invest up to £2.75 million in Scottish small-to-midsized businesses, acting in parallel to the retail investors on the platform; the Scottish government earlier identified SMEs needing financing up to £150,000 as an economic development priority. Source