Development finance P2P lender Bricks Finance has received Financial Conduct Authority authorization; firm is not planning to launch an innovative finance individual savings account; will instead focus on expanding partnerships with brokers; also announced a new Bricks Bond product for wealth managers and their clients; firm has been lending since May 2015 with loans of more than £5 million ($6.22 million). Source
Just 33 cryptocurrency firms have been registered so far under the UK FCA’s covered register, with the deadline looming for the watchdog to grant the firms approval before 31 March.
In an interview with AltFi the CEO of Zopa, Jaidev Janardana, gave some insight into how the company is thinking...
It is unsurprising that the UK has embraced the financial market shift to fintech, but where do they stand on a global scale?
I talk with Samantha Ettus of Park Place Payments, a women-owned company changing the experience businesses have with payment processor.
There have been many recent launches of digital banks which was a result of regulatory changes in the UK; Metro Bank was the first having launched in 2010, but there are many new names since then; article highlights founders and investors in the space including Eileen Burbidge (Monzo), Sanjeev Gupta (Wyelands Bank), Jonathan Rowland (Redwood Bank), Nick Ogden (ClearBank) and the Pears family (Masthaven Bank). Source
Paddle today announces it has raised $200m in Series D equity and debt financing at a valuation of $1.4bn, making it the UK's latest unicorn.
The Ranger Direct Lending Fund has reported plans for share issuance totaling 200 million British pounds through 2017; the Fund currently has a 40 million British pound issuance planned for December; it also raised 30 million British pounds in July and 23.2 million British pounds in November of 2016; according to a statement from Ranger Direct Lending, "The company believes that debt instruments originated or issued by direct lending platforms are an attractive and growing asset class that have the potential to provide higher returns for investors than other, more widely available, fixed income products."; growth from the asset class and potential returns are factors driving the new issuances. Source
A recent report called ‘Our Fraud – the Facts 2020’ produced by UK Finance shows just how much fraud is...
A report from P2P lender BondMason says wealth managers are becoming more aware of and comfortable with marketplace lending investments; over half of wealth managers would now recommend marketplace lending investments as an alternative to mainstream cash products; institutional investors are also increasingly allocating to marketplace loans with over half of the product's investments attributed to institutional investors. Source