Sub-prime lender Elevate, while still awaiting the right time to go public, has expanded their product line by offering customers a line of credit for up to $3,500 called Elastic; Republic Bank is the issuer of the credit line and according to Elevate's CEO, Ken Rees, there are other institutions showing interest; Rees explains further, "Banks are terrible at lending outside of their branch footprint and they are not good at customer acquisition. We provide products and a set of underwriting tools that fits for non-prime customers." Source
Payments International is hosting the "FinTech and Future of Payments Forum" in London from November 15th to 18th; the agenda on Nov.18 includes their own version of "Shark Tank"-like business pitch competitions; finalists and judges have been announced in the areas of Identity (including blockchain), financial inclusion/personal financial management; the Internet of Things, and cross-border payments. Numerous "fresh face" companies and personalities in these sectors are noted, with judges covered on the Nov.18th agenda page and entrants covered in this LendIt News post.
Banks have been given a deadline of early 2018 to comply with new regulations that will allow for open banking; many industry experts believe this deadline is too tight; to comply, banks would need to completely overhaul their current security infrastructure and banks are not known to rapidly change anything; the UK's big four - Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland - control 77% of personal current accounts and 85% of business accounts; these new regulations will allow consumers to control access to their data and give them comparison tools to shop for the best mortgage, credit card or loan. 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
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
Future Finance has received commitment for £30 million from the European Investment Fund (EIF) to lend to master's degree students supported by the Erasmus+ European program; Future Finance is a student lending platform active in the UK and Germany; Erasmus+ subsidizes career skills-driven education for over 300,000 higher education students across the European Union; EIF's commitment involves loan guarantees that will encourage investing and borrowing on Future Finance's platform; it has launched a "Call for Expression of Interest" targeting additional financial institutions that finance master's degree students crossing national borders in the EU. Source
Estonia-based marketplace lender, Bondora, has announced plans for a new business model and system design that will change the way the company services its borrowers and investors; the changes will involve a new system design for borrowers and investors; according to Bondora, splitting the business into two separate parts will allow for greater pricing efficiency and better reporting and analytics. Source
10x Future Technologies, founded by former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins, is developing a cloud-based core banking system that will allow banks to hold deposits and accounts; the company believes their technology will give banks better access and insights into clients' data; this new tailored access will allow the banks to offer products that will better fit their customers' needs. Source
HSBC has moved 3000 members of its staff into a new building and are viewing this digital group differently than their core suit-and-tie employees; the bank believes separating them out will better help to fuel new innovative ideas; HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver said, "To survive for 150 years we've had to evolve. Most of the risk we've dealt with is political. Actually what's happening in the digital space is there is a threat, particularly to retail banking... in payments, in wealth management." Source
A second regulatory reform focused on crowdfunding has gone into effect in France; the reform will broaden the offerings available for crowdfunded investing and lending; on crowdfund platforms, companies can now raise 2.5 million euros in equity funding through simple shares, plain vanilla bonds, preferred shares, participatory notes and convertible bonds; on crowdlending platforms, borrower limits were increased for qualified lenders to 2,000 euros individual lending per project; the reform also introduces new minibon debt securities. Source