The round was led by Five V Capital, who reportedly invested $8.5 million; company plans to boost number of employees from 50 to 80 in the next year; RateSetter Australia has doubled is loan levels since 12 months ago; Daniel Foggo, RateSetter chief executive stated, “In August, we became the largest peer-to-peer lender in Australia — both in terms of the number of lenders, and the number and value of loans funded each month.” Source
Until now little has been known about the hedge fund that invests in cryptocurrencies; it is backed by big names including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures, Founders Fund and Bessemer Venture Partners; the firm owns about a dozen cryptocurrencies, taking a value investing approach; Fortune shares more details about how the fund operates and the eye popping returns the fund has returned to date. Source
Bloomberg discusses the inner workings of SoftBank’s fund which includes Apple and Saudi Arabia; many former Deutsche Bank AG traders work at the firm; it has invested in a broad range of companies and is currently the world’s largest private equity fund. Source
deBanked reports that Wold Business Lenders (WBL) has purchased several assets from Bizfi including the brand, marketplace, the Next Level Funding renewal book and other pieces of the company; WBL, a small business lender will lend on the platform; Stephen Sheinbaum, founder of Biz joined WBL as a managing director in July; several other Bizfi staff have joined WBL. Source
WSJ published a story on China’s consumer credit rating ecosystem: the fact that China doesn’t have a widely accepted system to gauge individual’s creditworthiness leads technology giants (Ant Financial, Tencent among others) to developing their own credit-rating systems, but none of these projects has emerged as a single nationwide standard either yet; problems with generating credit scores in the private sector include data accuracy and privacy; the story says the lack of a single accepted standard is holding back the growth of borrowing among rising middle class in China. Source
Considered part of the 'Big Four' banks in China, the China Construction Bank (CCB) is looking to launch a banking and insurance blockchain product; their hoping to use their new bancassurance product in Q3 to sell third-party insurance products on the distributed ledger as CoinDesk reports; they are using the IBM blockchain and have been testing the products for months. Source.
Deloitte is the newest name to come under cyber attack where hackers accessed data on an email platform; the accounting firm said the cyber breach had affected “only very few clients” and that “no disruption had occurred to client businesses"; they notified government authorities of the hack when it occurred and have put a team together to figure out what happened. Source.
ZhongAn starts trading tomorrow and raised $1.5bn last week, valuing the group at up to $10bn; the IPO has begun pushing insurtech into the mainstream as the company has seen growing interest across the world; the use of AI & big data have been driving forces behind the company and a main reason for investor interest; this might help to give momentum to other insurtech firms like Lemonade and Oscar. Source.
According to UK research firm Autonomous NEXT there are now 68 crypto hedge funds which is a significant jump since the start of the year; while calling themselves hedge funds many of these new entities are not structured like a typical hedge fund and they don't have institutional backing; as the interest in cryptocurrencies grows, the market will continue seeing new entrants trying to capitalize on the rising value. Source.