As former director Cordray left the CFPB last week he named an acting director to minimize operational disruption in his words; the White House on the other hand thinks he meant to provoke a response from the administration; the agency now is broiled in confusion over who is the true interim leader as the White House appointed their own interim leader; Mr. Cordray is working off of language in the Dodd-Frank Act to appoint a successor, while the White House is acting on the Federal Vacancies Reform Act that gives the President authority to appoint interim leaders; each leader will have a different mandate and the confusion will need to be cleared up soon. Source.
MoneyMe is an Australian consumer lending fintech focused on the millennial market; Fortress Investment Group led the facility which also included Evans & Partners; Clayton Howes, CEO and Co-Founder of MoneyMe stated, "A capital investment of this magnitude is recognition of the strength and depth of our value proposition, and an indication of the strong potential for Australian fintechs to capture serious wholesale market funding." Source
The focus of the partnership is tokenization of assets to make the lending process easier and bringing in real-world assets as collateral; ETHLend is a peer to peer lender operating on the Ethereum network to connect lenders and borrowers globally; Brickblock is a trading platform connecting real-world assets and cryptocurrencies. Source
Balderton Capital is best known for their fintech investments in Nutmeg, Revolut, Crowdcuve and Prodigy Finance; the firm has now launched their sixth fund totaling $375 million from investors in Europe, Asia and the US; they have made 10 investments across five countries since March. Source
UK based Lendable raised $400mn to continue lending to UK consumers amid concerns over growing household debt; the capital infusion comes from Castle Trust who is backed by the US private equity shop JC Flowers; this is the second big deal for Lendable in 2017 as they were able to secure over $130mn from Waterfall Asset management in March. Source.
Bitcoin looks to be headed towards $10,000 and the overall market cap for digital coins has surpassed $300bn; Ethereum, bitcoin gold and bitcoin cash have all reached all time highs as the appetite for these currencies continues to rise unabated; while concerns of a bubble persist the prices continue showing more strength by the day. Source.
Historically online lenders have relied on a wide range of alternative ways of evaluating borrowers; the state-backed National Internet Finance Association of China which is aligned with China’s central bank has provided some details on developing a credit rating system; some industry participants question whether they will be able to overcome issues that have prevented similar plans in the past. Source
LexinFintech Holdings operates Fenqile, a leading online lender in China, and is now rethinking their IPO plans; LexinFintech is attempting to raise $500mn through their IPO but concerns about regulators in China have made the company have second thoughts; the company is planning to come to a decision soon on whether or not to plan their roadshow ahead of the IPO. Source.
CreditEase CEO Ning Tang is looking to offer an investment alternative to real estate investors by launching a fund of funds focused on real estate projects; currently investors in China need to directly buy property and hope the assets appreciate in value; the fund of funds strategy that CreditEase is looking to employ will allow investors to have access to leading real estate funds managed by Blackstone and KKR. Source.