Beyond Blend more suppliers could be coming soon such as Roostify, BankVOD, LendSnap and Quovo; FinLocker, Plaid and PointServ are also currently running pilots with Fannie Mae; Only Blend, Finicity and FormFree are approved suppliers while there are more than 40 approved vendors; there are 20 approved vendors of income and employment validation reports, but only DataVerify and Equifax are approved suppliers of these reports. Source
While most banks still do not offer a forecasting type feature Wells Fargo has added it to enhance their app experience; the bank says a customer can receive 50 different messages based on their account activity; “Having information in the palm of their hands can help lead customers to take action and make more informed financial choices,” Steve Ellis, who heads the bank’s innovation group, said in a press release reported by American Banker; the bank has had their share of issues recently but innovation has been one area where the company has excelled. Source.
Yesterday Forbes released their Fintech 50 list; since lending was one of the early segments in fintech, the companies on the list are some of the most mature businesses; Forbes shares more details on those with traction including Affirm, Better Mortgage, Blend, CommonBond, GreenSky, Kabbage, LendingHome, Tala, and Upstart. Source
Paytm is looking to expand beyond their Indian roots and Canada is their first test case; “Paytm Canada is our beta test, or our warhead to get an entry into new geography beyond India,” said founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma to TearSheet; while their bill pay products help top build customers their big revenue driver is when businesses pay them fees to accept payments; the current test case in Canada has Paytm signing up thousands of Canadian companies where they incentivize customers to pay bills with cash back offers; having a large Indian population in Canada has helped the company gain early success, but expanding to markets like the US is a different type of challenge. Source.
UK based Arrowgrass will offer investors fintech exposure through a new vehicle listed on the AIM Market; the $97mn IPO named TruFin, is the first time investors will have access to one of the country’s p2p platforms in Zopa; “Listing on AIM will allow us to provide further capital to our subsidiaries and scale faster, and take advantage of any developments in the current financial services market,” said Henry Kenner, chief executive officer of TruFin plc, to AltFi. Source.
After gaining approval from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Starling Bank has seen their partners grow; Starling now counts PensionBee, WealthSimple, Habito and Kasko as partners; the company plans to announce about 25 partners this year alone; Starling’s Chief platform officer, Megan Caywood, says the new partners take the marketplace to the next level. Source.
Online lenders in China have started to self inspect how they run their companies as the government has been a lot more proactive in oversight than in year’s past; the government fears that borrowers are becoming over indebted and are borrowing to pay back other lenders; some of the top lenders fear the government crackdown could cause other panic and trigger outcomes that would be even worse than a few online lenders shutting down; right now it seems as if lenders are in limbo wondering what the future will hold. Source.
OnDeck has achieved GAAP profitability and announced some interesting new developments for 2018. Source
Lloyd Blankfein recently presented at the Credit Suisse 19th Annual Financial Services Forum; Blankfein shared that Marcus has access to over $17 billion in deposits; since the acquisition of GE Capital, retail deposits have grown 90% which gives allows them to access cheap capital; Goldman plans to grow consumer products offered through Marcus. Source