The Federal Reserve released a report saying that P2P loans resemble predatory loans; the report cautions on the industry’s rapid origination growth and rising defaults; they also say the industry as a whole has the potential to destabilize consumer balance sheets; the research also shows taking out a P2P loan hurts credit scores and credit card balances increase; the report also points to the benefits of taking out a loan as well. Source.
According to the WSJ, SoFi is pulling back on its expansion to foreign markets and asset management; two executives, Peter Early and Arkadi Kuhlmann are leaving the firm as part of the shift in focus; they led asset management and banking respectively at SoFi; despite some of the challenges the company extended $3.52 billion in loans in the third quarter, up almost 80% from the same period last year. Source
A consensus over the upcoming bitcoin split was not reached and the plan was cancelled; the hope was for a new version that could handle double the number of transactions; upon hearing the news bitcoin’s value shot up to over $7,800; the current version can only handle about five transactions per second and to compete with names like PayPal and Visa that will need to change at some point in the future. Source.
Jay Clayton's statements suggest that firms using ICOs may need to register them with the SEC; he stated in a speech on Wednesday, "I have yet to see an ICO that doesn’t have a sufficient number of hallmarks of a security."; there have been more than 160 ICOs to date which have raised over $3 billion. Source
To continue a global expansion of the bank they needed to remodel it around technology; they needed to transform to handle the customer base, which currently stands at over 660 million, more effectively; increasing bandwidth has been a main focus according to China Construction Bank’s CIO Jin Panshi, “We don’t just need bandwidth for 4K or HD video, but we also felt that AI capabilities, including voice and facial recognition, were urgently needed.”; they have also migrated about 83 percent of distributed applications to the cloud and continue to keep innovating to try and stay ahead. Source.
Shares began trading on the NYSE this morning under ticker PPDF; shares were priced at $13 and the company raised $221 million; the company launched in 2007 and has over 57 million cumulative registered users; it targets borrowers between 20 and 40. Source
43 percent of borrowers applied for a mortgage digitally, up from 28 percent last year but satisfaction scores were down according to J.D. Power; Craig Martin, director of the mortgage practice at J.D. Power, said in a press release, "A critical element of satisfaction is setting expectations, and this tends to be a weakness of technology.”; Customers also rated non bank lenders higher than their banking counterparts as borrowers look to new lenders who provide a more seamless experience. Source.
Banks have started to push a lot more of their technology investment into mobile; banks like Capital Bank in North Carolina has seen a jump in mobile usage from 17 percent three years ago to 43 percent today; while most banks have a mobile app experience they do not offer all the features that are found online; while banks are making progress there is still significant innovation ahead. Source.
Peter Renton, Founder of Lend Academy was at the American Banker Digital Lending + Investing conference last week; Renton reflects on the discussion with the leaders of Marcus, shares the progress of the company thus far and his perspective on Goldman's venture. Source