Only 25 percent of the Chinese population is considered to have a traditional credit score; for non bank lenders gathering alternative data like transactions and social media has helped them to identify potential borrowers who the banks will not serve; Ant Financial has built out Sesame Credit who gathers this type of data and other online lenders have also begun using different data pieces to assess risk. Source.
Recent news about Chinese online lenders has caused regulators in China to begin looking at new regulations for the industry; “The public has doubts about its operating model and has appealed for it to be brought under regulation,” said Ji Zhihong, head of financial markets department at the People’s Bank of China, according to the FT; the potential regulations could hurt what has become a hot IPO market; Chinese lenders like Qudian who recently did a US based IPO and Paipaidai, Hexindai and Lexin Fintech who all have filed for potential US IPOs. Source.
Though Monzo has seen a share of issues and outages recently the company says the third party marketplace is core to their vision; they also explained it was a key part of their revenue drive and will help to drive down costs per customers in the near future; Monzo have plans to expand product offerings, potentially launch in the US and build out partnerships in the near and mid term future. Source.
An article in Bank Innovation explores whether Google’s mobile expansion points to larger fintech ambitions for the company; their Indian mobile payments app called Tez showed growth in the quarter and many companies are moving to Google Cloud including PayPal; Google also opened a payment API in Brazil and is also focusing on partnerships with retailers and merchants. Source
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Recent IPOs by ZhongAn and Qudian, as well as the prospectus by Jianpu could signal a significant rise for IPOs in the next few years; “There will be a new wave of China concept stocks after these two to three years' quietness," said Tiger Brokers research team to China Daily. Source.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Ant Financial is putting plans on hold to go public and will continue to invest in a wide variety of startups; Ant is one of the world’s most valuable fintech companies and last raised $4.5 billion in April 2016 giving it a $60 billion valuation; the firm is focused on expanding Alipay beyond the 70 countries it is used and deploying artificial intelligence technology. Source
After raising more than $232mn in an initial coin offering the company is now involved in a legal battle that could delay the launch into 2018; the dispute highlights the risk involved in the new form of financing since companies are raising money from a concept; how the case turns out could potentially effect future fundraising and whether or not investors feel secure enough to pour capital into young companies. Source.
Speaking at the Financial Investment Initiative event the former founder of PayPal thinks that bitcoin detractors could be underestimating the currency’s potential; as CoinDesk reports, “underestimating [it] especially because ... it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments."; he has in the past criticized bitcoin and is not bullish on all cryptocurrencies. Source.
Orchard stresses the importance of recovery rates in valuing pools of loans; blog post takes Orchard’s US unsecured consumer lending industry data and discusses what loan recoveries are, how they are calculated, how debt holders recover defaulted loan balances, and why recovery rates are so important. Source