All P2P lenders will now be known as non-banking financial companies (NBFC-P2P); all p2p lenders will also have to receive a certificate of registration; companies will go through a 12 month period before getting final approval; under the rules a p2p firm can’t raise deposits or lend on its own; other details of the guidelines including loan caps for borrowers are outlined in the article. Source
A new bill has been introduced in Congress that would mandate the IRS to make their data available via API; the current process for lenders requires borrowers to fill out a form known as IRS 4506-T: Request for Transcript of Tax Return; Lend Academy provides additional information on the bill with thoughts from Congressman McHenry and Nat Hoopes, Executive Director of the Marketplace Lending Association. Source
Greg Carmichael is the CEO of Fifth Third Bancorp; in this in-depth interview he shares his perspective on the intersection of regulation and innovation in banking, Fifth Third’s fintech strategy, their partnership with QED Investors and more. Source
The Bank of Montreal, Caixabank, Erste Bank and Commerzbank join the Batavia blockchain project; the project was launched by UBS and IBM last year; Batavia looks to transform the trade finance industry; Marie Wieck, general manager of the blockchain team at IBM, tells the FT, “there is now a shift from technology projects to more of what I’d call ecosystem projects like this one.” Source.
Barclays is launching the My Personal Bank finance service that will link all of a customer’s Barclays based accounts; they are testing the tool with 7,500 Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite Mastercard cardholders. Source.
Starling Bank is launching a business account focused on entrepreneurs, sole-traders and small business owners; the account is free to set up and will like to a number of features including payments and their Marketplace product for accounting based services. Source.
Roofstock provides a marketplace for buyers and sellers of rental properties; the company is up to 35 employees and has now raised their Series C led by Canvas Ventures; TechCrunch published a short Q&A with their CEO Gary Beasley; while the company doesn’t disclose actual number of properties, they have facilitated “hundreds of millions of dollars in value this year alone” and now operate in 15 markets across the US. Source
Renren, a publicly listed company in the US operates a social media platform in China but has also made several fintech investments; investments include LendingHome, Fundrise, Motif Investing as well as a significant stake in SoFi; a year ago Renren announced plans to spin off its minority venture stakes into a new subsidiary; under the plan retail investors would receive a cash payout, losing their exposure to SoFi; Ryan Roberts, director at MCM Partners stated in the Forbes article, “It certainly looks like Joe Chen is trying to strip the best assets from Renren, particularly SoFi. SoFi is basically the entire value of the company right now, the core business has really deteriorated.” Source
According to a form d filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission small business lender Kabbage is in the middle of a $161mn round; the filing shows they have thus far raised a little over $80mn; this round is in addition to the $250 million investment from a subsidiary of Softbank Group in August. Source.
After launching as savings product two years ago the app only bank is approaching £1bn ($1.3bn) in deposits; after disclosing in March they were at 17,000 customers and over £500mn ($663mn) they have seen a significant acceleration in growth; they also reported growth in small business loan applications and mortgages. Source.