During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news on Twitter as it happens. Then every Saturday I take the most interesting news items and blog posts from the past week and share them here.
Fintech firms want to shake up banking, and that worries the Fed from Reuters – There is no consensus at the Federal Reserve on how to deal with fintech. Some at the Fed recommend a more cautious approach while others want to embrace fintech.
The new FinTech bank from Chris Skinner’s Blog – The main difference between traditional banks and new fintech banks is the level of integration of the finance and technology operations. In traditional banks these groups remain siloed.
Alibaba taps Kabbage to loan up to $150K to SMBs after it quietly acquired OpenSky to ramp in North America from TechCrunch – The world’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, has teamed up with Kabbage to offer point of sale loans to its U.S. customers. Quite the coup for Rob Frohwein and his team.
CFPB to scrap key underwriting portion of payday rule from American Banker – Good news for the payday lending industry but bad news for consumers as the CFPB plans to scrap a key provision in a new rule that required lenders to take into account a borrower’s ability to repay.
Why Strategic Funding Rebranded as Kapitus from deBanked – Small business lender Strategic Funding has rebranded to Kapitus. deBanked provides the back story on this change.
Five financial health startups now under the wing of JPM, CFSI from American Banker – The Financial Solutions Lab, a joint initiative of JP Morgan Chase and CFSI has selected the five fintech startups for their 2019 cohort.
Fed not an impediment to fintechs’ charter ambitions: OCC’s Otting from American Banker – More clarity on the OCC fintech charter after comments from Comptroller Otting this week. Potential applicants see no need to process payments directly with the Fed. He also made comments on CRA reform and the “states issue” with the charter.
Gary Cole, the Actor You Know From Everything, Is Now the Time-Traveling Spokesguy for Kabbage from Adweek – There is a great new TV ad campaign out from Kabbage featuring actor Gary Cole as their time traveling spokesman.
New P2P platform launches to fund litigation cases from Peer2Peer Finance News – The new litigation finance platform, AxiaFunder, from Cormac Leech, has gone live this month in the UK with potentially very high returns for investors.
Online student lender CommonBond lays off 18 percent of staff from Reuters – Bad news out late yesterday from CommonBond. They are laying off 22 people citing “a plan to shift investment into new areas”.
KeyCorp to buy digital platform from Conn. community bank from American Banker – It has been a busy year already when it comes to fintech M&A, now add another deal into the mix. KeyBank is buying the digital lending business of Laurel Road Bank, a leader in student loan refinancing.
The Hot New Job in Fintech: Someone to Deal With Regulators from Bloomberg – Some of the biggest names in fintech are ramping up their government relations departments.
Funding Circle beats forecasts for revenue and loan growth from Financial Times – It was a strong 2018 for Funding Circle as they beat forecasts on both revenue and loan origination growth. But expected loan defaults in the UK going forward have increased.
A new Square debit card makes it easy for businesses to spend their Square revenue from TechCrunch – Here is the latest example of a fintech company moving into traditional finance as Square has announced a new debit card called the Square Card. It will allow customers to immediately draw on funds in their Square merchant account.
Block by Block: Crypto Lending from The Block – Good overview of the crypto lending market showing key players in the different niches.
From the Lend Academy Forum
The Lend Academy forum is where investors go to discuss p2p lending. Below are some topics that were being discussed this week.
Speed of Funding – An investor asks if it is possible to see what loans are most popular on LendingClub.
Taxes…? – As tax time approaches investors are interested in understanding how taxes on investments in loans are calculated.
daily spend? – Investors share their thoughts and strategies related to LendingClub’s secondary market.
