During the week I share the latest marketplace lending 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.
SoFi President Nino Fanlo to Leave Firm for Biotech Startup from The Wall Street Journal – The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nino Fanlo, the president and CFO at SoFi, is leaving the company.
Review: “When Markets Quake” Online Banks and Their Past, Present and Future,” by Marshall Lux and Martin Chorzempa from Orchard – Good review of a recent Harvard paper on marketplace lending – past, present and future.
States gang up to kill US fintech charter and offer alternative ‘Vision 2020’ from CNBC – The states continue to gang up on the OCC to try to kill their proposed new fintech charter.
Fintech lender MarketInvoice gets a boost as Portuguese bank puts £45 million on its platform from Business Insider – A Portuguese digital bank has agreed to lend £45M on the MarketInvoice platform.
AlphaFlow Adds Veteran Fintech Executive AdaPia d’Errico to Management Team from Business Wire – Industry veteran AdaPia d’Errico is now the COO of AlphaFlow (press release).
LendingClub Taps PayPal Executive Allocca to Serve as President from The Wall Street Journal – The head of Paypal’s credit business is heading to Lending Club to become the president there.
LendUp launches a better credit card for people looking to improve their credit from TechCrunch – Short-term lender LendUp has released a new credit card for the subprime market with low fees.
SoFi’s CEO wishes the US had less student loan debt from TechCrunch – At a conference this week SoFi CEO Mike Cagney lamented the explosion in student loan debt.
The Tesla of Alternative Lending from deBanked – Good piece on Upstart and their approach to automated underwriting and machine learning.
To get ahead in fintech, you need to be in touch with everybody’s go-to guy: Ron Suber from San Francisco Business Times – Great profile on Ron Suber the most connected person in all of fintech.
Online Lending Startup Earnest Said to Look for a Buyer from Bloomberg – Looks like another platform is struggling. Earnest is up for sale.
Household Debt Makes a Comeback in the U.S. from The New York Times – The US consumer is taking on more debt with student loans now over 10% of all loans outstanding.
Digital lender SoFi starts U.S. online wealth management service from Reuters – It is has been in beta for a while but this week SoFi officially launched their online wealth management product.
Changing of the guard: Funding Circle passes Zopa in cumulative lending from AltFi – In the UK Funding Circle is now the largest marketplace lending platform in total loans issued.
Why Wells Fargo is stepping up fintech partnerships now from American Banker – Wells Fargo is realizing the importance of fintech partnerships now says Penny Crosman in American Banker.
Consumers Place Personal Loans Atop the Credit Mountain from TransUnion – A TransUnion study found that consumers prioritize paying personal loans over other loan types. Very surprising.
Chinese P2P Lender Dianrong Links with Maggie Ng to Launch Global Fintech Marketplace from Crowdfund Insider – The Chinese are coming and with this new initiative Dianrong is going to help facilitate investment into US platforms.
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.
Imagine you were the CEO of Lending Club – Forum members share what they would do if they were the CEO of Lending Club after Renaud Laplanche’s departure.
Charge Off Rate Over Time – Investors discuss charge off and default rates and the difference between them.
Offering Hardship Plans for Borrowers and Protecting Returns for Investors – The forum looks into the fields Lending Club provides on hardship plans.
