Koubei was founded in 2015 with investment from Alibaba and Ant Financial; the firm offers online e-commerce services for merchants and is part of a diversified group of Alibaba affiliates; in January the firm reported new capital of $1.1 billion from external investors; investors now supporting the firm include Silver Lake, CDH Investments, Yunfeng Capital and Primavera Capital. Source
News Roundup
This page contains an archive of the Global Newsletter summaries and the weekly fintech news roundups.
Every day the Fintech Nexus news team scours the globe for the most important stories of the day to include in our daily newsletter.
Then every Saturday we bring you our weekly news roundup of the top 10 fintech stories of the week with commentary from Peter Renton.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was approved to investigate the activities of Indian tribe lenders; the online lenders under investigation will be Great Plains Lending, MobiLoans and Plain Green; the lenders are providing credit to a range of borrowers outside of their Indian tribes; they are claiming sovereign immunity because of their status as Indian tribes. Source
While the passage of the JOBS Act in 2012 helped to spur crowdfunding into an exciting industry, questions have continued surrounding investor protections and the legitimacy of companies using this method to raise capital; SeedInvest CEO Ryan Feit recently told the New York Times: "I'm legitimately concerned that a lot of people are going to be losing money; investing in startups is really risky, and it's very different than buying a used couch. We definitely do not think you should treat it like Craigslist."; investors don't necessarily understand the investment and companies are not following the rules fully, causing many in the industry to legitimately worry about the way forward. Source
In a positive announcement for consumer data sharing, JPMorgan has agreed to allow Intuit customers to access bank data without sharing their passwords; the agreement will provide added convenience for JPMorgan customers using Intuit's Mint.com, TurboTax Online and QuickBooks Online; the elimination of passwords is expected to improve security and real-time access of account data. Source
Upon their acquisition of Zencap, Funding Circle took up operations in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, though now you can remove Spain from that list; according to Ryan Weeks of AltFi, this was due in large part to a low quality pool of borrowers and limited understanding in Spain of P2P lending; in terms of their loan book this was only a fraction of global originations for Funding Circle; they will now be able to allocate more resources to Germany and the Netherlands where they are looking to increase their market share. Source
loanDepot has originated $100 billion in loans since launching seven years ago; firm provides home, personal and home equity loans online and through local branch offices; the company has serviced over 15 million consumers nationwide and its platform is acquiring approximately 500,000 potential borrowers per month; in 2016 it opened three new campuses to expand its direct, retail and wholesale businesses and it also has plans to open a new 65,000 square foot business campus in Irvine, California that will help to increase its employee base to over 6,000. Source
LandlordInvest has launched the UK's first secured property P2P lending innovative finance individual savings account (IFISA); the firm offers 5% to 12% returns on its loans and investors can now invest tax free with the IFISA; platform investments include bridge loans and term loans for buy-to-rent landlords; most of the firm's loans are for amounts ranging from 30,000 British pounds ($37,895) to 750,000 British pounds ($947,363) with a payoff term of five years; process for offering the IFISA took less than two months with approval obtained by HM Revenue and Customs shortly after the firm's Financial Conduct Authority approval in December. Source
California-based Kountable is an invoice and trade financing platform currently offering financing for businesses in Rwanda; firm has secured a $150 million credit line from a private credit asset manager; funding will help the company to expand in the global trade finance market. Source
Financial trading startup Alpaca has raised $1.75 million from private market venture capitalists; company is using artificial intelligence and database technology to develop software as a service for investment market traders; current products include AlpacaAlgo with over 25,000 user built trading algorithms; platform has executed over $100 million in transactions. Source