Funding Circle led international P2P loan issuance in January with originations of 120.9 million euros ($130.21 million), according to data from p2p-banking.com; platform loan volume was followed by Zopa and RateSetter; Zopa reported originations of 94 million euros ($101.24 million) and RateSetter reported originations of 78 million euros ($84.01 million). 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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Pepper Hamilton provides details on their recent podcast and webinar in their featured blog post; the firm's January 5 podcast provided insight on what the Donald Trump presidency means for the financial services industry; on January 24 the firm provided a webinar on factors for considering the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's new fintech charter. Sponsored Blog Post
Token-as-a-Service (TaaS), co-founded by Konstantin Pysarenko, Ruslan Gavrilyuk, Dmytro Chupryna and Maksym Muratov, will offer a blockchain fund through an initial coin offering (ICO); the fund will issue tokens which represent a proof-of-membership; the fund will perform a cryptographic audit to track trading activity; TaaS is also developing a new blockchain analytic platform called Kepler that will provide data similar to Bloomberg; according to founder Konstantin Pysarenko: "The overall aim of TaaS is to deliver long-lasting innovations in the blockchain industry. And, we believe that TaaS and Kepler are on track to revolutionize the journey of investing in cryptocurrencies and tokens forever and we are excited to watch it all unfold." Source
Wells Fargo is teaming up with Intuit which will allow customers to import account information via an API with Intuit products such as QuickBooks; we've recently seen banks opening up their data to empower customers to share their data with third parties; Brett Pitts, head of digital and virtual channels said in a prepared statement, "This agreement creates a much better experience for our shared customers, gives them greater control over their financial data, and enhances the efficiency of the data-sharing process." Source
Artificial intelligence is being utilized across all industries with new startups offering innovative market solutions; in January CB Insights released a list of 100 top artificial intelligence startups; Zoox tops the list as the most well-funded company with total funding of $290 million; it is also a fintech unicorn with a valuation of over $1 billion; among venture capitalists, Data Collective has emerged as a top investor partnering with 14 companies from the list for venture capital investment. Source
Last year at PitchIt@LendIt, AutoFi took home the top prize; in his pitch (34:00) Jonathan Palan, president and co-founder of AutoFi discusses AutoFi and the auto finance market; Jonathan previously spent six years at Lending Club and LendingHome; he shares that the auto market is a massive opportunity and is also a fragmented marketplace; consumers are beginning to go online to buy cars; 84% of new car purchases have financing and 68% of used cars have financing; AutoFi's thesis is that if car buying is going online then auto lending has to go online; they are a B2B software platform to help do just that; in a big vote of confidence for the company, they recently inked a deal with Ford to provide digital financing options to consumers; applications for PitchIt@LendIt 2017 close today.
IBM Watson will be further expanding in financial services by partnering with H&R Block's 70,000 tax professionals at 10,000 locations; Watson has learned 74,000 pages of tax code through its natural language processing capability and will be able to help tax professionals at H&R Block's branches; the new services have been tested at 100 locations and will begin being used in February; overall, IBM plans to market Watson as a business service solution with its capabilities offered to consumers through innovative business partnerships. Source
Lend Academy provides details on IBM Watson's acquisition of Promontory Financial Group, a firm used to help navigate complex banking regulations; IBM has acquired Promontory to train Watson on Dodd-Frank which includes 22,000 pages of regulation; Promontory has experience from a long list of banking veterans and will help train Watson on financial risk modeling, surveillance, anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC); the result will be an artificial intelligence solution that can be implemented for all aspects of compliance, regulation and monitoring; Brian Walter, Watson global industry leader for banking and financial markets at IBM will be speaking at LendIt USA 2017 in a featured keynote discussing how financial firms are using artificial intelligence and how it's expected to evolve. Source
Originators of all stripes are using machines in the underwriting process. Understanding the capabilities and how best to underwrite in a more automated way is something lenders are still working on.
At LendIt USA 2016 Douglas Merrill of Zest Finance discusses the credit and underwriting process and how consumers are really looking for an experience that automates the choice of loans for them based upon the existing data available.
Douglas believes that speed matters but nobody knows that it matters, when consumers come to the lender for a loan they are not looking for a loan but for life certainty. The loan is just a product, a seamless and improved experience is what the borrower wants.
We should be discussing loans in seconds and microseconds, not days or weeks. Machines can help to automate the process based on your existing data set and a borrower should not need to fill out a loan application. Computation, storage and bandwidth are free and infinite. The things we can do with data are exciting and seemingly endless.
The current underwriting has been stuck in the 70's. Data has enabled us to change underwriting and develop new types of products; machines can help to make this happen. Why do lenders make you apply for a loan? Lenders know enough about you to know what you should need and they don't need you to fill out an application at all.
An automated underwriting process and the amount of data available through traditional and nontraditional means will help to continue the advancement in credit. At LendIt USA 2017 we will be covering the latest innovations in credit and underwriting. Learn what is coming next from the top originators, credit bureaus and service providers.
Check out the full video here:
Manatt provides an overview of some of the comments received by the OCC on the proposed fintech charter; the New York Department of Financial Services was critical of the charter; the American Bankers Association is supportive of the charter "...as long as existing rules and oversight are applied consistent with those for any national bank"; the Financial Services Roundtable also spoke in favor of the charter, commending the OCC for its development of the proposal; also highlighted are responses from the Consumer Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America. Source