President Donald Trump has issued an executive order requiring the Treasury secretary and regulators to come up with a plan to overhaul Dodd-Frank and its over 400 regulations; the banking industry's tighter regulations have been a factor helping the success of marketplace lenders since the financial crisis and deregulation in the sector could create new challenges and increased competition for marketplace lenders; as the government begins to take deregulatory actions for traditional banks it also seems that marketplace lending has reached a phase likely to see increased regulations and involvement from regulators; these two forces along with other market factors could change the competitive landscape for the marketplace lending industry. 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.
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LendingCrowd has launched its innovative finance individual savings accounts (IFISA); the account has a minimum investment of 1,000 British pounds ($1,250); the account investment will be automatically allocated to a portfolio of LendingCrowd loans; the portfolio will target a rate of return of 6% for its investors; the IFISA product has been well received with the Lending Works IFISA launch attracting more than 500,000 British pounds ($624,850) within three hours. Source
CNBC reports on institutional developments in the marketplace lending industry with statistics on the growing securitization market for marketplace loans; in 2016 securitizations backed by marketplace loans totaled $7.62 billion, a 300% increase from introduction in 2013; securitizations are expected to continue at a strong pace with SoFi dominating the 2016 securitization market with 58% of issuance and leading in 2017 with a $564 million securitization portfolio; other institutional investors are also reporting interest including Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital, Zurich Insurance Group, and property and casualty insurer Chubb. Source
Customer acquisition is a key factor for both traditional banks and online lenders; both use similar marketing tactics to reach customers and expand customer accounts; expensive marketing strategies have led many financial services companies to focus on providing free financial health and planning tools for their customers as part of their marketing strategy for customer acquisition; FICO provides examples from Prosper and Discover in their featured blog post; notes some of the things needed to develop successful financial health and planning tools. Sponsored Blog Post
SupportPay is an app that provides a unique solution for managing child support payments; in 2016 the firm was one of only a few female led fintech venture capital fundraises; Sherri Atwood raised $4.1 million for development of SupportPay which offers a digital solution for receiving child support and tracking child care expenses; the increased transparency the child support app provides has helped the firm gain interest from state agencies and legal firms managing divorce cases involving child support. Source
Biz2Credit has announced a new partnership with Tradeshift for expanded small business access to capital; Tradeshift is a cloud-based business procurement network supporting over 800,000 businesses; companies that use Tradeshift will gain access to the Biz2Credit platform for financing options; Biz2Credit says the partnership will help Tradeshift's clients secure financing more quickly and easily. Source
Boris Batin and Alexander Dunaev have grown a successful lending startup after partnering together and launching ID Finance in 2012; the company is an online balance sheet lender that has been expanding throughout Russia, Europe and South America; the partners claim a digital lending business model that can launch and obtain profitability in nine months; part of their success is attributed to identifying challenging markets with growth potential that traditional banks have not entered. Source
loanDepot has originated $100 billion in loans through a unique business model that facilitates loans through both an online platform and branch offices located throughout the US; Lend Academy provides more details on their business and recent milestone in their article; in 2016 loanDepot originated $38 billion in loans and since 2010 it has been growing loan volume at an average annual rate of 70%; the company acquires half a million potential borrowers per month and offers mortgage loans, mortgage refinancing, personal loans and home equity loans; Anthony Hsieh, loanDepot's CEO, cites their non-bank status and agile technology as leading factors for their rapid growth in loans and customer acquisition; mortgage lending is one area of the credit market with significant opportunity for market share gains from advanced technological solutions and loanDepot has successfully capitalized on the market opportunity. Source
Chancellor Hammond and the newly established fintech delivery panel will meet in February to discuss the fintech industry; the group's purpose is to drive fintech specific policy recommendations for the UK; 24 industry experts will attend the February meeting including representatives from Funding Circle, Seedrs and MarketInvoice; on April 12 the UK government will also hold the International FinTech Conference in London to connect domestic and international investors with the UK's fintech market. Source
According to a report from GlobalCapital, Jefferies and Lending Club are partnering on a new securitization for Arcadia Funds; the portfolio is expected to include approximately $300 million of prime consumer loans from Lending Club. Source