Old Mutual has reduced its stake in the VPC Specialty Lending Fund to less than 6%; the Fund's performance has been struggling since September 2016 and it has been steadily shifting to balance sheet investments; over half of the portfolio is now contained in balance sheet investments which is an increase from 43% in June 2016. 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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Asia's alternative lending sector has been growing exponentially with a number of industry dynamics influencing the market; Forbes provides an overview of current market developments in China, India and Southeast Asia; growth in the three regions has been significantly influenced by a shift towards digital and a growing middle class increasingly using mobile technology; while marketplace lending has been growing in Asia a permeating challenge across all three regions is the lack of a deeply rooted credit underwriting system with robust data for lenders; China has approximately 2,200 P2P lenders with its P2P lending market valued at an estimated $100 billion however new regulations to handle fraud are likely to shrink the market; India is reporting about 30 P2P lenders in the country; India and Southeast Asia have a number of credible alternative lenders but seem to be growing cautiously in order to avoid the outbreaks of fraud experienced in China; Forbes provides a taxonomy of the various alternative lenders in Asia. Source
The Startupbootcamp FinTech London and PwC have released a new report which finds more companies are investing in artificial intelligence; the report's findings are based on program applicants; findings show that artificial intelligence is significantly impacting customer service solutions; report also provides insight on top trends in fintech including an increasing number of companies focused on B2B and SME solutions. Source
FnConn launched Chained Finance at LendIt USA 2017; the platform is built with blockchain technology and is intended to provide alternative loans for supply chain companies; Jack Lee, CEO of FnConn, says the platform has the potential to help improve supply chain finance in a number of ways specifically through greater cost efficiency from the use of blockchain; Chained Finance will be fueled through the support of FnConn's financial subsidiary Foxconn and P2P lender Dianrong. Source
Olaf Carlson-Wee recently launched a fund with $15 million in assets under management and backing by Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures; Laura Shin sat down with Olaf on her Unchained podcast to discuss the fund and how he discovered bitcoin back in 2011; the podcast covers how Polychain Capital invests exclusively in digital assets, not companies, and how Olaf Carlson-Wee views cryptocurrencies; they also cover Olaf being the first employee at Coinbase and how he put what he called at the time his meager life savings into bitcoin. Source
Russian marketplace lender Blackmoon allows professional investors to acquire portfolios of emerging market loans; it has now reported a new partnership with ID Finance, a data science, credit scoring and nonbank digital lending as an application provider; loans are screened and scored by ID Finance's advanced risk assessment system and qualifying loan transactions are automatically transferred to the creditor setting up an automated securitization process. Source
Avant has joined the Global Debt Registry (GDR) network; through the network partnership Avant's investors will have enhanced access to loan due diligence services; in comments regarding the partnership, Kevin Friedrich, senior director of treasury at Avant said, "We are delighted to partner with GDR to provide our investors with this independent loan data integrity service and help drive new transparency for the lending industry." Source
Ram Ahluwalia from PeerIQ was a featured keynote speaker at LendIt USA 2017; Ram reports marketplace lending securitizations reached over $12 billion in issuance from over 75 transactions; in the third quarter of 2016 rated tranches reached a peak of nearly 25 and in the fourth quarter of 2016 rated tranches were approximately 18. Source
According to Bloomberg, defaults have triggered a breach in a 2015 SoFi bond deal; Bloomberg provides some details on the breach, reporting that the SoFi loans backing the bonds averaged more than $35,000, were unsecured and were from prime credit borrowers with annual salaries averaging around $130,000; the SoFi breach adds to worries about rising defaults overall which have been a factor for bond deals and troubled lenders in the marketplace lending industry. Source
Carvana is working with Wells Fargo and Bank of America on plans for a US initial public offering (IPO); the company is one of a few specialist providers selling used cars and offering auto financing through the internet with automated towers storing vehicles in cities such as Austin, Dallas and Nashville; Reuters reports the company has a valuation of $2 billion and is planning for its IPO in the first half of 2017. Source