TrustPilot, a Denmark multi-language online merchant review platform, has raised 5.5 million British pounds ($6.9 million); platform allows for communication between merchants and consumers; funding was provided by Draper Esprit which now doubles its equity stake in the company to 11 million British pounds ($13.71 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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Australian P2P commercial property marketplace lender LendEx has appointed two new board members to its board of directors; Brian Benger will join the board with experience from consulting firm Mercer; credit market executive Kim Jenkins will also join the board; Jenkins is currently the CEO of the Australian Retail Credit Association; Benger and Jenkins join Robert Hines, the firm's chairman, as the board's non-executive directors. Source
The Financial Times reviews company and loan performance at various online lenders; shares that Shanda Group bought more shares of LendingClub after forecasts were adjusted last week; LendingClub also recently stopped making F & G grade loans available to investors; broadly, delinquency rates have increased across online lenders; valuations of other companies such as Earnest and Prosper have also been affected. Source
Amazon is speaking with the Bengaluru-based company; the company is focused on small businesses but is also looking to lend to consumers on Amazon’s platform; According to sources Amazon may invest $5-10 million; Capital Float recently raised $45 million in a Series C; Amazon has recently done other deals with fintech companies in India. Source
Scalable Capital has announced a partnership with Siemens Private Finance; Scalable Capital will offer wealth management options with daily rebalancing to individual risk profiles for Siemens employees in Germany; this adds to the services already offered by Siemens Private Finance which currently include insurance, pensions and mortgage lending. Source
Ally Bank has expanded its banking products to include mortgages and will offer the loans through an online service called Ally Home; the online service offering seeks to meet heightened expectations and shifting market priorities for digital, tech-driven customer experiences; with Ally Home, borrowers will have the option to manage their communication through email and their documentation online through any device; the bank also says it has partnered with mortgage servicing specialist, LenderLive, to provide fast and efficient service. Source
We all know that consumers are being hit hard by the economic...
9F Group has invested in a blockchain company called Wyre in Silicon Valley; the Group will establish its Southeast Asia headquarters in Singapore soon; plus it already has 9F Primasia Securities in Hong Kong. Source (Chinese)
British Business Bank (BBB) is a government-owned entity designed to support small businesses in the UK through a fund with 1 billion British pounds ($1.27 billion); it currently has 85 million British pounds ($108 million) invested in the P2P lending industry; the Financial Conduct Authority's release of an update on the crowdfunding market last week noting a number of factors for further investigation has caused taxpayers to question the large allocation to the P2P lending sector; specifically John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, has said, "This is extremely concerning and taxpayers will want to know how this can be good use of their money."; according to a Freedom of Information request reported on by Business Insider, the allocations from BBB include 60 million British pounds ($76 million) invested with Funding Circle, 15 million British pounds ($19 million) invested with MarketInvoice and 10 million British pounds ($13 million) invested with RateSetter. Source
Yesterday Forbes released their Fintech 50 list; since lending was one of the early segments in fintech, the companies on the list are some of the most mature businesses; Forbes shares more details on those with traction including Affirm, Better Mortgage, Blend, CommonBond, GreenSky, Kabbage, LendingHome, Tala, and Upstart. Source