The company passed £1bn in 2016 after 5 years and booked another £1bn in just 14 months; part of their success in increasing originations has been due to two new products, confidential invoice discounting and business loans; their larger institutional investor base has also allowed them to fund larger businesses with bigger funding requirements; in 2017 the firm lent £714.2m to businesses. 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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Experian’s Clear Early Risk Score is the first product released since their acquisition of Clarity Services. Source
Josh Feinberg was making $267 a week working at a pawn shop and knew he had to make changes to provide for his family; using his experience in working for his dad he created a equipment financing company; by making more than 400 calls per day he was able to build a solid foundation for the growing company; in a three year period ending in 2016 the company experienced 1,361 percent growth and made it to number 323 on the Inc. 500 list. Source.
- The Third Age of Credit
- Mastercard will support cryptocurrencies – as long as they’re backed by governments
- Composing Architecture for Growth
- BMO launches banking chatbot with Finn.ai
- RateSetter CEO warns of ‘risk’ of collaboration over competition
- One of the most secretive trading firms on Wall Street has been trading bitcoin
- A bitcoin trading firm just opened up a lending business — and it's going gangbusters
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news...
Experian just acquired credit reporting fintech ClearScore for $385mn; this follows the mortgage brokerage deal they did with London & Country Mortgages back in December; Experian is looking to expand their offerings and brand through the deals; this is part of a wider trend in fintech as more incumbent players have seen the value fintech startups have brought to market. Source
The Wall Street Journal reports a new fundraising round led by DST Global will value the company at more than $5bn; the last valuation was about $1.3bn in 2017; popularity in the app has since jumped when it expanded to include cryptocurrencies bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin; since launching they have reached more than 4 million users and the new valuation will put them in the top 15 of highest valued private tech companies in the U.S. Source.
Goldman Sachs has launched an in house incubator that will allow employees to work on innovative ideas; GS Accelerate is currently accepting applications to move Goldman into new business areas, manage risk and try to fix inefficiencies; the move is part of a wider strategy for Goldman who now shows 46 percent of staff being in technology; “When it comes to entrepreneurship, there are always more failures than successes,” a memo reported by TearSheet stated. “But if we’re creative, imaginative and learn from what did and didn’t work, GS Accelerate can become a powerful engine to bring important ideas to life.” Source.
The Senate passed a banking bill meant to roll back some of the financial regulations imposed after the crisis, but its fate is uncertain in the House; Republicans in the House want a further rollback of regulations; the bill is intended to help smaller banks avoid burdensome federal oversight and raises the definition of systemically important to $250bn from $50bn; the bill also makes adjustments to parts of the Volcker Rule and eases mortgage rules for smaller lenders. Source.
UK based Funding Circle recently signaled they were looking to go public this year and now investors are wondering is this the start of a UK fintech IPO trend; rumors have swirled around Zopa, LendInvest, Monzo and others, but thus far not many have gone forward with a listing; there is concerns over the ability of the businesses to make a profit and have lessons been learned from U.S. fintech IPOs; while there has been a few small listing thus far time will tell whether or not the big fintech firms will make the leap. Source.