Blockchain ETFs have received a lot of interest over the last two weeks and have raised almost $260 million; however, Bloomberg explores that the makeup of these ETFs contain many household names such as Cisco, Intel, Nvidia and IBM; thus, investors may be paying a high price to invest in stocks they could easily purchase themselves. Source
News Roundup
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Only five days after announcing they would enable bitcoin and ethereum trading Robinhood saw more than one million signups; Robinhood has made its name on zero commission stock trading and plan to roll out the new feature in five states first; “We see millions of trades a day. In our brokerage industry there is no excuse for down time. We plan on bringing that mind-set to the crypto space,” said Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt to Business Insider. Source.
The new CEO of the Innovative Lending Platform Association has written an op-ed focused on the Madden decision and how it could be fixed by Congress to better serve small businesses. Source
Kabbage will now offer lines of credit up to $250,000; this is the largest credit line available from any online lender; Kabbage will expand its customer base to larger businesses with the higher credit lines; Kabbage also shared results of a survey sharing where small businesses plan to invest in 2018. Source
- Ezbob Raises £15M in Expansion Capital
- Elevate Appoints Former PayPal, loanDepot Executive Brian Biglin as Chief Credit Officer
- GLI Finance scores £50m funding line from HoneyComb fund
- Western Union Opens Tech Center In India
- Nissan Motor Acceptance Corporation Announces New Way to Finance from Your Mobile Device
- SEC Halts Alleged Initial Coin Offering Scam
Banks have historically made money on overdraft fees, out-of-network ATM fees, fees for not maintaining a certain minimum balance and more; this fee structure has helped give banks a bad name; big tech companies and fintech startups have garnered a better reputation for upfront fees for a simple service and transparency around other fees; “It’s important to let consumers understand what you’re offering, what the fee structure is — and be abundantly clear about it — and then you can build trust,” said Jay Shah, CEO of Personal Capital to TearSheet; studies show that customers are not turned off by fees, but are annoyed when they hear of free checking then see ACH transaction fees or overdraft fees; banks need to begin to understand what their customers want and how much they are willing to pay for it in a clear way. Source.
Meta Financial Group formed a partnership to provide personal loans to customers of NY based Liberty Lending; Meta said they will look to originate between $500mn to $1bn of personal loans during the three year partnership; “We are excited to partner with a respected and growing brand in online lending, and look forward to working together to deliver best in class loan products to consumers,” Brent Turner, Meta's head of consumer lending, said in a press release reported by American Banker. Source.
SoFi acquired the engineering and product teams from mortgage startup Clara Lending; American Banker reported SoFi said of the deal it will help them to, “immediately ramp up our technical capabilities."; SoFi’s business is still reliant on student loan refinancing but this acquisition will allow them to increase their mortgage business in the next few years. Source.
Lending Club files an 8K for a $200mn warehouse funding agreement; JPMorgan Chase was the administrative agent and Wilmington Trust was the collateral trustee; the revolving credit facility will be with certain lenders not yet announced; the move is another step in the funding sources diversification direction the company discussed late last year. Source.
According to The Times, sources say Funding Circle is in no hurry to do an IPO, but if the markets continue to be favorable they may go public in the second half of the year; article also shares the potential in their US business where they have much less brand awareness compared to the UK; there are some concerns from clients and investors that the company has not yet been through a recession as they look at an IPO; Funding Circle currently has 850 employees and last raised £82 million at a £990 million valuation. Source