LendingClub grew revenue and announced settlements in two class action lawsuits. 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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Anyfin is based in Sweden and allows users to refinance existing loans using a photo of a loan statement; the round was co-led by Accel and Northzone and included Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital along with other angel investors; Anyfin is currently only available in Sweden but they have ambitions to expand further into Europe. Source
As rates rise fixed income investors are looking for places to put cash; Lend Academy shares the latest rates on savings and CD accounts as well as a look at the newly branded Marcus by Goldman Sachs bank account. Source
Users in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire will now have access to trade bitcoin and ethereum commission free; Robinhood plans to open to most states by the middle of 2018; over 4 million people have signed up for accounts with Robinhood. Source
Salt Lending has written a blog post sharing the immense amount of interest in their blockchain backed loans; since launching on December 28th, 2017 they have issued $23 million in loans yet there is still demand of over $1.3 billion; the company is working on scaling and automating processes, but is focusing on addressing existing demand before adding new members. Source
The pilot occurs after a successful proof of concept in September with BNP, Commerzbank and ING; they hope to expand later this year with more banks, credit insurers and enterprise planning and logistics providers; they are looking to address risk mitigation, payables finance and receivables finance; “The technology ran fast and smoothly and the positive results showed us we are on the right track and ready to take the next step by entering into a pilot," said Ivar Wiersma, head of innovation at ING Wholesale Banking, to CoinDesk. Source.
Digital banks have been presenting themselves as a more transparent fairer option than the traditional players; what these newcomers are finding is to scale and reach profitability they will need to figure out a way to lend that doesn’t strike the same tone as customers get from their typical bank; Tandem, Monzo, Starling Bank, Revolut and N26 have all started to roll out lending options in a variety of ways by using a tailored data driven approach; figuring out where the balance lies is the key piece if these banks are truly going to disrupt the banking system. Source.
While Alibaba’s Sesame Credit has increased access to loans in China the government recently told them to stop a national rollout of the program; John Gapper from the FT writes that there are three main issues behind social credit scores in China; technology companies have a more liberal attitude than banks when it comes to data; social credit scores seem to promote spending and more credit where as a traditional FICO score rewards a user for self control; the scores are proprietary to the companies who created them like Alibaba did with Sesame Credit. Source.
TD Bank has run into a number of issues since updating their online banking and mobile app experiences; customers have had issues accessing their accounts, transferring funds and paying bills; the issues point to a problem among banks as they try to figure out how long new product releases should be tested before releasing to market; the bank has tried to ease customer complaints by responding on social media but that has only made problems worse; with the amount of competition for customers increasing in banking the traditional players will need to better prepare the beta testing phase. Source.