Funding Circle has replaced German Managing Director Matthias Knecht who joined Funding Circle with the acquisition of Zencap and then left the firm in June of 2016; Thorsten Seeger will take the role of managing director; the firm has also hired Belkacem Krimi as chief risk officer for continental Europe; Funding Circle will also be closing its lending business in Spain which it acquired with the purchase of Zencap. 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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Groundfloor is a real estate crowdfunding company that has historically focused on retail investors; yesterday the company announced a whole loan purchase agreement with Direct Access Capital (DAC); this is their first institutional partner; Groundfloor to date has facilitated $40 million on the platform and has raised $8.5 million in venture capital. Source
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index increased to 105.9 in January and reported its highest level since December 2004; in December 2016 the Index increased 7.4 points and has since continued to gain; small businesses have reported plans to increase workers and their optimism overall has been helped by policy proposals from the Trump administration. Source
In March the Securities and Exchange Commission denied approval for a Bitcoin ETF by the Winklevoss twins because they said too many bitcoin markets were unregulated; with recent futures markets at the CBOE and CME starting there is new hope for ETF approvals; previous filings for ETFs are now being refilled and newer ETFs are being filed as recently as late last week; there has been similar products in Canada and Switzerland with both trading at premiums. Source.
A day after LendingClub made big news by laying off 471 people...
Chain CEO Adam Ludwin sat with Business Insider to talk about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies; the interview goes through the basics of what blockchain technology is and how it has been viewed by the wider market in recent years; the hype around the technology has made many believe it can transform anything and everything; in reality, Adam says, it is a tool that should be applied where relevant; they also explore the differences in selling into an institution and how the technology is used in bitcoin transactions. Source.
Big Banks vs. Silicon Valley Startups – Whose Customer Financial Data Is...
It was reported over the weekend that PayPal and Intuit gained approval...
LendEDU is a website that claimed to be a place for users...
American Banker shares some of the companies that may stand to benefit from the Equifax hack as identity verification becomes top of mind; Mitek is planning to roll out a new product called Mobile Verify for Lending; other companies that have similar solutions include Trulioo, VixVerify and AuthenticID. Source