Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, added a provision to the bill for the FHFA to review credit scoring alternatives; the FHFA currently uses FICO’s classic scoring model for loan applicants; the provision adds a new piece to the ongoing argument occurring between FICO and VantageScore; FICO and some lawmakers say the FHFA is already going through a review process for credit scores; the FHFA did ask for input on new scoring models in December and is working through the comment process. 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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Amazon is I Talks with JPMorgan Chase to offer a co-branded Credit card for small business owners; the credit card would have rewards points for purchases and they would also look to add business insurance plans; this is first time Amazon will look to have a credit card specifically for small businesses. Source.
- Retail Banking: Bridging the Gap from AI to ROI (White Paper)
- The Top 5 Trends of Institutional Investors Allocating Capital to Marketplace Lending
- Digital Assets Data Raises Seed Funding Round
- Funding Circle fund announces on target dividend
- Experian Acquires ClearScore for $385 Million
- Lenders warned against selling products to vulnerable consumers
The finalists for LendIt Fintech’s 2018 startup competition have been released; BitButter, BlockFi, CreditStacks, Flowcast, Genivity, Narmi, Spacequant and Trusted Key will pitch in front of judges at LendIt Fintech 2018 on April 10 in San Francisco. Source
Revolut continues to add functionality to their accounts as they apply for their banking license; while Revolut customers have access to card payments, in Europe many utilities require that you pay phone and electricity bills with direct debits. Source
The Chinese online lender issued over $2 billion loans in the quarter to over 200,000 borrowers; this represented year over year growth of 95%; 2017 total originations were $6.3 billion across nearly 650,000 borrowers; Revenue in the fourth quarter was $280.5 million and net income was $69 million. Source
Savings rates at UK challenger banks are more than 1 percent higher than their high street counterparts; research by challenger Gatehouse Bank revealed the statistics; challenger banks and digital banks are still finding wide knowledge of open banking a challenge; “Sadly too many savers still opt for products from household names as they are unaware of the best buys that exist beyond the high street,“ said Charles Haresnape, CEO of Gatehouse Bank, to AltFi. Source.
Options Clearing Corporation has set a three year plan to put their business on a cloud based system; the reason for the move is concerns over cybersecurity; the company clears more than 460mn trades a month and has recently added cryptocurrency futures; cloud based servers are cheaper and more secure than in house IT systems. Source.
Lightning Labs announced it had raised $2.5 million and at the same time released a beta version of their technology; one of the criticisms of bitcoin is that it can handle a limited number of transactions per second; some believe that bitcoin should increase its block size to process more transactions; Lightning Labs is working on the Lightning Network to add another layer of transactions to sit on top of the blockchain network which would allow for more transactions to take place. Source
Small business lender Fundbox believes their new credit and payment product will help to solve the cash flow issue at small businesses; “We want to do for [small-business] B-to-B commerce what the entire credit card infrastructure has done for B-to-C commerce,” said Prashant Fuloria, chief operating officer of Fundbox, to American Banker; one of the biggest reasons for some of these issues is there is no credit scoring equivalent for small businesses; Fundbox Pay allows businesses to get paid immediately and gives those invoiced 60 days to pay at no charge, allowing businesses to handle the seasonal cash flow issues without too much pain. Source.