American Banker shares their takeaways from their recent conference after hearing from a wide variety of thought leaders in fintech; takeaways include: mobile and mortgages go together, don’t count out banks, the need for simplicity is paramount, small businesses care about digital too and the fintech charter is meh. 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.
To join our newsletter community please subscribe here.
- House Financial Services Committee Approves Legislation to Help Keep Lending Partnerships Between Banks and Online Lenders
- Cinda International Leads Massive Round In Chinese Fintech Company 9f Group
- YieldStreet Surpasses $200M in Originations, Bolsters Leadership Team and Launches New Website amid Period of High Growth
- $15 Million Investment Round Fuels Accelerated Growth at Goji, the Online Home and Auto Insurance Distribution Platform
- Hornets, LendingTree Announce New Multi-Year Founding Level Partnership Highlighted By Jersey Patch
- Active.Ai raises over $8 million in Series-A round
- TransUnion Expands Credit Access to More Americans with Acquisition of FactorTrust
- LendInvest launches into buy-to-let market
Goldman CFO Marty Chavez said the bank surpassed $2bn in originations, a mark they were looking to reach by year’s end; the portfolio has an average APR of 12 percent, loans have an average length of four years and the typical amount if for $15,000 as reported by Business Insider; the company estimates they will reach $13bn in lending after three years in operation. Source.
A new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that subprime auto loans from nonbank lenders have higher delinquency rates than banks; about 4.4 percent of subprime loans from banks are delinquent while 9.7 percent from nonbank lenders are delinquent; “This suggests that bank auto loans may have some additional layers of underwriting — credit score alone does not explain the gap and divergence in the delinquency rates,” the New York Fed report stated as reported by American Banker. Source.
Prosper recently published their third quarter results; the company grew originations 6% from the previous quarter to $821 million; reported a net loss of $26.9 million largely due to non-cash charges related to warrants as part of the consortium deal announced this year. Source
Moody’s Investors Service had previously stated that companies like Ant needed to be more transparent about their asset-backed securities and their criteria for lending; Douglas Feagin, senior vice president of global business for Ant Financial stated, “The demand for these securities is very healthy and continuing to expand. That, at the end of the day, is the ultimate barometer of whether you're giving enough information to investors to invest. I think seeing that demand is evidence that we're sharing the right kind of information with them.”; article discusses the abs market broadly in China which has increased recently. Source
Chinese online consumer lender, LexinFintech, filed a $500mn IPO to list on the Nasdaq; LexinFintech provides installment loans for consumers to buy products; regulators have been looking closer at consumer lending in China with recent companies listing on US exchanges; the listing is being underwritten by Goldman Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank Securities and China Renaissance. Source.
Citigroup led the $20 million round and the company is now worth $200 million; Citigroup plans to use the startup’s technology which uses natural language processing to improve customer interactions; the software converts audio conversations into text and then uses sentient analysis algorithms to detect questions, and whether it was a positive or negative interaction; it also works to determine bearish and bullish markets for traders. Source
The new API by Fidelity Investments called Fidelity Access will give third parties access to customer data; the idea behind the program is for customers to give apps focused on tax prep, budgeting or portfolio advice access to their Fidelity data; Fidelity believes this will cut down on cyber crime as access will be more secure instead of a user passing along their credentials; they are following a number of other financial institutions who have started similar programs recently. Source.
The Reality Shares Nasdaq Blockchain Economy Index looks to provide an ETF that tracks the growth and development of companies implementing blockchain solutions; they filed for the ETF with the SEC on November 2nd; “The collaboration between Nasdaq and Reality Shares represents a tangible way to track the growth of an industry that may revolutionize the way commerce is conducted, and yet is still in its infancy,” said Fredrik Voss, Vice President of Blockchain Innovation at Nasdaq. Source.