Instant buying or iBuying is starting to shake up certain real estate...
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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The European Investment Fund (EIF) has pumped over $2 billion into venture capital funds and startups in the last four years; with the vote to leave the European Union, venture capitalists in the UK now fear that this important source of funding will disappear as the government looks to officially complete Brexit; the UK is not as fortunate as the US when it comes to endowments that allocate capital to funds, therefore the EIF has filled a much needed role; there currently is no plan to replace the EIF when the UK officially leaves, though lawmakers and lobbyists are looking to see if they can strike a deal to keep the flow of capital coming. Source
Join the National Venture Capital Association’s on June 5 in Washington, D.C....
Online real estate lending platform PeerStreet has partnered with Wealthfront; PeerStreet will integrate with Wealthfront's Path offering; the integration has been facilitated by Quovo and will allow PeerStreet customers to view their PeerStreet investments holistically within their entire Wealthfront investment portfolio. Source
British Business Bank (BBB) is a government-owned entity designed to support small businesses in the UK through a fund with 1 billion British pounds ($1.27 billion); it currently has 85 million British pounds ($108 million) invested in the P2P lending industry; the Financial Conduct Authority's release of an update on the crowdfunding market last week noting a number of factors for further investigation has caused taxpayers to question the large allocation to the P2P lending sector; specifically John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, has said, "This is extremely concerning and taxpayers will want to know how this can be good use of their money."; according to a Freedom of Information request reported on by Business Insider, the allocations from BBB include 60 million British pounds ($76 million) invested with Funding Circle, 15 million British pounds ($19 million) invested with MarketInvoice and 10 million British pounds ($13 million) invested with RateSetter. Source
Last year at PitchIt@LendIt, AutoFi took home the top prize; in his pitch (34:00) Jonathan Palan, president and co-founder of AutoFi discusses AutoFi and the auto finance market; Jonathan previously spent six years at Lending Club and LendingHome; he shares that the auto market is a massive opportunity and is also a fragmented marketplace; consumers are beginning to go online to buy cars; 84% of new car purchases have financing and 68% of used cars have financing; AutoFi's thesis is that if car buying is going online then auto lending has to go online; they are a B2B software platform to help do just that; in a big vote of confidence for the company, they recently inked a deal with Ford to provide digital financing options to consumers; applications for PitchIt@LendIt 2017 close today.
Prime Minister Theresa May announced the start of the R5-SHCH Connect Partnership between London and China; the partnership will allow banks in China to have access to London’s foreign exchange market; the partnership is between London's R5 and the Shanghai Clearing House; companies involved include HSBC, LSE, BP, Standard Chartered and Standard Life Aberdeen; Jon Vollemaere, CEO of R5 commented to Finextra, “The new service offers benefits for all institutions trading FX. It provides Chinese banks with increased access to the global FX market, it enhances liquidity in major currencies, and it advances the internationalisation of the RMB.” Source.
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news...
PricewaterhouseCoopers' DeNovo team says transparency, credibility and evolving business models will be key factors for marketplace lending in 2017; increased disclosures and new solutions for data analytics are expected to help transparency while also improving confidence and credibility; new regulations will also be an important factor for the landscape overall, potentially creating new business requirements while also validating funding sources; the DeNovo team also cites potentially lower investment taxes from House Speaker Paul Ryan's "A Better Way" plan and expansion to broader lending categories as important for the new year; in 2017 funding disbursement is also expected to come from a wider range of sources with securitization in the lead; originations overall in 2016 are down 4.9% through September at $7.8 billion versus $8.2 billion in 2015 while securitizations have increased by 80% at $5.4 billion versus $3.0 billion in 2015 according to Orchard. Source