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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Bank of America has optimized auto loan applications for mobile apps and is looking to expand to mortgages with a similar offering; the expansion follows a market trend toward increased demand for digital mortgage offerings; Bank of America plans to launch its mobile mortgage application in 2017 as it seeks to broaden its service availability to a full range of service channels; the mobile offering will expand on the firm's current online mortgage experience which provides for electronic applications and documentation with the benefit of automating and verifying customer information; within the industry, JPMorgan is also developing a mobile mortgage offering through its partnership with Roostify and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has set a precedent for mobile mortgage service with the launch of its Hello Home product. Source
Arbor Commercial Mortgage and its affiliates are private lenders for commercial and multi-family real estate as well as a REIT sponsor; they have launched the ArborCrowd real estate crowdfunding platform; their marketing emphasizes 30 years of experience in real estate, careful selection of sponsors, and individuals investing alongside institutional capital providers as well as the project sponsors themselves. Source
The largest non bank service provider, Mr. Cooper, led a series A round into Matic Insurance; Matic is a digital insurance agency that allows homebuyers to get homeowners insurance during the mortgage process; Coverager reports Aaron Schiff, CEO of Matic said, “Mr. Cooper’s customers will benefit from Matic’s ability to expedite loan closings and make it easier for Mr. Cooper to lower their borrower’s payments for improved payment performance. Source.
Blend has signed new bank partnership agreements and announced fundraising of $100 million; the firm will partner with Wells Fargo and US Bancorp, providing its mortgage software to help improve the mortgage application process for the two large banks; concurrently, it has also completed a $100 million fundraising round led by Greylock Partners that will increase its value to approximately $500 million and allow it to potentially expand to other lending markets. Source
Mosaic has announced the closing of its Mosaic Solar Loans 2017-1 securitization portfolio which resulted in proceeds of $138.95 million; Guggenheim Securities and BNP Paribas were the lead arrangers on the deal; Mosaic specializes in solar loans with over $1 billion originated on the platform since its launch. Source
There are many fintech companies who are getting significant traction in changing financial services industry; Business Insider has curated a list of 11 startups that are each worth over $1 billion and shares what each company does; list includes: Clover Health, Kabbage, Robinhood, Avidxchange, Coinbase, Apttus, Avant, Oscar, Credit Karma, SoFi and Stripe. Source
Motif provides an investment trading platform with themed investment portfolios for retail investors; the company has now introduced Motif Impact Portfolios for socially responsible investing; the Motif Impact Portfolios will feature companies focused on one of three social values: sustainable planet, fair labor or good corporate behavior; the portfolios were developed through a partnership with MSCI ESG Research; in comments regarding the announcement, Hardeep Walia, founder and CEO of Motif, noted that the introduction of the Motif Impact Portfolios will extend the company's commitment to innovative, accessible and fully-transparent financial products. Source