According to reporting in CoinDesk last month money manager VanEck filed to create the VanEck Vectors Bitcoin Strategy ETF and last week that effort was given bad news by the SEC; the SEC sent a letter to VanEck stating that they cannot review the offering because "the underlying instruments in which the fund intends to primarily invest are not yet available." 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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Trading cryptocurrencies has shown itself to be quite a lucrative business, at the same time the exchanges where trading occurs underscores how risky trading might be; exchanges can lack basics controls on know your customer (KYC), fraud prevention and more; there have also been a number of significant thefts or hacks where millions were lost; while the risk is real it has now slowed the market's growth as total value of all digital currencies has soared to over $140bn. Source.
The CBRC issued a warning that the surge in consumer loans could pose a risk to the country's lending system; they noted that lenders should not try to push up the consumer leverage ratio and they should take lessons from the US subprime mortgage crisis; recent reviews of loan books show misuse of loans for housing down payments and banks need to stay closer to lending regulations. Source.
Zopa launched a pilot with provide Uber drivers with low credit scores car loans; however the partnership didn’t attract the amount of customers it had hoped; Zopa stated in the FT article, “The pilot was interesting, but demonstrated that the potential opportunity was limited for us, and we had other priorities.”; Bryan Zhang, co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance discusses one of the problems in the industry today, attracting borrowers . Source
Zopa's Chief Product Office Andrew Lawson told investors last week they launched a new credit risk scorecard; the scorecard is meant to better help the platform assess borrowers and what is behind their approval/denial; Zopa has seen higher than expected losses and has also cut down on lending to higher risk customers; Lawson explained how the new model will use traditional credit methodology mixed with data science. Source.
According to Peer2Peer Finance News, "The inaugural Peer2Peer Finance News Power 50 list aims to identify the big names in the industry who have helped it grow into a force to contend with over the past decade and who will play a key role in its future."; rounding out the top 10 include executives from RateSetter, Zopa, Funding Circle as well as Christine Farnish from the P2PFA, Bruce Davis, co-founder of Abundance, Mark Carney, governor, Bank of England and Andrew Bailey, chief executive, Financial Conduct Authority. Source
Trustly shares how how loan companies can best differentiate themselves from others and details their partnership with Lendify. Source
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter...
Acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika confirmed that the fintech charter was open to commercial firms like Walmart & Google; this is a departure from former OCC head Thomas Curry who said the charter was designed for companies primarily involved in financial services; Mr. Noreika talked through this issue and others wile speaking at a fintech conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Source.