Gellman is the firm's first chief marketing officer; he joins the firm from Esurance and also has experience at Wells Fargo; Credible is a personal finance marketplace that provides offers for student loans and personal loans; in July it also announced a credit card marketplace; Gellman will help the platform expand its business and continue to focus on supporting its customers. 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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The LIM Asia Special Situations Master Fund has increased its ownership in the Ranger Direct Lending Fund to 9.2% from 5.48% reported in July; the Ranger Direct Lending Fund is primarily focused on high yield direct lending platforms; it has recently been troubled by its exposure to losses from marketplace lending platform Argon Credit which it invested in indirectly through the Princeton Alternatives Fund. Source
Lend Academy Article: Hongling Capital: The Worst Victim of China’s P2P Lending Regulatory Crackdown
China's P2P platform Hongling Capital is shutting down; Lend Academy details its business highlights and subsequent shutdown in their article; continued losses, large loans and payment guarantees were a few of the factors that led to its closing; the article also highlights some of the issues with guaranteeing principal or interest and includes Hongling's plans for the future. Source
Alibaba will bring a version of its smartphone-based payment platform to Japan as early as 2018 spring; the Japanese unit of Ant Financial will offer a version of the Alipay digital payment system tailored for the Japanese market under a new brand. Source
9F Group has invested in a blockchain company called Wyre in Silicon Valley; the Group will establish its Southeast Asia headquarters in Singapore soon; plus it already has 9F Primasia Securities in Hong Kong. Source (Chinese)
Forbes reports on the next wave of personal finance apps; discusses pairing, partnering and mergers among companies, helping to allow companies to offer life solutions; highlights market partnership cases including deals led by Acorns, Revolut and Starling Bank; also notes some of the key aspects in marketing personal finance apps to millennials. Source
In the "Top 10 Disruptive Technologies in Fintech" report, Juniper identifies the emerging technologies that are disrupting and influencing financial services in 2017; the top three include PSD2 and open APIs, regtech, and chatbots; at the top of the list, open APIs are a trend influencing financial services globally and Europe's PSD2 legislation is expected to help accelerate innovation. Source
TruePillars, an Australian SME lender that focuses on individual investors, raised $3.9 million in a series A round; the round was led by a Melbourne-based private investor; "This investment will give us the means to further innovate and build on our service, including our ground-breaking secondary marketplace which allows investors to liquidate their investments ahead of schedule by selling to another investor in real time," says John Baini, TruePillars co-founder and CEO; the company allows for individual investors to fund loans with a $50 minimum commitment per loan. Source
Funding Societies is the first P2P lender to join the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers (IACPM); the IACPM was established in 2001 and is focused on supporting a community of members in the practice of credit portfolio management; the Association currently has approximately 100 financial institution members. Source
India has become one of the fastest and most diverse fintech markets in the world; at LendIt USA 2017 we hosted a panel featuring leading India fintech firms; panelists talk about what makes the India market unique and what is the size of the opportunity right now; banks have helped to serve the top of the credit pyramid and micro lending has helped to serve the bottom of the credit pyramid, there is a big opportunity in serving the missing middle; panelists focused on how their lending models differ, the differences in the small business and consumer markets and how India has gone from a data scarce country to a data rich country; Aadhaar has also played a key role in helping to get more people and businesses into the financial system; other areas discussed include borrower acquisition channels and leveraging third party data sources. Source