In documents reviewed by the FT Ant Financial says they now have...
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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Over 250 investors, entrepreneurs, bankers, and regulators attended the 2019 Fintech for...
Chinese regulators are considering custodian requirements for bitcoin to help mitigate effects from its market risks; the custodian support appears to be welcomed by platforms and investors in China; overall, Chinese regulators are taking a more active role in bitcoin market activity as Chinese investors increasingly account for a majority of bitcoin's trading volume. Source
Stress testing from Funding Circle has reported its loan platform would still provide investors with a net return of 6.4% given a worst case market scenario; while effects from Brexit continue to be debated, market skeptics are not as optimistic as the UK platforms; they foresee stagflation in the UK characterized by higher unemployment and slowing GDP growth; they are also concerned about a lack of skin in the game which has prompted parliament member, Chris Philp, to request from the Financial Conduct Authority that a portion of each firm's loans include balance sheet capital; while marketplace lending executives are against this approach, policy makers are considering it. Source
Though Monzo has seen a share of issues and outages recently the company says the third party marketplace is core to their vision; they also explained it was a key part of their revenue drive and will help to drive down costs per customers in the near future; Monzo have plans to expand product offerings, potentially launch in the US and build out partnerships in the near and mid term future. Source.
Marketplace lender, Bitbond, has been an industry leader, providing the first global P2P lending platform for small businesses and now known as the world's first P2P lender allowing transactions with digital currency; Radoslav Albrecht, Bitbond's founder, sees digital currency, and specifically Bitcoin, as an opportunity to expand lending availability to borrowers and help returns for investors; Bitbond is able to offer digital currency transactions through its licensing from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority which took three years and required in-depth investigation of the company's operations including their know your customer and anti-money laundering procedures. Source
Credy was founded in 2016 and has been gaining some ground in India's P2P lending market; the firm is emerging from the Y Combinator Winter 2017 program and seeks to capitalize on two factors supporting the growth of P2P in India: 1) the use of the Aadhaar ID system and 2) the country's demonetization which eliminated 85% of the country's currency and shifted the economy towards a focus on digital transactions; using digital IDs and a technology platform for underwriting and instant approvals will allow the firm to capitalize on a $50 billion personal lending market; the firm's average loan size varies from $500 to $1,000 with repayment terms up to nine months; led by former Goldman Sachs bankers, the P2P platform has already processed approximately $3 million in loans. Source
LoanHero has appointed three new executives: Zalman Vitenson, Olaf Janke and Michael Sides; Vitenson will take the CEO role, Janke will be the firm's new CFO and Michael Sides has been hired as the firm's vice president of sales; LoanHero provides an innovative technology loan origination platform for point of sale lending. Source
Germany's central bank is testing the use of blockchain technology in securities settlement; the central bank has partnered with Deutsche Börse to build a prototype; the prototype system is expected to be able to transfer electronic securities and digital coins also performing functions for coupon payments and redemptions of securities. Source
Climb Credit is taking a different approach to lending to college students,...