Survey provides insights on investors preferences for investing in real estate and demand for technology; the report shows only 2% of participants are very familiar with real estate crowdfunding providing opportunity for greater awareness of real estate investment platforms; additional highlights include statistics on investment performance perception, interest in real estate technology and thoughts on house flipping investments. 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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Robo adviser Wealthfront has announced in a blog post that it will expand its product offering to include loans; the firm is one of the premier robo advisers in the US; through a partnership with RBC Capital Markets, Wealthfront has uniquely designed a lending product for its current clients with at least $100,000; loans can be issued for approximately 30% of a client's account value. Source
According to a report from UN-based Better Than Cash, between Alibaba's Alipay and Tencent's WeChat, customers sent over $3 trillion in payments in 2016; the chart above shows how far the services have come since 2012; percentage of digital payments (online & mobile) went from 3.5% to 17% of all transactions over the same time period; Alipay and WeChat own 63% of the market for digital payments. Source
A new study has been released by two researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government; it reports on the evolution of online lending and outlines factors for sustainability; suggestions include harmonizing state lending laws and increasing state usury caps; the entire report can be downloaded from this link. Source
Orange is a large French telecom company located in France; users will be able to create an account in an Orange store or completely online; service will be open to non-Orange customers; there will be no monthly fees provided users use their attached payment card; Orange has also partnered with IBM's Watson to provide user support and is also working to add insurance products and loans to the service. Source
Revolut has partnered with Trussle to offer mortgage loan solutions for its clients; the partnership is the most recent in a series of partnerships for the digital only bank, adding to lending solutions from lenders Lending Works and Bricklane; Trussle will provide a multi-lender service to Revolut customers through technology that can recommend mortgage loans for first time borrowers and suggest alternatives for current borrowers. Source
BlackRock's investment in the Funding Circle SME Income Fund has increased to 15%; meanwhile Aberdeen's ownership has also increased to a substantial share; investments from the institutional managers show the success of the Fund and the confidence in its management; Sachin Patel is the Fund's lead portfolio manager and the Funding Circle SME Income Fund has grown to assets under management of approximately GBP300 million ($383.5 million) following a recent C-Share issuance. Source
The FCA regulates approximately 56,000 firms in the UK; its 2017/2018 business plan outlines three main objectives: 1) protect consumers 2) enhance integrity and 3) promote competition; the annual business plans shows the FCA's commitment to foster fintech innovation but notes that the sector presents some of the broadest risks; its business plan states it will continue to focus on fintech initiatives such as Project Innovate and sandbox development; the FCA also plans to actively engage with international regulators for growth of the sector as well; the entire business plan can be found here. Source
Consumer lender Avant filed documents with the SEC for a new unsecured consumer loan portfolio, Avant Loans Funding Trust 2017-A; the ABS deal looks to consist of 41,250 unsecured consumer loans, though the total portfolio pricing has yet to be released; the deal was audited by Deloitte; banks involved in the transaction include J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Credit Suisse Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC. Source
Emmanuel Marot writes about the hybrid robo advice model in a blog post for Lend Academy; says he is not in favor of the hybrid model since machine learning can take care of the needs of investors noting that complexity nor human whims have proven to bring any value. Source