CommonBond has created a March Debtness bracket to look at the payoff rates of this year's March Madness basketball teams; the bracket identifies the time it takes for students to pay off their student loans; UCLA is CommonBond's current March Madness winner with the fastest payoff rate at 4.42 years. 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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Promise Financial was previously a marketplace lender focused on providing wedding loans; it issued loans of approximately $10,000 with interest rates up to 30%; in January the firm announced a change to its name and business model citing competitive pressures as the main reason for the shift in focus; it will now sell its technology as a service to banks and is in the process of changing its name to DigiFi. Source
MoneyThing has announced its authorization from the UK Financial Conduct Authority; says it will no longer be pre-funding loans and revising its terms for new lenders; plans to seek HMRC approval for innovative finance individual savings accounts. Source
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter...
Passporting could increase fintech competitiveness across Europe as the UK prepares to leave the European Union; passporting would lower regulatory requirements for fintech firms in the European Union allowing them to operate more freely across Europe; it would also create greater incentive for firms to move their business to the European Union and away from London; the European Commission has launched a three month consultation period on passporting and new legislations for fintechs which will be followed with legislative proposals; on Thursday, March 23 the European Commission also published a plan for European Union financial services companies that will focus on reducing costs and increasing consumer protection. Source
The Royal Bank of Scotland is closing 158 branches in the UK in an effort to reduce costs; it has continued to struggle since the financial crisis reporting nine consecutive years of losses; the firm has been increasingly integrating automation to cut costs and says it will make a decision on its robo advisory service for mortgage lending by the third quarter; the robo advisory service offers customers advice and insight that helps them decide on a mortgage loan product, also giving them an option to connect with a human advisor at any time during the process. Source
Lufax is one of China's leading P2P lenders with support from Ping An Insurance; it is currently planning to launch a global asset allocation platform to facilitate investment for middle income earners across Asia in 2017; the platform will build on the company's offerings in P2P lending and wealth management; Lufax is also working with four investment banks on an initial public offering in Hong Kong. Source
Fifth Third has announced a $112 million investment in a five year project that will upgrade its technology and help it to partner with fintech firms; enhancements involved with the upgrade include video conferencing with remote experts, Wi-Fi in branches, distance learning and real-time data feeds to fintech partners; following the investment the company will be driven more by its new web-services and APIs; it also plans to more openly partner with fintech companies for data sharing. Source
Several startups are approaching the auto purchase and loan process by integrating with the existing system instead of attempting to upend the current model; Kevin Singerman, founder of AutoFi, who recently inked a deal with Ford stated: "The market is so big that there's nothing preventing someone from creating a new dealership model, but I want to go after the biggest part of the pie, which is how consumers buy cars today. That's a much more attractive opportunity."; startup AutoGravity who is backed by German carmaker Daimler has a similar approach, providing a white label service to dealers; Bloomberg provides details of the current state of the auto market and other industry participants. Source

Bloomberg provides insight on factors involved in a potential takeover of OnDeck Capital after rumors on Thursday that Kabbage was considering an offer to acquire the firm; it seems OnDeck's shareholders would likely veto a takeover with 45% of the company still owned by its original investors; as a private company, the structuring of the deal terms for Kabbage would also be difficult and to gain any interest from OnDeck's shareholders they would have to offer a considerable premium. Source

