Kabbage has reported it will open a new office in Ireland; the geographic expansion follows a 50 million euro ($54 million) investment from the Irish Strategic Investment Fund which is managed by the country's National Treasury Management Agency; the Kabbage lending platform is focused on lending to small businesses and the firm expects to help support the Irish small business sector while also creating many high-quality financial services jobs in Ireland. 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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Marketplace provides insight on Goldman Sachs' new online lending business discussing the culture and variance from the traditional aspects of the investment bank; one reason for the divergence in culture is the company's focus on building Marcus as a tech startup within the bank; the investment bank's venture has gained considerable industry attention and also attracted talent from leading technology companies including Facebook and Google; it appears to be well positioned in the market with numerous competitive advantages supported by the legacy bank's 147 year history. Source
Goldman Sachs appears to be planning for a robo advisory service offering; the firm is advertising a job posting for a GSAM Technology digital experience developer that would build an automated robo advisory platform complementing the firm's asset management business; the bank's private wealth management business focuses on client's with approximately $50 million in investable assets; it has been broadening its client demographic recently by including business and retail products for investors with $1 million or less; a robo advisory service would add to other recent product expansions including the acquisition of GE Capital's online bank, Marcus and Honest Dollar. Source
Marketplace lending originations have been increasing significantly in the US and China however in 2016 both countries saw a number of challenges influencing the market and increasing risk; Moody's analyzes market similarities and differences in the two countries; reports on the variance in lending model structuring; notes that US marketplace lenders are more deeply integrated with partner-bank relationships; while structuring and partnerships vary considerably between the two countries, there are similarities, including reliance on big data, lack of credit cycle testing and ongoing development of regulatory standards. Source
The Asset provides details on recent decreases in China's P2P lending market; the chart above notes a significant decrease in transaction volume for P2P lenders in China since December 2016; the publication also reports on the number of Chinese P2P platforms and the number of problematic P2P platforms from January 2014 through February 2017. Source
Fitch Ratings has upgraded its ratings for the Citi Held for Asset Issuance 2016-PM1 (CHAI 2016-PM1) portfolio which includes loans originated from the Prosper platform; the ratings agency upgraded the Class A, B and C tranches; it attributes the upgrades to growth in hard credit enhancement available to the notes. Source
In the midst of getting ready to launch in a few weeks the UK digital bank Tandem is now unable to launch with savings accounts; the bank was approved in 2015 for a banking license so long as they fulfilled a number of criteria including hiring a board, building out sufficient technology systems and raising enough capital to cover losses; the final point is where the bank was unable to comply, they fell short of raising enough capital and now are forced to launch without the savings feature; Tandem was expecting 29 million British pounds ($36.1 million) from House of Fraser, the UK department store chain that was bought by China's Sanpower Group, but Sanpower was worried about capital restrictions coming out of China so they pulled the funding. Source
The new partnership aims to increase access to financial services for individuals and small businesses; according to a Chinese press release translated by TechNode, the "credit factory" (in Chinese) model is a business model mainly used for credit certification of small and micro-sized enterprises as well as individuals; loans lent to such groups are small, but are lent at high frequency; the adoption of the "credit factory" mode, thanks to its high efficiency and economies of scale in handling petty loans, can help big financial firms gain some ground lost to the country's mushrooming small loan companies in the microfinance market; an upgrade to the traditional "credit factory", Dianrong-Quark Credit Factory utilizes such fintech means as big data, anti-fraud management systems and decision engine; it can help lenders reduce manual operations, save costs and cut operational risks through its powerful quantitative system when they handle credit certification for individuals or small and micro-sized businesses. Source
Technology conglomerate IBM has launched a new set of developer tools for the financial services industry; the IBM Cloud for Financial Services platform will be directed by IBM InterConnect and will provide building blocks for financial services apps built on the IBM Cloud; the platform will target 100,000 individual and enterprise developers with APIs, data and content for financial services apps that can quickly scale to service fintechs, banks, wealth management firms and insurance companies; with the launch, IBM also announced a Singapore Fintech Hub, developed with support from the Singapore central bank, that will plug in to IBM's new Cloud for Financial Services platform and accelerate fintech growth in Singapore and Southeast Asia; across the world, IBM will integrate the new offerings of IBM Cloud for Financial Services at IBM's Business Partner Solution Hubs. Source
Google Play has created a guide for developers focused on fintech financial health apps; the guide was created in partnership with the Center for Financial Services Innovation and specifically its Financial Solutions Lab; the guide provides best practices for developing financial health focused apps for Android and distributing them through Google Play; Google Play is also featuring a page with financial health apps. Source