Creditas, a provider of online secured loans in Brazil, has raised $16 million from the asset-backed securitization market and will use the proceeds to fund auto loan refinancings; the firm partnered with Empirica Investimentos Gestao de Recursos Ltda to launch the securitized investment portfolio, FIDC Empirica Creditas Auto; Creditas seeks to capitalize on an auto loan refinancing market opportunity that has seen increased risk from higher defaults with decreased lending from traditional banks; Brazil reports secured personal credit accounts for 1% of the country's outstanding loans; Creditas plans to offer auto refinancing at monthly rates of 1.99% to 3.65% for an annual rate of approximately 37% which compares to bank rates annually of 120%. Source
News Roundup
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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
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has published details on its fintech charter in a 16-page supplement to its existing OCC licensing manual; the fintech charter supplement addresses capital requirements, liquidity, financial inclusion plans, consumer protection and the application process; Lend Academy provides an analysis in their article; the release of the fintech charter will now be followed by an open comment period which ends on April 14; also noteworthy is that Thomas Curry's term as comptroller ends on April 9 however he can serve until a replacement is confirmed. Source
Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) has provided ratings and released more details on Marlette Funding's Marlette Funding Trust 2017-1 (MFT 2017-1) securitization; the transaction is valued at $257.44 million and includes consumer loans from Marlette; the portfolio includes three tranches rated A to BB; the majority of the loans are contained in tranche A which accounts for 80%. Source
Marlette Funding has announced plans to cut one-fifth of its workforce as the company scraps plans for expansion to new verticals and remains focused on its online unsecured personal loans; the company has reported significant lending growth with over $3 billion in loans originated through its Best Egg brand in the first three years in business; the more conservative strategy follows some signs of increasing defaults, plans for new regulations and slowed capital investments. Source
Yirendai, an affiliate of CreditEase, is the only Chinese online lender publicly traded on a US exchange; its stock price closed at $29.29 prior to the company's earnings announcement after the closing bell on March 15; year-to-date the stock is up 41.36%; the earnings results showed revenue of $154.3 million for the fourth quarter, beating estimates by $19.38 million and increasing 137% from the comparable quarter; revenue for the year was $466.4 million an increase from $190.1 million in 2015; earnings per share for the fourth quarter were $0.91, beating estimates by $0.58 and increasing 287% from the comparable quarter; earnings per share for the year were $2.72 an increase from $0.79. Source
CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund (CEFIF) announced three investments in new fintech companies at LendIt USA 2017; the investments were a series C round in Trumid, an electronic trading platform for the bond market, series B round in WeConvene, an online corporate access management ERP provider for capital markets, and a seed round in WorldCover, an innovative peer-to-peer insurance network; Anju Patwardhan, senior partner of CEFIF, said: "We believe the Chinese fintech market will continue to grow in 2017 and beyond, as many three to five year-old companies have grown into large-scale operations. We expect many of these to mature into high-quality, mid-to-late stage companies." Source
Yirendai announced the appointment of Dr. Yichuan Pei as chief credit officer; Dr. Pei was recently vice general manager of Ping An Bank in Shanghai; "Dr. Yichuan Pei is a highly regarded credit expert with extensive experience in the financial industry. We warmly welcome him to join our senior management team. With Dr. Pei assuming his roles as chief credit officer, we are very confident to further enhance our market leading capabilities of credit underwriting and risk management," said Ms. Yihan Fang, chief executive officer of Yirendai. Source
Orchard provides insight on its Q4 2016 originations report which shows total originations of $2.1 billion; data for the Orchard report only includes originators on the platforms that have allowed their data to be shared publicly; from the report, Orchard shows an increase of 10% in originations from the previous quarter which is the first increase since Q4 2015; charge-offs appear to be trending slightly higher in 2014 and 2015 than in previous years which is likely a factor of the entrance of more subprime lenders and could also be the result of broadening credit models; the data also shows borrowing rates trending lower; a breakdown of interest rates by FICO and interest rates by loan size is also provided. Source
Big banks reported their seventh consecutive month of increased approval rates at 24.1%; small bank lending approvals decreased in February to 48.8% from 48.9%; institutional lending approvals reached a new high of 63.5%; the approval rate for credit unions remained at 40.8%; the loan approval rate for alternative lenders decreased to 58.4% from 58.5% in January and has been trending lower over the past twelve months with February 2016 reporting an approval rate of 60.8%. Source