Russian marketplace lender Blackmoon allows professional investors to acquire portfolios of emerging market loans; it has now reported a new partnership with ID Finance, a data science, credit scoring and nonbank digital lending as an application provider; loans are screened and scored by ID Finance's advanced risk assessment system and qualifying loan transactions are automatically transferred to the creditor setting up an automated securitization process. 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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Olaf Carlson-Wee recently launched a fund with $15 million in assets under management and backing by Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures; Laura Shin sat down with Olaf on her Unchained podcast to discuss the fund and how he discovered bitcoin back in 2011; the podcast covers how Polychain Capital invests exclusively in digital assets, not companies, and how Olaf Carlson-Wee views cryptocurrencies; they also cover Olaf being the first employee at Coinbase and how he put what he called at the time his meager life savings into bitcoin. Source
FnConn launched Chained Finance at LendIt USA 2017; the platform is built with blockchain technology and is intended to provide alternative loans for supply chain companies; Jack Lee, CEO of FnConn, says the platform has the potential to help improve supply chain finance in a number of ways specifically through greater cost efficiency from the use of blockchain; Chained Finance will be fueled through the support of FnConn's financial subsidiary Foxconn and P2P lender Dianrong. Source
The Startupbootcamp FinTech London and PwC have released a new report which finds more companies are investing in artificial intelligence; the report's findings are based on program applicants; findings show that artificial intelligence is significantly impacting customer service solutions; report also provides insight on top trends in fintech including an increasing number of companies focused on B2B and SME solutions. Source
Asia's alternative lending sector has been growing exponentially with a number of industry dynamics influencing the market; Forbes provides an overview of current market developments in China, India and Southeast Asia; growth in the three regions has been significantly influenced by a shift towards digital and a growing middle class increasingly using mobile technology; while marketplace lending has been growing in Asia a permeating challenge across all three regions is the lack of a deeply rooted credit underwriting system with robust data for lenders; China has approximately 2,200 P2P lenders with its P2P lending market valued at an estimated $100 billion however new regulations to handle fraud are likely to shrink the market; India is reporting about 30 P2P lenders in the country; India and Southeast Asia have a number of credible alternative lenders but seem to be growing cautiously in order to avoid the outbreaks of fraud experienced in China; Forbes provides a taxonomy of the various alternative lenders in Asia. Source
Old Mutual has reduced its stake in the VPC Specialty Lending Fund to less than 6%; the Fund's performance has been struggling since September 2016 and it has been steadily shifting to balance sheet investments; over half of the portfolio is now contained in balance sheet investments which is an increase from 43% in June 2016. Source
The Finance Innovation Lab and Toynbee Hall will partner to create a fintech incubator; the incubator will focus on companies in financial health; the Financial Health Fellowship will be a six month endeavor helping companies to scale their businesses; more details about the program can be found here and the program is accepting applications through April 10. Source
CapitalRise has announced the launch of an innovative finance individual savings account (IFISA) offering its investors a tax free account for investing in the firm's real estate investments; investors can invest in the IFISA with a minimum of 1,000 British pounds ($1,223); the investment maximum for the current tax year is 15,240 British pounds ($18,632) and the maximum will increase to 20,000 British pounds ($24,451) in the following tax year; the platform offers a range of real estate loan property investments in the UK with tax-free returns of approximately 10% to 14% per year. Source
LendIt has posted presentations from LendIt USA 2017 keynote speakers and the event's various tracks on its blog; keynote speaker videos are now all available on the LendIt website and videos from different tracks continue to be added; also available on the website are LendIt USA 2017 photos. Source
Crowdfund Insider provides a roundup of keynote speaker quotes from LendIt USA expressing sentiment from the event; a great deal of attention at LendIt USA 2017 was on the industry's rebound from challenges faced in 2016 including a disturbance of platform confidence following the release of Lending Club's CEO with economic uncertainty and increased defaults also factoring into the market landscape; Scott Sanborn began the conference with an opening keynote speech discussing the exponential market opportunity still ahead likening the market's growth to Amazon's initial market potential; Lending Club's appointment of Sanborn appears to be a critical success factor for the firm and the industry overall; generally market leaders were confident about the industry's current trajectory and government officials reported an increased presence as mainstream integration becomes even more prevalent. Source