Lend Academy talks with John Donovan from Bizfi in their podcast; Bizfi provides balance sheet lending for merchant cash advances and also operates a multi-lender platform giving small businesses multiple loan funding options; Donovan talks about his career in online lending which began at Lending Club; he also discusses the dynamics of Bizfi's two business lines and some of the company's plans for the future. 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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Thomas Curry spent most of his speech at LendIt USA refuting arguments against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's (OCC) fintech charter and the agency's authority for establishing the charter however controversial factors affecting the charter's implementation were the primary topic for discussion on a LendIt USA panel; while panelists generally agreed that more regulatory clarity is needed for financial innovation overall, panelists were divided on the need for a fintech charter to regulate fintech firms; panelists reported that fintech chartering could potentially promote partnerships with banks through more standardized regulation however it seems the fintech charter is far from ready to match the broad ranging fintech variants for which it's trying to target. Source
The House Financial Service Committee (HSFC) is promoting small business investment and growth through six new bills; provisions include an expansion of venture capital fund investing, changes to the number of shares available for employees at privately-held companies and more responsive action by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in findings and recommendations by the SEC's Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation. Source
Chapman and Cutler provide insight on regulation in marketplace lending in their annual survey publication titled, "The Regulation of Marketplace Lending: A Summary of the Principal Issues"; covers a wide range of marketplace lending regulatory aspects for consideration; includes court case rulings and government involvement; also provides details on the status of marketplace loans as securities, applicable securities laws and more. Source
RateSetter has added additional detail to its annual performance statistics to provide greater transparency; the additional details provide data on loan originations by lending type with a breakdown of consumer and commercial loans; for commercial lending the firm will now also disclose loans to property developers, small and medium size enterprises, and wholesale lenders; the changes were prompted by a request from the Financial Conduct Authority for greater disclosure on wholesale lending across the industry; the update from RateSetter also included a report on a defaulted loan that RateSetter has taken onto its balance sheet to protect investors. Source
Marlette Funding has filed for a new securitization portfolio, Marlette Funding Trust 2017-1; the portfolio details were filed by Marlette Funding Depositor Trust; associated parties include Deutsche Bank Securities, Citigroup Global Markets and Goldman Sachs; the portfolio will contain unsecured consumer loans originated by Marlette. Source
Social Finance Inc. has filed as a sponsor for a securitization portfolio of private student loans; SoFi Lending Corporation, will act as the securitizer for the SoFi Professional Loan Program LLC 2017-B (SOFI 2017-B) portfolio. Source
The market has reported the first securitization of Lending Club prime loans, the Arcadia Receivables Credit Trust (ARCT 2017-1); the portfolio has been priced by Jefferies and is backed by $220 million of Lending Club prime loans as collateral; the loans come from Cirrix Capital's marketplace lending fund which is overseen by Arcadia; the securitization has two tranches which have both received a rating from Kroll Bond Rating Agency; tranche A includes the majority of the loans with $176.9 million in collateral and a BBB rating; tranche B includes $36.75 million in loans with a BB- rating; PeerIQ provides further analysis on the portfolio and how it compares to other similar securitization deals. Source
Google's artificial intelligence unit, DeepMind, is using blockchain technology to build an auditing system for analyzing and storing healthcare data; the system will mainly focus on tracking all of a person's hospital health data and centrally storing it for access and ownership by individuals; DeepMind will also make its system available through open source software allowing for the technology to be utilized for broader solutions including auditing identities, financial records and private corporate data. Source
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) denied the approval of a rule change proposal that would have allowed for the Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF to be traded on the Bats BZX Exchange, also operated by the Winklevoss brothers; approval would have created the US's first publicly traded bitcoin investment fund; the SEC cited two main factors in their disapproval of the investment: 1) the Exchange lacks surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying bitcoin commodity and 2) the markets involved in bitcoin trading are not sufficiently regulated. Source