FST Biometrics has raised $40 million and is developing a solution for facial recognition that detects your identity while you are in motion; the biometric technology presents a new solution for security identification; by detecting your identity it can be used to unlock doors and provide various other types of security access. 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.
To join our newsletter community please subscribe here.
The UK's Department for Media, Culture and Sport has published a digital strategy report outlining its plans for the tech sector post-Brexit; the government plans to invest 17.3 million British pounds ($21.27 million) into artificial intelligence and robotics research and also reported a 1 billion British pound ($1.23 billion) program to improve internet connectivity across the UK; it will also create five international tech hubs, host a competition for fintech products and create a forum for communicating with the tech community; all of its efforts are geared towards helping the UK remain competitive in the tech industry. Source
R3 has reported it will focus on its Corda platform; the firm was developed to create blockchain inspired solutions; in comments regarding Corda, R3 Managing Director Charley Cooper says, "It is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, but with design choices that make it able to meet the needs of regulated financial institutions."; R3 refutes any wasted efforts on blockchain research saying it never intended to use blockchain technology directly; Cooper also notes, "We've said from the beginning that while Corda is a distributed ledger platform, it is not a traditional blockchain platform and was never designed to be one." Source
Funding Circle has announced a new $100 million multi-year investment agreement with Community Investment Management including provisions for additional investment; the $100 million investment will focus on small businesses in the US; the investment supports continued growth for Funding Circle which has reported monthly lending of over 100 million British pounds ($122.92 million) since November. Source
The Evolution of Home Buying: The Rise of Home Ownership Investments and What It Means for Consumers
Innovation in online real estate is creating new funding opportunities for homeowners and Unison is one of the market's leading fintech firms; in their featured blog post they provide a recent white paper titled, "A New Era for Home Buying: The Rise of Home Ownership Investments" and give insight on how home ownership financing is changing; the firm introduced home ownership investing in 2007 and has been working since then to integrate it into the US housing finance system; through Unison, home buyers receive an investment for their home that tracks with the home's value and has no financial obligations until the home is sold. Sponsored Blog Post
The underserved or underbanked have always had a problem getting access to credit that is affordable. The panel at LendIt USA 2016 entitled, "Providing Access to Credit in Underserved Markets" explored the different types of thin file borrowers around the world.
Lenders first need to understand who they are looking to serve and be sure to define their market. Understanding the type of borrower you are looking to serve will allow you to better evaluate the limitations of the data you will receive from this borrower.
How do lenders look to serve borrowers with a thin file, no file or limited data set from the traditional credit bureaus? They look to compile alternative data to help them evaluate the different borrowers.
These non-traditional lenders will pull some traditional data, as well as alternative credit bureau data and proprietary data such as questionnaires they ask to these borrowers. Alternative data can be phone payment records, bank transaction analysis and social data.
These newer lenders are no longer constrained by technology; banks used to have about thirty variables to analyze a borrower, now companies can look at two or three times that amount and are no longer limited by legacy technology.
LendUp, ZestFinance, China Rapid Finance and Oportun all serve a different type of borrower, but they all extend credit to the non-prime, non-traditional borrower. Serving these types of borrowers has additional impacts as well, the more people that are able to access affordable credit the better it is for broader communities.
To learn more about the latest trends and technology in credit and underwriting please join us at LendIt USA 2017, where we will have a dedicated track covering the market.
Noah Holdings Limited, a wealth and asset management services provider in China, has announced its fourth quarter and full year results for 2016; the firm has two leading services including asset management and internet finance; net revenues for the full year 2016 were RMB 2,513.6 million (US $362.0 million), an 18.6% increase from 2015; for the year the firm reported an operating margin of 26.5%, compared to 26.4% for 2015; the firm's internet finance business is led by Mr. Kenny Lam, who reported that the company was pleased with the results, also stating that, "Our newer businesses – asset management and internet finance – are bringing impactful results to the group." Source
In collaboration with Energy 4 Impact, UKAid and the CME Group Foundation, the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance has released a study on crowdfunding and P2P lending in Africa and the Middle East; Lend Academy provides details of the report in their article; covers 46 countries in Africa and 12 countries in the Middle East, featuring data on 70 alternative platforms. Source
eOriginal has been an active innovator in the digital finance revolution and began working with marketplace lenders in 2013; expanding its services in the industry, the firm discusses how online lenders can become even more competitive in the securitization market through digitization; their featured blog post also includes their recent white paper, "Creating Securitization eCertainty in the Secondary Market." Sponsored Blog Post
Ron Suber has invested in online commercial lending platform Money360 and will also join the firm as a strategic advisor; Money360 has been growing fast and estimates loan originations will exceed $500 million by 2017; the investment will add to Ron Suber's fintech portfolio which he is managing from a family office; his equity investment follows positive returns from loan investments on the platform. Source