AT Zuche is a Shanghai-based peer-to-peer car rental platform with over five million users and 200,000 vehicles; it has announced a $58 million Series C financing round from investors including Matrix Partners China; Matrix Partners China also recently invested in insurtech app Anxin Doctor which raised RMB200 million ($28 million) for a healthcare service focused on women and children; CreditEase Insurance Agency, a CreditEase affiliate, has also added new capital of RMB80 million ($11 million) for its insurance platform. 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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Lending Club borrowers are given a 15 day grace period for loan payments; borrowers are not assessed a late fee and previously did not pay accrued interest on the overdue amount; Lending Club has revised its grace period policy as of February 24 to require borrowers to now pay additional interest on the late payments; the firm will continue to not charge a late fee until after the 15 day grace period. Source
P2P Finance News provides details on how six of the industry's top funds have performed over the past year; their analysis includes performance for P2P Global Investments, SME Loan Fund, Ranger Direct Lending, Funding Circle SME Income Fund, VPC Specialty Lending and Honeycomb Investment Trust; performance from Ranger Direct Lending leads the group of funds with an NAV total return over the past year of 19.9%. Source
Lend Academy talks with Jeff Stewart of Lenddo in their podcast; Lenddo provides software used for analyzing credit of underserved borrowers in 20 countries around the world; Jeff explains how he came up with the idea to start Lenddo, the early days of proving out the model and much more. Source
At the SFIG 2017 conference on Monday, PeerIQ announced a new data partnership with 1010data; according to the press release the partnership will now offer the industry's only integrated cloud platform with self-service data management and analytics; users will now have access to even broader capabilities for loan data analysis through 1010data's Insights Platform which includes an analytical function library, pre-defined reports and queries through 1010data QuickApps and the ability to overlay consumer credit and econometric data with marketplace loan data analysis. Source
Nasdaq Vice President Fredrik Voss is optimistic about the use of blockchain in capital markets trading; according to Cointelegraph, stock market transactions and the core premise of blockchain are compatible making stock market trading ideal for blockchain integration; blockchain technology could help with a number of trading factors including transparency and efficiency; according to Voss, blockchain technology is helping industry trading specialists to look at some of the market's trading problems with new options and solutions from blockchain's capabilities; while he is optimistic, Voss also says, "There is a long way to go before we see a very wide scale adoption of the technology in capital markets, but it looks more promising now than we thought three years ago." Source
Fintech firm Quovo launched its bank API in November 2016 with 18 financial institutions; it has now expanded to 215; the API technology allows fintech firms to verify accounts and offer ACH payments and transfers; Quovo's recent partnership expansion has also included credit unions and regional banks. Source
Andy Rachleff, CEO of Wealthfront, makes the case for automated advice and technology powered software; reports that Wealthfront's new system, Path, can analyze a client's spending and savings preferences through access to their accounts, creating financial plans in minutes; Wealthfront also has plans for adding artificial intelligence solutions to improve its services. Source
Wealth advisor Snowden Lane has partnered with Artivest to offer investors easier access to private equity and hedge fund investments; Snowden Lane is an independent wealth advisor with no proprietary product offerings; through the partnership, Artivest will now be the firm's main provider of private equity and hedge fund investments; Artivest provides a curated platform of hedge funds and private equity investments. Source
Sunlight Financial has gained a $130 million investment from Route 66 Ventures for expansion of its residential solar systems lending business; the firm plans to develop new financing products, expand its Charlotte business center and partner with more solar installers; the firm is currently a trusted provider for a network of solar installation companies and offers its credit products through an easy to use online platform. Source