P2P lending platform, Growth Street, has received registration as an appointed representative by the Financial Conduct Authority and will partner with Resolution Compliance; the new registration and partnership allow it to expand its product offerings to individual investors; the expansion of investors helps the company to offer loans to even more small and medium enterprises; the company primarily lends to businesses through its GrowthLine business overdraft product. 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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Innovate Finance is encouraging the creation of two new fintech hubs in Bahrain and the UAE; Innovate Finance's CEO Lawrence Wintermeyer spoke on the potential benefits of a fintech hub for Bahrain on Monday at the FinTech Enterprise Excellerate (E2) conference; while in Bahrain, Innovate Finance will also meet with Bahrain fintech regulators; later in the week Innovate Finance plans to meet with fintech supporters in the UAE. Source
UK startup, Vault, launched a retirement product for small businesses at TechCrunch Disrupt London; the investment platform offers a retirement solution for small businesses through automated investing; the company's automated platform allows small businesses to offer a retirement solution for their employees at a low cost. Source
LendingUSA has hired Manoj Mathew as its new chief technology officer; the firm provides point of sale financing solutions for merchants; Manoj Mathew will be joining LendingUSA from LendFoundry where he was co-founder and chief technology officer; brings in-depth experience in credit financing technology and will support the firm in advancing financing solutions. Source
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter...
The board of directors at CAN Capital, an online lender for small businesses, has named Parris Sanz as the company's chief executive officer and promoted Ritesh Gupta to chief operating officer; the new executives will be focusing on process improvements and market positioning as the company seeks to grow its lending business for small companies; CAN Capital has been an industry leader in small business marketplace lending with more than $6 billion funded since 1998; the firm is primarily focused on providing merchant cash advances. Source
Victory Park Capital (VPC) Investments says it is shifting investments from peer-to-peer loans to balance sheet investments after losses in October triggered significant writedowns and caused a revenue return of -1.25%; in October the return was primarily caused by a substantial capital loss of -203 basis points from "certain marketplace loans" which it did not disclose and also from losses in a securitized portfolio of Avant loans; according to Cormac Leech, "the marketplace lending portfolio is not quite seasoned, while the balance sheet side of investments is doing really well"; this performance has caused the change in focus to balance sheet investments. Source
Kroll Bond Rating Agency has assigned preliminary ratings to a LendingClub securitization portfolio; the loan securitization, LendingClub Issuance Trust, Series 2016-NP2 (LCIT 2016-NP2), is valued at $101.75 million and includes two classes of notes with LendingClub consumer loans; the class A tranche which accounts for 84% of the deal at $85.3 million, is rated BBB; the class B tranche accounts for 16% at $16.4 million and is rated BB+. Source
Looking to stay competitive, Barclays has announced a new digital investment platform that promises to lower fees for investment services; the platform will be available to existing customers in 2017, providing an upgraded dashboard for viewing checking, savings and investment accounts, also adding increased capabilities for direct investments; this will help the bank keep in line with recent fintech innovation as robo advisors are becoming a bigger force in the wealth management space. Source
Tuesday's 3.2% GDP growth rate report is an indication of expanding economic growth in the US which increases the probability of a rate hike from the Federal Reserve in December; a continued positive trend in economic growth is also likely to lead to five interest rate increases through 2018; consumer spending appears to be the leading catalyst for current economic growth and the source cautions that it could lead to problems for the marketplace lending credit market; consumer spending has been driven by increased credit balances but as rates rise, risks from these borrowers are also likely to increase which could affect platform defaults and securitization portfolios with the greatest risks in unsecured loans. Source