Artificial intelligence company, Flamingo, has listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and partnered with online lender, DirectMoney; the company seeks to help increase the sales conversion rate of online customers through web chat, web forms and artificial intelligence that guides customers through an online purchase. 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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During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter...
Chinese authorities on Monday ordered a ban on initial coin offerings (ICOs); a PBoC statement ordered that ICO activities should be halted starting from Monday, and ICO platforms should not engage in exchange services between fiat currencies, virtual coins and tokens; two of China's leading ICO platforms, ICOAGE and ICOINFO, had already halted services before the official statement came out. Source
Zane Wang concluded the LendIt USA keynote speeches with a presentation on China Rapid Finance's business growth in China; the firm's online lending business has grown steadily as a leading provider of online loans for consumers; Wang discussed China's credit market infrastructure and credit bureau development; Wang also noted the market opportunity from emerging middle-class mobile active consumers (EMMAs) which are a primary target market for China Rapid Finance; also of high importance in China is the use of big data; Wang reported that China Rapid Finance has been able to achieve its success by using predictive selection technology solutions derived from machine learning and big data algorithms. Source
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news...
SoFi is one of the US's fastest growing alternative finance companies; the Financial Revolutionist talks with Mike Cagney about the firm's accomplishments, success factors and future objectives; Cagney provides insight on the firm's recent acquisition of Zenbanx and $500 million fundraising; discusses how these deals will drive growth for the firm and the other areas of the business the firm is working to expand. Source
Zopa has promised its investors it will speed up the time for selling loans on the platform after investors complained of loan sale times taking weeks; the platform has identified this as an issue, reporting in a blog post, "Recently, some of our processes have been running slower than normal, resulting in it taking longer for you to sell loans and access your money early."; Senior Developer Joe Hutchinson says the platform has been working to upgrade its technology with steady progress and it has more enhancements planned which will provide more capacity on the server improving performance significantly over the next few weeks. Source
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has opened a comment period for information on alternative credit data. The CFPB issued the request for information (RFI) on February 16 and the comment period is open until May 19. Responses to the RFI can be found here.
The CFPB, established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and led by Director Richard Cordray, is interested in obtaining information on the currently available sources of alternative credit data in the market and alternative credit data underwriting models being used by fintech innovators.
The CFPB's RFI follows an increasingly emerging financial inclusion trend in fintech. The market has seen a number of new companies seeking to make credit more accessible for thin file borrowers. Meanwhile, innovation around alternative credit data is also surfacing. The CFPB seems to be taking an active role in this emerging trend and will likely publish a comprehensive report on its findings and perspective following the comment period. Source
Square reported earnings yesterday, reporting year over year gross payment volume of...
China Construction Bank is working with IBM to develop blockchain-enabled “bancassurance” platform for its retail and commercial banking arm in Hong Kong; A ‘bancassurance’ endeavor typically sees sales of insurance products through banks; the blockchain platform, which is expected to launch in Q3 2017, is currently in its testing phase between China Construction Bank (Asia) and its insurance providers and their clients. Source