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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B2B FinPAL, Ethis Kapital, FundedByMe Malaysia, ManagePay Services, Modalku Ventures and Peoplender have now been registered with the Securities Commission of Malaysia and plan to begin business in 2017; Malaysia is the first of the ASEAN countries to register P2P lending companies. Source
SoFi has partnered with Fannie Mae to help its customers pay down student loan debt using home equity; already focused on student loans, SoFi's new Student Loan Payoff ReFi will allow homeowners to refinance their home and simultaneously pay student loan debt; with home equity, borrowers can combine their mortgage and student loans to make one loan payment on their debt. Source
Morgan Stanley has upgraded Lending Club's stock to overweight; the stock closed at $4.81 on Tuesday, November 2; analyst, James Faucette, notes the company's new executive leadership and positive capital growth potential for 2017; says the stock could increase to $17; company reports earnings on Monday. Source
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) ended its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday and released an afternoon announcement reporting no change to the central bank borrowing rate which will remain at 0.25% to 0.50%; as expected the FOMC's statement did indicate that a rate hike in December was likely with new language saying the 2% inflation objective is near and that the Fed only needs "some further evidence" of economic progress for a rate increase; globally the US is one of few central banks tightening monetary policy; many are easing with negative rates; Japan's central bank borrowing rate is -0.10% and the ECB central bank borrowing rate is at 0% for the Eurozone; the Bank of England will be meeting on Thursday and is expected to keep its rate unchanged with further easing in 2017. Source
The Bank of England kept its central bank borrowing rate at 0.25% and decided to continue with its $86 billion asset purchase program; while no changes were made to monetary policy, the BOE changed its guidance; with an increased focus on inflation in the region, the BOE said it would be prepared to raise rates in order to keep inflation at its 2% target rate. Source
P2P-Banking has released its monthly report on loan originations; Funding Circle led originations for the month at 106.1 million euros, also reporting a new monthly high; Zopa and Ratesetter also topped the list; Zopa reported monthly loan originations of 85.3 million euros and Ratesetter had loan originations of 63.9 million euros. Source
Square's CEO, Jack Dorsey, explained on this week's earnings call why he puts its subsidiary, Caviar, on a silver platter; Square's payment-handling service is used by many restaurants, while Caviar's food delivery-enabling platform allows those restaurants to reach a customer base eating at home; the key for Dorsey is cross-selling services that grow their customers' businesses, even if the synergies aren't apparent at first bite; on CNBC's Squawk Box the day after the earnings call, CTO Sarah Friar said that Square has been "executing on all cylinders." Source
Earlier this week, the UK launched its bank referral scheme to help extend credit to small businesses not funded by nine of the UK's largest banks; it seems that UK banks outside of the UK consortium are also increasing their efforts to provide alternative options for business borrowers; this week NatWest announced it has added iwoca to its alternative lending panel, Capital Connections. Source
Facebook's data and privacy rules have slowed business development plans for insurtech firm, Admiral; many fintech firms have sought to use social media profiles in crowdfunding with little success for various reasons; insurtech firm, Admiral, will now be forced to end its plans to use Facebook social media posts and likes for consideration in auto insurance underwriting; Facebook says use of the information is a violation of its data privacy rules. Source
Latvian marketplace lender Mintos and Creamfinance have partnered to list loans originated in Denmark and the Czech Republic; Creamfinance Financial Planning Director, Georgijs Ustinovs, said, "High investor demand for Creamfinance loans was our main motivation for adding a new market to the Mintos platform."; Mintos noted that the annual return to investors should reach 11%. Source
