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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Orchard's Weekly Online Lending Snapshot for the week of October 27 focuses on new marketplace lending securitizations and the snapshot's new tracking for recent securitization issuances; other key data points from the week include Yirendai leading publicly-traded marketplace lenders with a monthly stock gain of 12.52% and the UK Ranger Direct Lending Fund continuing to lead among UK listed funds with a monthly gain of 6.46%. Source
Estonia-based marketplace lender, Bondora, has announced plans for a new business model and system design that will change the way the company services its borrowers and investors; the changes will involve a new system design for borrowers and investors; according to Bondora, splitting the business into two separate parts will allow for greater pricing efficiency and better reporting and analytics. Source
Reg. CF crowdfunding platform, Wefunder, is now accepting Bitcoin; Wefunder has taken the lead on Reg. CF crowdfunded investments accounting for 33 of 46 offerings; after numerous requests from its investors the platform has been able to incorporate Bitcoin investments; says the acceptance of Bitcoin will make it even easier to invest in early stage companies. Source
Jiedaibao, launched by JD Capital, would give people looking to engage in debt recovery all kinds of personal data belonging to overdue debtors, including phone numbers, addresses and even ID card numbers; releasing this kind of information would allow for any freelance debt collector to harass borrowers into paying their overdue amounts; this type of practice in China is not all that unusual as past debt collection efforts have discussed the release of nude photos if payments are missed; the agreement would give the "debt collector" 40% of the debt paid. Source
Financial Finesse writes about a gap that exists regarding women accruing retirement capital and gaining confidence in personal financial management; causes for the gap versus men include less comfort with traditional means of communicating financial products in-person and online; women (therefore) being more conservative with novel asset classes; as well as women living longer and requiring more savings; the article reports that "the bottom line is that women need to be saving more and at a faster pace than men to meet their retirement income needs."; their survey finds that only 20% of women feel the financial sector "truly hears their needs." Source
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has announced it will create an Innovation Office with staff in Washington, New York and San Francisco; the new Innovation Office is part of a broader framework for responsible innovation also released this week; the Innovation Office will provide a dedicated staff of government officials focused on innovation affecting federally chartered banks and the banking system; it will also seek to manage the OCC's framework for responsible innovation for banks and nonbanks. Source
The Global Fintech 100 list by KPMG and H2 Ventures has been highly publicized and is a leading point of reference for the global fintech market; Lend Academy provides insight on this year's list in their article; the list includes companies from 23 countries with two groupings for established and emerging companies ranked by five factors; marketplace lending reported the greatest representation by category with 32 companies; by country China led the list with four of the top five rankings. Source
Since 2008, a number of changes have occurred affecting the U.S. financial industry and its regulations; simultaneously financial technology has also been evolving rapidly and market conditions have actually been a catalyst for P2P lending platforms; Forbes finds, as many market experts have recently discussed, that P2P lending platforms' extension of credit to a more diverse range of borrowers and built in accountability through investors and lenders, is providing a new type of support for the credit market that could help to prevent another crisis in the future. Source