Alternative data scoring considerations are becoming more prevalent in today's credit market; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has announced a public comment period seeking feedback on the potential use of alternative credit sources such as mobile phone bills and rent payments in credit approvals; the CFPB is seeking to identify how it might be able to serve consumers with minimal credit history; it says that approximately 26 million Americans have no credit histories and an additional 19 million consumers lack enough credit information to produce a credit score. Source
News Roundup
This page contains an archive of the Global Newsletter summaries and the weekly fintech news roundups.
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Former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair writes in the FT that in light of the recent hack to Equifax should regulators be providing more entry points to customer data; she goes on to explain past bank hacks are typically done using a third party who has gained access to a customer’s data; other key points include can these service providers cover potential losses and are regulators forcing service providers into the most secure process. Source.
Goldman Sachs has been offering more products to a wider range of consumers; this started with the acquisition of the online deposit platform of GE Capital; the firm is competing aggressively on their deposit rates to grow this base; in 2016 they launched Marcus, their online lending platform, and now have a new lending product called GS Select; product offers loans backed by investment portfolios for individuals that have a Fidelity financial adviser. Source
BB&T and SunTrust merger; Tech in Bank Earnings; Webinar for Whole Loan...
Fintech companies continue to attract interest from traditional financial institutions and now...
National Public Radio has surveyed research on the impact of micro-lending to entrepreneurs around the world; in a number of well-controlled studies, the finding was that the loans were used to expand businesses, but the expansions were modest even by local measures and in none of the studies did the average borrower end up significantly increasing their income; micro-loans did have other benefits such as debt consolidation; one MIT economist, Abhijit Banerjee, found that straight cash grants to global entrepreneurs with low incomes did have a significant effect on long-term income generation, and hypothesized that the strict repayment structure of microfinance might be limiting its potential; the average microloan size is $200 in South Asia and $3,000 in Eastern Europe. Source
Research: More than half of the industry believes challenger banks won’t be...
Silicon Valley-Backed Venture Cleared to Become 14th U.S. Stock Exchange WTF is...
China e-commerce business JD.com has announced the sale of its finance business which is focused on payments and investments; company will sell JD Finance for 14.3 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) in cash while also retaining some share in its future profits; with the spinoff of JD Finance, JD.com's business structure will now be similar to the structure of competitor Alibaba who also focuses on e-commerce and has a stake in payments finance business Ant Financial. Source