Bitcoin reported substantial gains in 2016, increasing 120% and 57% in the last three months of the year; on January 1 the cryptocurrency exchange rate versus the dollar increased to over $1,000; equity strategist, Christopher Wood of CLSA notes that trading in China has concurrently been high with trading on the China BTC Bitcoin Exchange increasing from Rmb 1 billion ($140 million) in September to Rmb 27.8 billion ($4 billion) in December; in an article from Asia Times, the source also reported that China accounted for 42% of Bitcoin's trading in the first six months of 2016; one factor significantly affecting the increased trading volume has been the weakening of China's currency causing increased interest in foreign investments. 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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Cross River Bank is leveraging its fintech customers to grow its payment transaction services; the firm has digital lending partnerships with 17 companies and is the issuing lender for some of the industry's top marketplace platforms; the firm's business relationships have helped to expand its payments system customers with many of its customers naturally migrating to Cross River Bank's payments system; the firm's CEO Gilles Gades says its payments activity could double next year with help from existing relationships with Stripe and Google Wallet providing access to Mastercard Send; in payments, Cross River currently manages approximately 2 million transactions per month and it sees a substantial opportunity for gaining more market share; industry participants are also watching Cross River Bank's plans for developing a newly branded bank called Almond Bank, which it has recently been investing in. Source
Increased home prices combined with available capital are supporting renewed interest in house flipping; the number of investors buying and selling a house within a few months has increased to the highest level since 2007; current investors are reporting an average profit of approximately $61,000; big banks are now more interested in financing real estate lending for house flipping deals and more online lending platforms are facilitating these investments; real estate crowdfunding companies seeing increased activity from house flipping customers include 5 Arch Funding, LendingHome Corp., Asset Avenue, Groundfloor Finance and Anchor Loans. Source
Denise Thomas was named one of the tech industry's top female founders in 2016 by TechCrunch; Denise Thomas and Stephen Pelletier formed ApplePie Capital in 2013 after previously working together at online investment platform OffRoad Capital; Denise Thomas is currently the CEO of ApplePie Capital which specializes in providing online loans to franchise businesses. Source
This year's top financial professionals are from a broad range of businesses; Matt Humphrey, CEO of LendingHome which provides real estate loans for homebuyers and fix and flip investors made the list; LendingHome has originated $1 billion in real estate loans; also on the list is Eugene Marinelli, chief technology officer of mortgage tech company, Blend. Source
Rohit Arora of Biz2Credit outlines three fintech trends affecting small business lending; highlights artificial intelligence, convergence in marketplace lending and bank partnerships and financial inclusion initiatives for underserved banking consumers; Arora also says market conditions are positive for small business lenders with new job creation measures and technological advances broadly across the financial industry. Source
LendIt provides details on LendIt USA 2017 training sessions in their blog post; the training sessions will be focused on sales and marketing, and technology and operations; the two sessions will be held on March 6 and will include interactive discussion; the sales and marketing training session will be in the morning and will include discussion on digital marketing channels, and lead generation, retention and engagement; the technology and operations session will be in the afternoon and will include discussion on artificial intelligence and the importance of mobile. Source
Morgan Edwards, chief financial officer at CommonBond gives an overview of the company and the student lending opportunity in this video from LendIt USA 2016. CommonBond provides student loan refinancing but one thing that makes them unique is their "1-for-1" model where they fund an education of a student in Africa for each student loan refinancing. As of April, the company had $625 million in capital committed with zero defaults and zero 30+ day delinquencies.
Morgan believes we are in a growth cycle and capital is here to stay although we may experience some ebb and flows through the cycle. He stated, "Capital flows where there is understanding and there is a return," and highlights several aspects that make this a favorable environment for student lending and marketplace lending broadly.
You can view the full video below:
P2P-Banking.com has released its monthly report on marketplace lending originations; Funding Circle, RateSetter and Zopa led in December however loan volume for the UK lenders was down from November; Funding Circle originated €114.1 million ($118.92 million), RateSetter originated €68.2 million ($71.08 million) and Zopa originated €60.2 million ($62.74 million); in December Funding Circle's loan volume decreased -14% from November, RateSetter's originations decreased -1% and Zopa's originations decreased -25%.
Data from Financial Technology Partners reports $36 billion in fintech financing in 2016; the funding was provided by over 1,700 investors through approximately 1,500 deals; banking and lending companies represented 29% of deals while the payments, loyalty and ecommerce category obtained 38% of the total funding. Source