Chinese regulators have issued new guidance for P2P lenders in further efforts to regulate China's fintech industry; the new guidance requires P2P lenders to register with the government which will also help regulators to build an industry database for development of future regulation; regulators involved with the new guidance include the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. Source
Orchard has released its "Quarterly Industry Report" for the third quarter; origination volume was lower in the third quarter, down approximately 21% from the previous quarter and 50% from peak origination volume in the fourth quarter of 2015; the third quarter is the third consecutive quarter of decreased origination volume; charge-offs have also increased; average borrowing rate has decreased 79 basis points from the previous quarter. Source
Nava Finance Ltd. has announced plans to launch a new marketplace lending platform in the UK in 2017; the platform will be called Nava and will focus on near-prime consumer credit loans with investment only from institutional investors; the founders believe their experience and credit underwriting models can provide competitively priced loans for borrowers and competitive market returns for investors. Source
A partnership with DomaCom has helped ThinCats Australia offer its first mortgage loan on residential property; the funder of the firm's first mortgage-backed loan requested a loan-to-value ratio of 36% resulting in a A$212,000 interest-only loan with a term of 24 months and interest rate of 6.5%; prior to the residential property lending expansion, ThinCats has primarily been focused on small business loans. Source
Croudify has launched a platform for the Lending Club secondary market; Lend Academy provides details in their article; platform is built using Lending Club's secondary market API created last year; the platform provides trading capabilities, data analytics and pricing on the listed notes. Source
Tuesday's 3.2% GDP growth rate report is an indication of expanding economic growth in the US which increases the probability of a rate hike from the Federal Reserve in December; a continued positive trend in economic growth is also likely to lead to five interest rate increases through 2018; consumer spending appears to be the leading catalyst for current economic growth and the source cautions that it could lead to problems for the marketplace lending credit market; consumer spending has been driven by increased credit balances but as rates rise, risks from these borrowers are also likely to increase which could affect platform defaults and securitization portfolios with the greatest risks in unsecured loans. Source
Kroll Bond Rating Agency has assigned preliminary ratings to a LendingClub securitization portfolio; the loan securitization, LendingClub Issuance Trust, Series 2016-NP2 (LCIT 2016-NP2), is valued at $101.75 million and includes two classes of notes with LendingClub consumer loans; the class A tranche which accounts for 84% of the deal at $85.3 million, is rated BBB; the class B tranche accounts for 16% at $16.4 million and is rated BB+. Source
Victory Park Capital (VPC) Investments says it is shifting investments from peer-to-peer loans to balance sheet investments after losses in October triggered significant writedowns and caused a revenue return of -1.25%; in October the return was primarily caused by a substantial capital loss of -203 basis points from "certain marketplace loans" which it did not disclose and also from losses in a securitized portfolio of Avant loans; according to Cormac Leech, "the marketplace lending portfolio is not quite seasoned, while the balance sheet side of investments is doing really well"; this performance has caused the change in focus to balance sheet investments. Source
The board of directors at CAN Capital, an online lender for small businesses, has named Parris Sanz as the company's chief executive officer and promoted Ritesh Gupta to chief operating officer; the new executives will be focusing on process improvements and market positioning as the company seeks to grow its lending business for small companies; CAN Capital has been an industry leader in small business marketplace lending with more than $6 billion funded since 1998; the firm is primarily focused on providing merchant cash advances. Source
LendingUSA has hired Manoj Mathew as its new chief technology officer; the firm provides point of sale financing solutions for merchants; Manoj Mathew will be joining LendingUSA from LendFoundry where he was co-founder and chief technology officer; brings in-depth experience in credit financing technology and will support the firm in advancing financing solutions. Source
