Multi-lending platform Alternative Business Funding (ABF) will become the fourth alternative finance business to be involved in the UK's bank referral scheme; the bank referral scheme began in November 2016 and has been reporting success with over 8,000 SMEs being referred to alternative funding sources; the other three businesses in the referral scheme network include Funding Options, Funding Xchange and Bizfitech. Source
China-based, QuantGroup, has raised $73 million in a Series C funding round led by Sunshine Insurance Group Corporation, Fosun Capital, Guosen Hongsheng Investment Co., Ltd. and other undisclosed investors; QuantGroup is an online financial services platform offering credit products; it evolved from the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator and is led by Zhou Hao with experience at Morgan Stanley, Capital One and Barclays. Source
SmartBiz is expanding its Small Business Administration (SBA) loan offerings to include a new online SBA commercial real estate loan; SmartBiz is an online marketplace providing small business owners with SBA loan financing options facilitated through banks; its new commercial real estate offering will include the SBA 7(a) commercial real estate loan. Source
Originations for the quarter were $464 million; OnDeck continues to tighten their credit policy and limit loans designated as held for sale on OnDeck's marketplace; company seeks to achieve GAAP profitability by the end of the year; the second quarter brought some of the highest quality borrowers the company has ever originated which resulted in OnDeck being in a substantially more stable credit position than six months ago; OnDeck made progress in expanding and lowering the cost of their funding sources on multiple fronts; the partnership with JP Morgan Chase has been extended for up to four years. Source
Blackmoon has secured $2.5 million in equity funding from Target Global, A&NN Group, Flint Capital and several private investors; company provides a technology platform for institutional investment in loans from balance sheet marketplace lenders; will use the funds for technology development and further expansion in the US. Source
Giles Andrews launched Zopa, the industry's first peer-to-peer lending platform, in 2005; he has now taken on a new role as the chairman of MarketInvoice; MarketInvoice provides P2P financing for small business invoices giving them an alternative source for working capital; Giles Andrews will help the firm scale its business and reach its 2017 goal of 2 billion British pounds ($2.48 billion) in lending. Source
Upgrade has launched for consumer lending; Lend Academy provides details on the platform's fundraising, lending criteria and lending structure; Renaud Laplanche has raised $60 million for the new company; its loans will focus on high credit quality borrowers with low debt-to-income and minimum monthly free cash flow of $1,000; loans range from $2,000 to $50,000; the platform will be partnering with WebBank for loan originations and will then acquire the loans and sell them to institutional investors with some portion of the loans retained on the firm's balance sheet. Source
The Ranger Direct Lending Fund has reported plans for share issuance totaling 200 million British pounds through 2017; the Fund currently has a 40 million British pound issuance planned for December; it also raised 30 million British pounds in July and 23.2 million British pounds in November of 2016; according to a statement from Ranger Direct Lending, "The company believes that debt instruments originated or issued by direct lending platforms are an attractive and growing asset class that have the potential to provide higher returns for investors than other, more widely available, fixed income products."; growth from the asset class and potential returns are factors driving the new issuances. Source
Zhengyuan Lu, OnDeck's Senior Vice President of Capital Markets, will soon move to investment firm, Victory Park Capital; his last day is Tuesday; Victory Park invests in and provides credit facilities to online lenders, including Avant Inc. and Square Inc.; the last year has been a challenge for OnDeck as investors have not been buying loans at the same pace and this has forced the lender to hold more loans on its balance sheet. Source
The Peer-to-Peer Finance Association (P2PFA) is a trade body representing three quarters of the P2P lending market in the UK; RateSetter has breached rules set by the P2PFA; according to RateSetter, "No customer has experienced any loss from our actions but we recognize that our actions breached the principles of the Association."; recently the company has been in the news with regards to their wholesale lending business that it has been winding down. Source