Intuit has partnered with BlueVine to make credit more easily available for its QuickBooks users; the partnership will allow small businesses using QuickBooks to obtain credit lines of up to $100,000; BlueVine will add a line of credit product offering to the borrowing options on QuickBooks which currently also include loans from Lending Club, OnDeck and Funding Circle. Source
A development agency for the Scottish government, Scottish Enterprise, and its investment arm, the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), have agreed to fund loans on the LendingCrowd platform; they will invest up to £2.75 million in Scottish small-to-midsized businesses, acting in parallel to the retail investors on the platform; the Scottish government earlier identified SMEs needing financing up to £150,000 as an economic development priority. Source
DirectMoney, an online lender in Australia, has received institutional funding to help it continue originating loans for the next 12-24 months; the funding follows the appointment of new CEO, Anthony Nantes on October 5; full terms of the deal and details on the institutional partnership were not disclosed by the source and appear to be available only to the platform's shareholders. Source
Sub-prime lender Elevate, while still awaiting the right time to go public, has expanded their product line by offering customers a line of credit for up to $3,500 called Elastic; Republic Bank is the issuer of the credit line and according to Elevate's CEO, Ken Rees, there are other institutions showing interest; Rees explains further, "Banks are terrible at lending outside of their branch footprint and they are not good at customer acquisition. We provide products and a set of underwriting tools that fits for non-prime customers." Source
Small business loan facilitator, Lendio, has secured $20 million in a financing round led by investment from Comcast Ventures and Stereo Capital; Dave Zilberman of Comcast Ventures will be joining the firm's board of directors following the financing round; the firm seeks to partner with small business lenders in order to help them find the best loan provider for their needs; they currently partner with approximately 75 loan providers; in the third quarter they helped facilitate $63 million in loans for small businesses, an increase of 93% from the third quarter of 2015. Source
MPOWER Financing, which provides funding for international students attending US universities, secured $6 million in funding; the round was led by private equity firm, Zephyr Peacock India; the company will use the capital to enhance its technology and expand marketing efforts in emerging markets, especially India; in addition to providing loans the company also helps to build credit history of students and provides them with personal finance education to use in life after college. Source
India-based platform, KredX, who focuses on providing short-term working capital to blue-chip companies, has raised a Series A round; Sequoia Capital has joined existing investor Prime Venture Partners in the round; company was founded in 2015 and has facilitated 3,000 transactions ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1 crore (approximately $1,600 to $214,000); company views invoice discounting market opportunity at $100 billion. Source
In an interview with CNBC, Ning Tang, CEO of CreditEase, provides insight on the China Banking Regulatory Commission’s regulation for China’s P2P lending industry; says the regulation will have positive long-term affects; focuses on the requirement of P2P lenders to work with banks as a custodian and says CreditEase has complied with this requirement for many years. Source
Prosper is lowering rates for higher credit quality borrowers and increasing rates in the lower credit quality segments; borrowers with loan ratings AA through C will see a rate decrease of as much as 79 basis points while borrower ratings D through HR could see an increase of as much as 74 basis points; in total, across all ratings, rates will be lower by approximately 39 basis points; Prosper says the rate changes are a result of the credit market environment, interest rate expectations and competition for consumer loans. Source
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) will use Borrowell's technology to offer loans to their existing clients with one click of a button; the loans can be up to $35,000, involve a streamlined online application and will be funded within 24 hours; they will only be offered to a select group of CIBC clients to start; David Williamson, Group Head of Retail and Business Banking, CIBC, says, "Our partnership with Borrowell is based on our shared view that the process for borrowing money for personal banking clients could be improved in the digital age, while retaining all of the prudent risk management criteria you would expect from a major bank." Source