As of January 2017 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fully authorized ten peer-to-peer lenders, according to AltFi, while the remainder of the industry operates with interim approvals; AltFi speculates on some of the characteristics of the authorized and interim lenders; of the authorized firms, Folk2Folk is the largest with originations of approximately 100 million British pounds ($120.44 million); the UK's largest platforms including Zopa, RateSetter and Funding Circle still have not been approved; loans from these lenders are primarily unsecured; characteristics identified by AltFi as issues for the FCA include: pre-funding, collective investment, auto-investing and institutional investment. Source
P2P ratings and research firm 4thWay has released a list of the UK's top P2P lenders by loan originations; Zopa, FundingCircle and RateSetter lead the market with originations nearing 2 billion British pounds ($2.46 billion); UK property lender Wellesley, which has reportedly been struggling for capital, tops the list with 366.5 million British pounds ($451.48 million) in loan originations. Source
The online lender is now able to originate mortgages in 27 states, with hopes of expanding to all 50 soon; included in their announcement about the New York license was overall originations reached $1 billion in December, $100 million of which were mortgages; SoFi Chief Revenue Officer Michael Tannenbaum said, "The plan is to continue to roll out a state licensing strategy, our licensing strategy mirrored places where there were large jumbo balances."; SoFi also believes their cross buying strategy and the $1 billion infusion from SoftBank has helped them weather the storm of the last year; in a separate announcement, the online lender has moved their office to 860 Washington Street in New York's Meatpacking District. Source
Business marketplace lender Loan Frame has announced a $2.25 million fundraise that will help the firm expand its business in India as demonetization and the Indian economy present new opportunities for growth; participants in the $2.25 million funding round included the co-founder of Vedanta Capital, the former chairman of Visa International and the co-chief executive of MIO Partners; the platform has stated it is seeking to build the largest small and medium-sized business lending marketplace in the sub-continent; expects to lend $150 million over the next two years with both secured and unsecured loans. Source
LendIt has announced its Lang Di Fintech 2017 conference which will be held on July 15 to 16 at the Kerry Hotel, Pudong, Shanghai; LendIt also announced a partnership with JadeValue Fintech who will co-host the second annual LendIt China PitchIt@LendIt startup competition and offer the winning company six months of co-working space as one of the many competition prizes; LendIt China will also be translating the daily LendIt News on its new Lang Di WeChat channel. Source
Small business P2P lender Lendix has announced expansion to Italy; based in Paris the Italy expansion follows expansion to Spain in 2016; Lendix has hired Sergio Zocchi who will be the CEO for the new Italy business based in Milan; as of December 31, 2016 Lendix had originated 57 million euros ($61.01 million) in loans; it is also rumored that the firm plans to continue its expansion across Europe in 2017 with a new office potentially opening in the UK. Source
We had an all-star panel of the pioneer fund managers at LendIt 2016 to discuss how to prepare their portfolio for a market downturn. The managers were beginning to see greater dispersion in returns and started to question whether a downturn was coming. However, as we have seen, the bull market continued its historic rise throughout the year. Nevertheless, it was great to hear firsthand from these managers on how they stay prepared for a market correction. Source
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LendIt will be hosting a LendIt Forum today featuring speakers Peter Renton from LendIt and Andrew Dix from Crowdfund Insider; participants can submit questions for the speakers to learn more about the evolution of the industry and how to effectively invest in marketplace loans; the forum will take place at 2:00 PM EST; register here and join the webinar today. Source
The marketplace lending industry has evolved with investments coming from a range of market channels; to help marketplace loans integrate even further into the mainstream the industry needs involvement from 'gatekeepers' and needs to educate the asset allocator community; Lend Academy discusses the investment consultant process to bring new types of investments to asset allocators; to help facilitate this communication, LendIt is offering asset allocators free tickets to LendIt USA 2017 and is planning a special event at the conference for asset allocators, hosted by fund managers. Source
Since launching in 2015, Sharestates, a real estate crowdfunding company, has crossed $275 million in originations across 323 loans; in December 2016 the company originated $42 million, nearly doubling total loan volume in just over three months; average net yield to investors has been 11%; Sharestates recently announced they were raising their Series A through SeedInvest; the company is currently profitable and was previously a finalist for PitchIt@LendIt. Source