American Banker talks with David Klein, CEO of CommonBond about the fintech industry and his insight on the effects of a fintech charter; David Klein says company valuations across the industry are more realistic and the industry is maturing with more lending platform investments focused in later round fundraisings; explains the company's technology solution for employers adding student loan payment benefits; notes the company's default rate is zero; says the OCC fintech charter should give fintech companies better competitive market positioning and help to reduce costs. Source
Zopa launched its Plus product one year ago; the Plus product is the firm's highest risk and highest return offering; investors are reporting a 6% short-term return for the loan investments which fall in two additional risk categories: D and E; since introduced the platform has lent more than 100 million British pounds ($124 million) from approximately 9,000 investors. Source
The March MPL Loan Performance Monitor from PeerIQ discusses recent rate increases to riskier borrowers for both Lending Club and Prosper; PeerIQ described the rate increases at Prosper to be mild in comparison to Lending Club, additionally we should see more rate increases in 2017 as the Fed looks to raise rates a few times; the MPL Loan Performance Monitor also takes a look at delinquency and charge-off rates for 36 and 60 month products for both lenders. Source
SoFi has announced the addition of Mike Bingle, Steven Freiberg, and Robert Joss to its board of directors; Bingle is a managing partner and managing director at Silver Lake, the company which recently partnered with SoFi for a $500 million funding round; Freiberg is joining the board after previously servicing as the CEO of E*TRADE Financial Corporation; Joss is currently a professor at Stanford and previously worked at Westpac Banking Corporation and Wells Fargo; Mike Cagney says the experience from the new board members will be helpful in supporting the firm's product and geographic expansions. 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
This week's PeerIQ industry update focused on the OCC's special purpose bank charter and a trio of new securitization deals; the OCC charter is beginning to face some pushback from lawmakers who feel the OCC may be moving along too quickly; Marlette is looking to close their MFT 2017-1 securitization on March 23rd, the deal was $257.44 million but has upsized to $304.47 million; SoFi has a new offering, SoFi 2017-B, led by Bank of America and Deutsche Bank for $461 million; Avant is also heading to market with a $300 million securitization being led by Credit Suisse. Source
Experian has partnered with Finicity to launch Digital Verification Solutions, a service that leverages Finicity's technology to connect with financial institutions for verifying income and assets; Experian is the first credit bureau to offer this type of solution; in addition to offering an enhanced service, the solution is also intended to help lenders broaden their credit underwriting for thin file borrowers; Finicity is also working with other lenders to help improve verification processes and shorten the end-to-end processing time for lending. Source
The Estonian-based P2P lender turned a profit late 2016; hopes to turn an annual profit in 2017; revenues were 4.2 million euros (USD $4.5 million) in 2016; according to CEO Partel Tomberg: "Looking at the bigger picture, we were a bit looking for our place. We have tried a number of products, businesses and client segments over the years. By mid-2016 we understood that our focus has to be on what we started from – a faster and cheaper consumer loan product. And we understood that on the investment side it has to be an online product for the people, not so much for the banks or funds." Source
Nearshore Systems announced two online lending platform development partnerships at LendIt USA 2017; the software engineering firm was chosen by Dianrong to support the efforts of the firm's new blockchain-based solution; Nearshore was also selected by US-based Hijro to support the development of the firm's trade finance platform built on distributed ledger technology. Source
Money360 has reported another milestone in the nascent online lending commercial real estate market; the firm has originated $100 million in new commercial real estate loans in the past six months, doubling its total from August 2016; four recent loan closings for a total of $38 million helped the company reach its $200 million milestone; Money360 says it expects to exceed $500 million in loan transactions by the end of 2017. Source