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
The Madden v. Midland case has been a closely followed case for over two years by the marketplace lending industry; bills are now being introduced to hopefully fix the ambiguity around the case; Lend Academy shares the history of the case and perspectives from Adam Levitin, professor of law at Georgetown University, Nat Hoopes, executive director of the Marketplace Lending Association, and Brian Korn, partner at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Source
SmartFunding has raised S$700,000 in a seed funding round led by Fintech Asia Group; the firm is marketing 20% to 30% annual returns for invoice financing investors; the invoice financing business seeks to capitalize on the Singapore market's small and medium-enterprise businesses which account for half of Singapore's GDP and approximately 70% of the country's jobs. Source
Daimler Financial Services plans to invest 'double-digit' millions of euros in AutoGravity's vehicle financing platform; the investment will support Daimler's digital services financing portfolio; in January AutoGravity's app was launched in 46 states and it has now reported over 150,000 app downloads; it currently provides consumers with four auto financing offers. Source
P2P-Banking has released its monthly report on loan originations; Funding Circle led originations for the month at 106.1 million euros, also reporting a new monthly high; Zopa and Ratesetter also topped the list; Zopa reported monthly loan originations of 85.3 million euros and Ratesetter had loan originations of 63.9 million euros. Source
Bizfi, a small business lending platform, has hired John Donovan as its CEO; after working at Mastercard, Donovan had served in several Lending Club roles, including COO, through 2012; he has since served on various boards; Bizfi is on target to lend a cumulative $600 million by end of 2016. Source
This year's top financial professionals are from a broad range of businesses; Matt Humphrey, CEO of LendingHome which provides real estate loans for homebuyers and fix and flip investors made the list; LendingHome has originated $1 billion in real estate loans; also on the list is Eugene Marinelli, chief technology officer of mortgage tech company, Blend. Source
Upstart's Dave Girourad talks with TechCrunch about the company's new fundraising round which is adding new capital of $32.5 million; the new capital brings total funding to $85 million and this round's investors included Rakuten, Third Point Ventures, Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital; the fundraising will help the firm launch a new software as a service product called Powered by Upstart, an extension of its proprietary credit underwriting platform which utilizes machine learning and modern data science; Upstart will be releasing the new product at LendIt USA 2017. Source
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has requested that P2P lenders not lend to each other through industry network lending; the request comes as the regulator continues to increase its oversight and understanding of the industry; in the FCA's report it says that the industry network lending could be in violation of rules that require deposits for such transactions. Source
Online lending platform Marcus by Goldman Sachs is now open to all borrowers; the bank launched its lending platform in October 2016 for borrowers receiving an email code; like other marketplace lending platforms it offers low borrower interest rates; one of its leading advantages is that it offers no fees; Goldman Sachs will announce its fourth quarter earnings in January with insight expected on the new platform's business. Source