Both Lending Club and Prosper have announced several programs to help borrowers affected by Hurricane Harvey; Lend Academy shares an email to Lending Club investors which states approximately 30,000 live in the affected areas; Lending Club has made changes around collections calls, late fees, credit bureau reporting and hardship plans; Prosper has taken similar actions by waiving late and NSF fees as well as adjusting payment schedules. Source
BlueVine raised $49 million in a Series D funding round from existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners; BlueVine has so far provided $200 million in working capital and says they are on track to lend out $500 million in 2017; BlueVine credits partnerships for a lot of their success, in particular the deal with QuickBooks who says the BlueVine offer is very popular among users. Source
Lantern Credit has appointed John Mack as its new chairman of its board of advisors; the company works to provide credit solutions for inefficiencies through its technology platform; Mack brings experience from roles as chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, co-CEO of Credit Suisse Group, CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston and various other roles on corporate boards including Lending Club. Source
Online franchise business lender ApplePie Capital has announced the acquisition of Funding Solutions, LLC and the appointment of Ronald Feldman as chief development officer; Funding Solutions is a six-person franchise loan consulting firm based in Michigan and will help business and product development for the firm; supporting ApplePie Capital's brand portfolio and product strategy, Ronald Feldman will also bring significant franchise market experience from roles at FranData, Franchise America Finance and The Siegel Financial Group. Source
The board of directors at CAN Capital, an online lender for small businesses, has named Parris Sanz as the company's chief executive officer and promoted Ritesh Gupta to chief operating officer; the new executives will be focusing on process improvements and market positioning as the company seeks to grow its lending business for small companies; CAN Capital has been an industry leader in small business marketplace lending with more than $6 billion funded since 1998; the firm is primarily focused on providing merchant cash advances. Source
China is reporting 478,000 individual cases of complaints with problematic P2P lending firms; accounts for approximately 4.5% of the investors in P2P; the report coincides with the country's fraudulent P2P lending activity; 1,300 platforms were named problematic in 2016 with 2,388 platforms in good standing. Source
Dianrong announced the hiring of former Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley banker Yawen Cui as the new CFO; now former CFO Xuxia Kuang has been named chief operating officer; Dianrong CEO Soul Htite praised Mr. Cui: "His extensive experience managing initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and financial reporting will also help Dianrong explore opportunities within the capital markets. We are thrilled to welcome Yawen to our executive leadership team."; Long Hsiang Loh, the previous COO, will remain on the executive leadership team and a new role will be announced soon. Source
TransUnion has introduced a fraud solution for businesses; the firm will market IDVision, a comprehensive solution that uses advanced analytics technology to interpret and analyze transactions for fraud detection; the solution can identify and alert businesses of fraud at the time of transaction and also monitor portfolios for fraudulent activity. Source
Citigroup has a new small business loan offering offered through a branded partnership with Biz2Credit; the partnership follows new small business offerings from JPMorgan and Wells Fargo; Rohit Arora from Biz2Credit said the partnership has not been widely publicized because it is in very early stages; small business lenders use a website interface managed by Biz2Credit that submits their information to a Citigroup banker for follow up; Arora also said the new small business loan offering is part of the bank's Community Reinvestment Act obligations. Source
Funding Societies is the first P2P lender to join the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers (IACPM); the IACPM was established in 2001 and is focused on supporting a community of members in the practice of credit portfolio management; the Association currently has approximately 100 financial institution members. Source