China Rapid Finance currently has 1.2 million borrowers on its platform and is seeking to triple its users; it recently received $70 million in funding which will help to support the growth; also wants to increase its users to 10 million over the next two to three years; the firm says it is well positioned to manage new regulations from the Chinese government and it is developing its platform to more broadly target the needs of the country's 500 million residents. Source
StreetShares provides loans for veteran-owned small businesses; following the California bizWin™ and VetBizWin™ initiatives, StreetShares has partnered with the Northern California Financial Development Corporation (Nor-Cal FDC) which will expand its business lending solutions with contract financing; Nor-Cal FDC is a licensed Financial Development Corporation and supports small business capital solutions for more than 3.6 million small businesses throughout California including a focus on companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. 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
In an outlook from Moody's, the rating agency says marketplace lending securitization performance is likely to be stable in 2017; outlook says marketplace lenders have strengthened their business models resulting in improved credit characteristics for the loans backing new securitizations; increased confidence in marketplace lending best practices is likely to continue however performance of loans may vary by category and economic conditions may also be a factor. Source
US legislators have proposed that student loan debt be discharged in the case of bankruptcy; the current law gives added protection to student loan lenders by requiring the debt to be repaid in bankruptcy; lawmakers and lobbyists are also considering other provisions that would provide debt relief to student loan borrowers who have filed for bankruptcy; while the debt relief initiatives will benefit borrowers, the effects will add increased default risk for investors in private student loans and private student loan securitizations. Source
Gellman is the firm's first chief marketing officer; he joins the firm from Esurance and also has experience at Wells Fargo; Credible is a personal finance marketplace that provides offers for student loans and personal loans; in July it also announced a credit card marketplace; Gellman will help the platform expand its business and continue to focus on supporting its customers. Source
Boston-based Eastern Bank hired a former Capital One executive, Dan O'Malley, to help the bank learn how it can compete with the growing online lending industry; through his research Dan learned that 5% of Eastern's business customers used an online lender and the primary reason for this was quick access to capital; Eastern now has a competing product to offer small business customers and has even begun to license out their technology to fellow banks; Eastern believes their credit scorecard will allow for banks to utilize their new technology more than they would with an online lender because of their adherence to banking regulations. Source
Since launching in 2007, OnDeck has provided over $7 billion in capital to more than 70,000 customers in 700 different industries across the United States, Canada and Australia; creating a new type of commercial loan product for small businesses has been the company's focus since the beginning; its loans support small business activity in the regions it lends and its partnership with JPMorgan is an industry leading example of collaboration between fintechs and banks. Source
Consumer online lender 4finance has announced it will be using FICO TONBELLER Cloud Solution to monitor for anti-money laundering; the new solution will help the firm comply with the 4th EU Anti Money Laundering directive; 4finance is a European online consumer lender operating in 17 countries with total loans of over EUR4 billion ($4.24 billion) since its founding in 2008. Source
CEO Tom Burnside from LendingPoint provides his insight on how to be successful in the online lending business in this featured blog post; gives five factors for success; Tom Burnside is optimistic about the industry's growth and potential as well as the success of LendingPoint; in 2016, LendingPoint gained steadily as it continued to focus on providing credit for underserved consumers through fair credit underwriting. Sponsored Blog Post