B2B FinPAL, Ethis Kapital, FundedByMe Malaysia, ManagePay Services, Modalku Ventures and Peoplender have now been registered with the Securities Commission of Malaysia and plan to begin business in 2017; Malaysia is the first of the ASEAN countries to register P2P lending companies. Source
loanDepot has invested approximately $80 million in technology over the last 18 months and is announcing the launch of its proprietary digital lending platform, mello™; seeking to develop the fintech ecosystem of the future, the platform is beginning with three solutions: an intuitive web-based consumer portal, a state-of-the-art mobile point of sale system and a fully digital mortgage loan application experience; overall mello™ will be one of the fastest and most accurate lending systems in the industry; the firm has also opened a new 65,000 square foot mello™ tech campus in Irvine, CA to support the new platform. Source
Online mortgage broker Trussle is currently in the early stages of talks with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to potentially overhaul the mortgage application process; the plan that Trussle is pitching to the FCA is to help standardize documents needed in a format that they are needed in; Mr. Mahli told FTAdviser: "There's an unnecessary inefficiency in the way mortgage applications are packaged and submitted, which varies wildly from lender to lender. Uncertainty is the last thing a buyer wants when making what's often the biggest financial decision of their life."; currently the FCA will not comment on talks that are in such a nascent stage. Source
ID Analytics LLC has launched the Online Lending Network; launch of the network was announced at Money 20/20; network is focused on responsible lending, borrower protection and security; Lending Club, Prosper Marketplace and Marlette Funding are founding members; member firms have access to data that can help in detecting fraud and assessing risk. Source
Ant Fortune is the wealth management app for Ant Financial; Fortune is launching “4S” on its wealth management app; solution will use artificial intelligence to help investors allocate capital if they are not sure where it’s most appropriate to invest; aimed to better serve less sophisticated, smaller investors in China; Source
Upgrade has launched for consumer lending; Lend Academy provides details on the platform's fundraising, lending criteria and lending structure; Renaud Laplanche has raised $60 million for the new company; its loans will focus on high credit quality borrowers with low debt-to-income and minimum monthly free cash flow of $1,000; loans range from $2,000 to $50,000; the platform will be partnering with WebBank for loan originations and will then acquire the loans and sell them to institutional investors with some portion of the loans retained on the firm's balance sheet. 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
LendIt will be hosting a webinar today at 2:00 PM EST; the Lendit Forum will feature Aaron Peck from Monroe Capital and Tim Ranney from Clarity Services; the speakers will discuss the profile of non-prime borrowers and where the best investments are in the non-prime space; other topics will include how alternative data can be used to better assess the borrower's risk, interest rates for non-prime borrowers and the types of return investors can get when making this investment; register here and join the webinar today. Source
Savings rates are low and markets have always been volatile, P2P platforms in the UK have consistently returned 4.5% to 6.5% according to the AltFi Data returns index and so the question remains why aren't financial advisors recommending the P2P asset class; there has been some movement on this front as firms like LendingWell and Octopus offer solutions to better help P2P firms become more attractive to financial advisors; obstacles remain as many financial advisors do not know much about P2P platforms and it will take time for this asset class to be more widely known to the broader advisor. Source
Inc. has released their list of the 5000 fastest growing private companies; this year over 250 companies made it in the financial services category; the list shares basic information about each company including revenue numbers; several online lenders made the list including Avant, OppLoans, Kabbage, loanDepot, Lighter Capital, FastPay, National Funding and ZestFinance. Source
