The first day of LendIt USA 2015 started off with Peter Renton of Lend Academy giving opening remarks. Renaud Laplanche, the CEO of Lending Club took over with the signature keynote. Of note was Lending Club’s announcement of a partnership with Citi, focusing on community lending and a concept cube of loans at point of sale.
From there, Peter continued on to give a market analysis. Propser and Lending Club combined originated $9 billion in consumer loans in 2014 alone and 2015 will no doubt be another record year. These numbers are dwarfed by China, where 1.2 million people are engaged in peer-to-peer lending platforms. From there, we had a panel on achieving scale in consumer lending and hot button issues in online lending. The inevitable increase in compliance and regulation is something that panelists agreed would continue to be an issue in the future. In our main track, we heard from several European lenders and also featured a panel on invoice and receivables. Sam Hodges, co-founder of Funding Circle discussed the market for small business lending and announced that they had crossed $1 billion in originations.
Our China Pavilion hosted both US and Chinese based companies to discuss the market in China and how aspects can be applied to the US market. Ning Tang gave the State of the Union Address for the Chinese Internet Finance Market followed by several other panels. These included discussions on risk management, emerging markets venture capital, government regulation and student lending.
Our second track was packed full of a variety of panels. We brought on several online lending leaders to talk about the landscape in several different countries. The panels on small business lending innovators, the financial advisor’s approach to marketplace lending and trends in credit underwriting were all well attended. The afternoon continued as panelists discussed borrower acquisition and big data. Finally, we finished off our second track with our first PitchIt at LendIt competition where 8 companies pitched their companies to venture capitalists. Kickfurther, a company focused on inventory crowdfunding, took home 1st place in our inaugural contest.
The day wrapped up with Ron Suber, President of Prosper Marketplace. As we achieved goals in this industry, such as two companies going public in 2014, he shared new goals for participants in the industry.
Besides these three tracks, we also hosted over 20 companies in our company demo room. Here, they pitched their products in 10 minute presentations to the audience. Throughout the day, our exposition hall was buzzing with investors, platforms and service providers.
Tomorrow, we continue all tracks and introduce our first ever Real Estate FinTech Track. Dan Ciporin of Canaan Partners will give the State of the Real Estate Online Lending Market. Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary will give the signature keynote in the main track. Watch this presentation and more on LendIt.tv beginning at 8:30 AM EST.
