In December the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its proposal for a fintech charter with an open comment period until January 15; the OCC has received numerous comments which can be found here; Lend Academy and LendIt submitted a response in favor of the fintech charter; their response outlines the difficulties online lenders have in complying with different rules in each of the 50 states; suggests nationalization of regulation would make platform operations more efficient and help the industry to broaden the benefits it can offer to financial inclusion and other nationwide initiatives. Source
At Lang Di Fintech (LendIt's Chinese event), Peter Renton, the founder of Lend Academy, conducted an interview with ZhongAn Insurance CEO Jeffrey Chen; they talked about how the biggest insurtech company uses big data and artificial intelligence to measure risk, the scale of ZhongAn's business, regulatory issues and the future of the company; the article provides five key takeaways from the interview. Source
Lend Academy talks with Jeff Stewart of Lenddo in their podcast; Lenddo provides software used for analyzing credit of underserved borrowers in 20 countries around the world; Jeff explains how he came up with the idea to start Lenddo, the early days of proving out the model and much more. Source
SoFi bought online bank Zenbanx for approximately $100 million and will now be the first online lender to offer deposit accounts; Lend Academy provides more details on the acquisition in their article; the acquisition will help SoFi become a more central source for financial services to their clients; Zenbanx currently offers mobile accounts in the US and Canada; the current business will become integrated with SoFi's operations and Zenbanx's founder and CEO will be joining SoFi to run banking services; the acquisition gives SoFi significant latitude to launch additional banking products and the deposit accounts will add to the company's current products which now include student loan refinancing, consumer loans, mortgages, wealth management services and insurance. Source
Lend Academy reviews a session on applying blockchain to real estate after attending MIPIM, the world's largest conference dedicated to real estate; one company helping run a pilot is velox.RE; company is working with Chicago's Cook County on a program for transferring and tracking property titles as well as filing liens; the three perceived benefits are: a permanent, immutable public record that is immune to well-funded nation-state attacks, a path towards paperless land transfers and so-called "e-deeds" and reduced costs for offices across the country that want to upgrade electronic document processing systems; other applications for blockchain in real estate include tracking property ownership in emerging markets, real estate crowdfunding and tracking/transferring solar energy. Source
Lending Club and Prosper allow for tax efficient investing on their platforms through an IRA; Lend Academy provides details on opening an IRA with Lending Club or Prosper and explains why investing in P2P lending is best done through an IRA. Source
Frederic Nze is the CEO and founder of Oakam, a UK micro-lender that serves the needs of immigrant communities; in...
Lend Academy recently highlighted the trends in interest rates at Lending Club in their recent article; Lending Club has changed interest rates five times since late 2015; the recent trend of increasing rates can be seen in the below chart taken from Lending Club's statistics page which tracks average interest rates across loan grades since 2008; higher risk loans have seen the most impact from recent changes in interest rates. Source
Peter Renton of Lend Academy shares his quarterly marketplace lending results for the third quarter; portfolio includes twelve accounts with investments in Lending Club, Prosper, Direct Lending Income Fund, Lend Academy P2P Fund, P2Pinvestor and PeerStreet; Q3 reported another quarter of lower returns; third quarter trailing twelve month return was 8.21%, a decrease from 8.72% in the second quarter and the sixth consecutive quarter of lower portfolio return. Source
Peter Renton has been providing a quarterly investment report showing the returns for his complete alternative lending portfolio in detail...