Peter Renton from Lend Academy provides his quarterly report on marketplace lending investments; the portfolio return continued to trend lower in the fourth quarter of 2016 however the overall decrease was lower than previous quarters; trailing twelve month returns in Q4 2016 was 8.07% compared to 8.21% in Q3 2016; defaults were a significant factor during the quarter, reaching a new high; an analysis of performance across the following companies is included: Lending Club, Prosper, Direct Lending Income Fund, Lend Academy P2P Fund, P2Binvestor and PeerStreet. Source
Prosper has announced a funding deal which has been in development since August; the firm has received an investment commitment for $5 billion over the next two years from a consortium of investors including affiliates of New Residential Investment Corp., Jefferies Group LLC, Third Point LLC and an entity of which Soros Fund Management LLC is the principal investment manager; the consortium is also being offered an equity stake which could account for as much as 35% ownership in the company and is expected to help promote a long term business relationship; the committed investment will represent a substantial increase for the firm which is likely to report approximately $2.2 billion in loan originations for 2016. Source
While fintech innovation has greatly evolved in recent years, there is still much more to be accomplished; one area available for significant market growth is financial inclusion; Lend Academy talks about fintech innovation for the underserved bank customer in their article; LendIt will be running a financial inclusion track this year at LendIt USA to help support development of this market opportunity. Source
Lend Academy provides insight and highlights from the event's keynote speakers in their article; day one featured Scott Sanborn from Lending Club as the event's leading keynote speaker and also included three keynote presentations on regulation in the industry from Congressman Patrick McHenry, Comptroller Thomas Curry and CFPB Director Richard Cordray; day two began with Alex Tapscott discussing blockchain and followed with a variety of insights from leading industry innovators; Lend Academy also reports on PitchIt and the LendIt Industry Awards additionally including key takeaways from the event overall; videos from the event will all be published within the next few days and can be found on the LendIt USA 2017 video page. Source
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has published details on its fintech charter in a 16-page supplement to its existing OCC licensing manual; the fintech charter supplement addresses capital requirements, liquidity, financial inclusion plans, consumer protection and the application process; Lend Academy provides an analysis in their article; the release of the fintech charter will now be followed by an open comment period which ends on April 14; also noteworthy is that Thomas Curry's term as comptroller ends on April 9 however he can serve until a replacement is confirmed. 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
In collaboration with Energy 4 Impact, UKAid and the CME Group Foundation, the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance has released a study on crowdfunding and P2P lending in Africa and the Middle East; Lend Academy provides details of the report in their article; covers 46 countries in Africa and 12 countries in the Middle East, featuring data on 70 alternative platforms. Source
Lend Academy summarizes the activity of past LendIt PitchIt finalists in their article; a LendIt competition for startup businesses, PitchIt provides finalists the opportunity to present their business in front of a panel of judges and an audience of investors with the goal of receiving new venture capital funding for business growth; since 2015, PitchIt has helped support the success of the many finalists detailed in the Lend Academy article. Source
Lend Academy provides more details on defaults triggering a breach in a SoFi securitization portfolio; the portfolio reporting the defaults was SoFi's first securitization of unsecured consumer loans, the SoFi Consumer Loan Program 2015-1 LLC; given the terms of the deal and the overall characteristics, the breach does not seem to have broad market indications; the deal arrangers set the trigger level at 3% which is a relatively low rate and the cumulative net loss is only reported to be marginally above the trigger; a chart from PeerIQ also provides more details on the cumulative net loss rates for SoFi. Source
Yirendai released its Q4 2016 earnings after the closing bell on March 15; the Chinese online lender issued a US initial public offering of its stock in December 2015; Lend Academy provides an analysis of the company's Q4 2016 results in their article; the firm has been growing online loan originations by over 100% per year since 2013; mobile has been a significant factor for the company with 98.8% of online volume generated through Yirendai's mobile application and 85% of investors using the mobile application for investment; as a well-established firm, Yirendai is also benefiting from China's P2P regulatory focus and a higher quality portfolio of borrowers and lenders; the firm is expanding its product lines and also offering a new platform as a service product, the Yirendai Enabling Platform; it expects a similar pace of growth in 2017 with minimum projected loan originations of RMB 33 billion ($4.753 billion) compared to RMB 20.28 billion ($2.9 billion) in 2016 and minimum revenue of RMB 4.4 billion ($634 million) compared to RMB 3.2 billion ($466.4 million) in 2016. Source