Giles Andrews launched Zopa, the industry's first peer-to-peer lending platform, in 2005; he has now taken on a new role as the chairman of MarketInvoice; MarketInvoice provides P2P financing for small business invoices giving them an alternative source for working capital; Giles Andrews will help the firm scale its business and reach its 2017 goal of 2 billion British pounds ($2.48 billion) in lending. Source
The United States Automobile Association (USAA) was created to provide financial services for Americans serving in the military; the Association has seen significant adoption of biometric authentication which it first introduced for members in 2015; the USAA is currently reporting two million of its five million mobile app users opting for mobile account sign in using fingerprint, facial or voice recognition; the Association is actively integrating new biometric solutions and working with new providers. Source
The Estonian-based P2P lender turned a profit late 2016; hopes to turn an annual profit in 2017; revenues were 4.2 million euros (USD $4.5 million) in 2016; according to CEO Partel Tomberg: "Looking at the bigger picture, we were a bit looking for our place. We have tried a number of products, businesses and client segments over the years. By mid-2016 we understood that our focus has to be on what we started from – a faster and cheaper consumer loan product. And we understood that on the investment side it has to be an online product for the people, not so much for the banks or funds." Source
The New York Interactive Advertising Exchange has partnered with Nasdaq to create NYIAX, a blockchain trading platform for digital advertising contracts; Nasdaq has supported the system with its trading and blockchain technology; through the system publishers and advertisers can buy, sell and re-trade digital advertising as guaranteed contracts; NYIAX says it also plans to expand trading to other advertising markets including TV, print and radio. 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
This week's PeerIQ industry update focused on the OCC's special purpose bank charter and a trio of new securitization deals; the OCC charter is beginning to face some pushback from lawmakers who feel the OCC may be moving along too quickly; Marlette is looking to close their MFT 2017-1 securitization on March 23rd, the deal was $257.44 million but has upsized to $304.47 million; SoFi has a new offering, SoFi 2017-B, led by Bank of America and Deutsche Bank for $461 million; Avant is also heading to market with a $300 million securitization being led by Credit Suisse. Source
Experian has partnered with Finicity to launch Digital Verification Solutions, a service that leverages Finicity's technology to connect with financial institutions for verifying income and assets; Experian is the first credit bureau to offer this type of solution; in addition to offering an enhanced service, the solution is also intended to help lenders broaden their credit underwriting for thin file borrowers; Finicity is also working with other lenders to help improve verification processes and shorten the end-to-end processing time for lending. Source
While bitcoin's price has been reaching new highs its trading volatility has also been high; market momentum has recently been slowed by a number of factors including exchange regulation and new fees in China and the denial of the Winklevoss bitcoin ETF; Business Insider charts the cryptocurrencies progress and reports a double top with a neckline at $1,100 noting that if the price falls below the chart's neckline, technical analysis would indicate it's likely to fall even further, giving it a new expected average of approximately $900; given recent market factors a significant decrease in China trading volume and the technical analysis, bitcoin's price appears to be headed lower. Source
"Orebits Corp. has created a new asset class, enabled by Symbiont's distributed ledger technology, which will change the precious metals financing marketplace forever," says Scott Mehlman, CEO of Orebits Corp.; through support from Symbiont's blockchain technology, Orebits will offer clients digitized "smart certificates" called "orebits" that are tied to gold reserves setting up a new form of gold trading; additionally the exchange for the new gold orebits will operate based on a peer-to-peer structure; Symbiont reports that the innovation has created a completely new trading alternative for investors to gain exposure to gold and Orebits says the exchange will operate without margins, storage and insurance, creating a considerable advantage over other current methods for investing in gold. Source
Baidu is active in artificial intelligence (AI) development and could provide an investment channel for investors seeking to gain from the innovative technology; the company is integrating AI into nearly all aspects of its business and in September launched artificial intelligence platform "Baidu Brain" which integrates AI in search, news feeds, maps, Nuomi and PostBar; the firm is also evolving AI for healthcare and actively developing autonomous driving solutions powered by AI; overall, its business model can easily integrate AI while it also provides products for AI entrance in other markets. Source