Scott Sanborn gave a recap of his LendIt USA 2017 keynote presentation and reiterated his excitement and positive outlook for the marketplace lending industry in a blog post; Sanborn identified three key areas of importance: evolving the customer experience, unleashing the platform potential and amplifying core innovations; with a focus on these three things Lending Club plans to see more borrowers and investors as well as a number of new and innovative partnerships fueling its future business growth. Source
LendIt held its first conference event in June 2013 with 340 people gathering at the Convene Conference Center in New York City; Renaud LaPlanche gave the opening keynote speech discussing how marketplace lending technology was quickly being adopted with potential for disrupting incumbents; LendIt's Jason Jones followed with a global market overview identifying the significant market opportunities in the US, China and the UK; the one-day event included multiple panel sessions, networking and a closing presentation from Prosper's Ron Suber who discussed the importance of the ecosystem for the industry's success. Source
Groundfloor has partnered with IRA Services to offer clients investment through tax-deferred retirement accounts; Groundfloor is the US market's first and only real estate platform with all of its investments open to non-accredited investors; through IRA Services, which provides a unique platform for facilitating investment in alternative finance, investors can now invest in Groundfloor's range of real estate offerings, achieving returns of 5% to over 20% in tax deferred retirement accounts; Groundfloor's P2P real estate lending platform has been growing substantially with $16.5 million in loans originated in 2016, an increase of 621% from 2015. Source
Leading global technology provider DH Corporation launched Total Lending™ Small Business to help improve the small business lending experience; this is a cloud based, mobile first application for banks and credit unions; "It's vitally important that banks embrace the kinds of technologies that will provide them with a competitive edge in todays' era of disruption," explained Duncan Hannay, president, global lending solutions, D+H. Source
A group of House Republicans has sent a letter to Comptroller Thomas Curry requesting his agency slowdown its plans for a fintech charter; the letter was signed by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling and 33 other House Republicans; it primarily suggests that stakeholders are not receiving an appropriate amount of time to comment on the full details of the fintech charter and that there is potential for the fintech charter to be overturned by Congress. Source
Brett King interviewed Antony Jenkins for a LendIt USA 2017 keynote presentation titled, "The End of the Beginning: Accelerating Transformation in Financial Services"; King also talked with a number of conference participants in a Breaking Banks podcast titled, "Innovations in Lending at LendIt 2017"; the podcast provides insight from Brock Blake of Lendio, Christoph Rieche of iwoca, Ohad Samet from TrueAccord, Peter Renton from LendIt, John Owens and Emmanuel Daniel of The Asian Banker. Source
Brickell Capital Finance will now offer its healthcare clients Liquid FSI Convert2Pay services through its sales representatives; Liquid FSI Convert2Pay allows healthcare professionals to upload healthcare claims and receive payouts; the firm has a range of solutions for healthcare claim payouts and also offers healthcare industry lending services. Source
eOriginal surveyed participants at the LendIt USA 2017 conference to gain insight on drivers of industry growth and market challenges; according to the survey report 90% of participants expect an increase in partnerships between traditional banks and marketplace lenders in 2017; when asked about challenges for the industry overall, 47% reported regulation as the top challenge followed by access to capital at 25%; respondents also reported a number of challenges in end-to-end digital transaction management solutions including: full adoption by partners, lack of infrastructure, security and privacy concerns, and cost. 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
Chinese regulators are preparing new rules that target the businesses of the country's small-loan lenders; recent rules have capped P2P loans at Rmb200,000 ($28,925) for an individual and Rmb1 million ($144,626) for a company however small-loan lenders fall far below these thresholds and regulators fear the companies do not have adequate risk controls; 2016 data shows China has 8,673 small-loan companies with loans totaling Rmb927 billion ($134.1 billion) and this is in comparison to approximately Rmb673 billion ($97.3 billion) outstanding from P2P lenders; China's small-loan lenders are active in the market, offering a range of lending solutions and reporting small-loan asset securitizations of Rmb82 billion ($11.9 billion) in 2016; as the country continues its focus on tightening regulation for China's P2P lending industry, Li Junfeng, director of the financial inclusion department at the China Banking Regulatory Commission, says it will be specifically addressing new regulations that target the country's small lenders. Source