Cambridge, Massachusetts-based artificial intelligence (AI) platform Kensho has built a solution that can successfully predict market trading and is receiving significant attention from Wall Street; its AI-powered platform helped the company identify currency trends following Brexit that resulted in substantial gains from trades against the British pounds decreasing value; the company has announced a new partnership with S&P Global and has received investment from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, General Catalyst, Breyer Capital and Google Ventures; the firm is led by Daniel Nadler, a Harvard trained Ph.D; its new partnership with S&P Global Market Intelligence will supply new data feeds to power its AI analysis and support its numerous solutions including the Kensho Global Event Database and Kensho's Knowledge Graph; the business is expected to become integrated with Wall Street's mainstream banks, emerging as one of the market's leading solutions for AI-powered trading. Source
The Coalition for Responsible Business Finance (CRBF) has announced it will join the Innovative Lending Platform Association (ILPA) in efforts to more broadly support lending for small businesses; the ILPA's network is primarily led by existing members, OnDeck, Kabbage and CAN Capital; with the merger of the two organizations, the ILPA will gain representation from the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Small Business Association, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Association for Enterprise Opportunity; the expanded ILPA will provide even greater resources for advancing online small business lending education, advocacy and best practices; the ILPA is most well known for its work on introducing the SMART Box™ comparison tool for small business lenders; with the merger of the two organizations, the ILPA has also developed an updated industry code of ethics, leveraging the work previously done by the CRBF. Source
Silicon Valley Bank has a joint venture partnership with Shanghai Development Bank Co. Ltd; the partnership led the bank to open its first Chinese branch in Shanghai in 2012 and the firm has now announced their second location in Beijing; the banking branch in Beijing has 14 employees and will offer services for companies in technology, private equity and venture capital which are a key focus for Silicon Valley Bank globally. Source
Credit reporting agency TransUnion has announced the launch of a new innovation lab with increase support for client data modeling through broader access to proprietary data and analytics experts; the innovation lab will allow clients to test new models and solve business problems with real time data empowering credit data platforms and solutions across the industry; many companies have already reported success in building new models, analyzing new markets and expanding into new products; the innovation lab is also uniquely positioned to integrate with TransUnion's startup lender development program providing support for new market launches. Source
SoFi is one of the US's fastest growing alternative finance companies; the Financial Revolutionist talks with Mike Cagney about the firm's accomplishments, success factors and future objectives; Cagney provides insight on the firm's recent acquisition of Zenbanx and $500 million fundraising; discusses how these deals will drive growth for the firm and the other areas of the business the firm is working to expand. Source
Monzo and Revolut alerted customers of an outage due to a processing migration from a third party processor which caused customers to be unable to use cards for transactions; other digital banks affected by the third party processor migration included Starling Bank, Loot, Curve, Pockit and Uaccount; Monzo and Revolut have both reported they will reimburse customers for foreign exchange costs incurred as a result of the outage; Monzo says it has plans to move its processing to an internal unit with transactions processed on the firm's technology. Source
Madden v. Midland has been proceeding since 2015; Judge Cathy Seibal of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a decision in the case on February 27; Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP provides their insight on the court's decision; the central focus of the case is on the inconsistency between the issuing lender (New York) and Midland Funding, the debt collector, (Delaware); the judge ruled in favor of the borrower in default setting a precedent for better alignment between rates of issuing lenders and the loan's affiliated debt collectors. Source
LendIt News has launched as a new media brand for LendIt; serving as a unique industry resource, it will provide up to date content and analysis on fintech industry news, giving LendIt followers daily insight on the industry's most important topics and trends; subscribers receive daily industry news emails and insight on global activity. Source
ThreatMetrix is a provider of online fraud prevention services and authentication; using rules based technology they allow clients to customize risk factors for identity authentication and fraud prevention; in 2016 ThreatMetrix helped its clients prevent $1 billion in fraudulent loan applications; Frank talks about the company's systems, their recent $30 million fundraising from Silicon Valley Bank and what they are working on for the future. Source
A husband and wife from Sri Lanka were arrested in Canada for fraud and money laundering; the couple reportedly used fraudulent checks and synthetic identities for fraudulent charges and purchases; both are charged with fraud of CAD5,000 ($3,729) and possession of proceeds obtained of over CAD5,000 ($3,729); the fraudulent charges are an example of the emergence of sophisticated synthetic identities that are more difficult to be detected by fraud prevention systems. Source