VeriComply has announced the completion of a new funding round from investors including Jon Barlow of Eaglewood Capital and John Maute of Helios AMC and Situs Holdings; VeriComply plans to use the funding for sales and operations of the firm's automated loan verification services for lending platforms and the secondary market; it is currently building out its business for verification services in the marketplace lending industry. Source
Brett King developed his company Moven as a better solution to banking; after gaining only 60,000 customers since the digital bank's launch, he is now selling the software to banks for use in mobile apps; Moven and many other digital bank competitors are losing some of their appeal in the startup space as the Trump administration seeks to ease banking regulations that resulted in less risk taking from banks and greater opportunities for startups; as the landscape changes under the new presidential administration, it's likely that the latitude and interest from banks in partnering with startups will increase. Source
AT Zuche is a Shanghai-based peer-to-peer car rental platform with over five million users and 200,000 vehicles; it has announced a $58 million Series C financing round from investors including Matrix Partners China; Matrix Partners China also recently invested in insurtech app Anxin Doctor which raised RMB200 million ($28 million) for a healthcare service focused on women and children; CreditEase Insurance Agency, a CreditEase affiliate, has also added new capital of RMB80 million ($11 million) for its insurance platform. Source
P2P Finance News provides details on how six of the industry's top funds have performed over the past year; their analysis includes performance for P2P Global Investments, SME Loan Fund, Ranger Direct Lending, Funding Circle SME Income Fund, VPC Specialty Lending and Honeycomb Investment Trust; performance from Ranger Direct Lending leads the group of funds with an NAV total return over the past year of 19.9%. Source
At the SFIG 2017 conference on Monday, PeerIQ announced a new data partnership with 1010data; according to the press release the partnership will now offer the industry's only integrated cloud platform with self-service data management and analytics; users will now have access to even broader capabilities for loan data analysis through 1010data's Insights Platform which includes an analytical function library, pre-defined reports and queries through 1010data QuickApps and the ability to overlay consumer credit and econometric data with marketplace loan data analysis. Source
SoFi has announced details of its latest fundraising round which now adds $500 million in new equity capital for the firm; the financing was led by Silver Lake and included SoftBank and GPI Capital; the fundraising will support the continued expansion for the firm; it now offers student loan refinancing, personal loans, mortgage loans, life insurance, wealth management and banking; it also plans to expand its services to Australia and Canada. Source
Lufax sees a growing market opportunity in China's retail investment space and is planning to increase its focus on this area of the business; the firm is currently the world's highest valued P2P lender at $18.5 billion; it has $56.9 billion in client assets with P2P loans accounting for a third which is expected to decrease to 15%; it plans to expand the investments it offers through online brokerage accounts and also enhance its mobile and online trading capabilities; the firm is also rumored to have plans for an initial public offering in Hong Kong in the second half of 2017. Source
Lending Club borrowers are given a 15 day grace period for loan payments; borrowers are not assessed a late fee and previously did not pay accrued interest on the overdue amount; Lending Club has revised its grace period policy as of February 24 to require borrowers to now pay additional interest on the late payments; the firm will continue to not charge a late fee until after the 15 day grace period. 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
Nasdaq Vice President Fredrik Voss is optimistic about the use of blockchain in capital markets trading; according to Cointelegraph, stock market transactions and the core premise of blockchain are compatible making stock market trading ideal for blockchain integration; blockchain technology could help with a number of trading factors including transparency and efficiency; according to Voss, blockchain technology is helping industry trading specialists to look at some of the market's trading problems with new options and solutions from blockchain's capabilities; while he is optimistic, Voss also says, "There is a long way to go before we see a very wide scale adoption of the technology in capital markets, but it looks more promising now than we thought three years ago." Source