Leading UK consumer organization, Which?, has published new research showing in the last two years 1,045 branches have closed; HSBC has closed 27% of branches, Lloyds has closed 14% and Co-operative Bank has closed 53% of branches; the banks have said the rise of digital banking has moved their customers away from in person branches; while the move to digital banking is continuing, research by Bain also shows that 40% of global customers would consider a new bank if their branch was closed. Source
The agreement was signed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the People's Bank of China, the intention of the deal is to strengthen regulatory cooperation and boost market access for fintech startups in both markets; the "Fintech Bridge" as it is being called will allow the countries to share information about financial services and help to spot emerging trends in each market. Source
Lending Club has announced their second quarter earnings results; originations were up 10% sequentially to $2.15 billion; quarterly originations have been hovering around $1.9 billion since Q2 of last year; the second quarter also marked the second highest revenue generating quarter for the company; bank participation made up 44% of the funding for the quarter; Lending Club focused on developing testing infrastructure for borrower take rates which included a website redesign; guidance was adjusted upwards for the third quarter and the full year. Source
The focus of the partnership is tokenization of assets to make the lending process easier and bringing in real-world assets as collateral; ETHLend is a peer to peer lender operating on the Ethereum network to connect lenders and borrowers globally; Brickblock is a trading platform connecting real-world assets and cryptocurrencies. Source
While speaking at an event at Georgetown Law School Acting OCC Head Keith Noreika defended the proposed fintech charter; Mr. Noreika also took questions on the fear of commercial companies being granted banking charters; “A national bank charter is a special thing, and the OCC will not undermine its value by granting charters to companies that are not ready to meet our admittedly high expectations” said Noreika. Source.
Cloudvirga has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round for its automated, cloud-based intelligent Mortgage Platform (iMP); the service can easily integrate with lenders to streamline, automate and manage the compliance of mortgage lending, also offering significantly reduced processing times and costs; the iMP service was launched in 2016 and has processed over $15 billion in loans. Source
Viva Republica is the operator of Toss; firm has announced a $48 million funding round for the payment app from PayPal, Goodwater Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Altos Ventures and Partech Ventures; Toss has reported significant market share in Korea with over six million app downloads and payment transactions of over $3 billion; Viva Republica has also partnered with 18 of Korea's 19 major banks and now provides payment services to 98% of Korea's banking customers; for PayPal the investment builds out its payment services portfolio which includes mobile payment processor Venmo. Source
China Rapid Finance has filed for an IPO in the US; it will be the fifth online lender to trade on a public US exchange and the second Chinese online lender to list in the US; Lend Academy provides more details on China Rapid Finance and the IPO in their article; the firm is hoping to raise $100 million from the IPO; it is a peer-to-peer lender matching borrowers with investors and does not lend from its balance sheet; the platform targets underserved consumers and uses thousands of data points from alternative data sources including information on work history, payments, e-commerce, telco, search and social data for its credit underwriting. Source
A report from P2P lender BondMason says wealth managers are becoming more aware of and comfortable with marketplace lending investments; over half of wealth managers would now recommend marketplace lending investments as an alternative to mainstream cash products; institutional investors are also increasingly allocating to marketplace loans with over half of the product's investments attributed to institutional investors. Source
VPC Specialty Lending has released its January monthly report which shows balance sheet investments increasing to 58% of the fund's net asset value; 19 of the firm's 24 platform investments are now balance sheet focused; balance sheet investments in January included Cognical and Kueski; balance sheet investments over the past twelve months have been successful with balance sheet loans returning 5.6% while marketplace loans returned -0.8%. Source