Santander Consumer USA Holdings describes itself as a technology-driven consumer finance company; they focus on vehicle finance, and have been originating retail installment contracts since 1997; company announced originations for the quarter of $5.2 billion; "Fewer originations are in part due to our disciplined underwriting standards as we are committed to driving originations at the right price and structure, and in part due to increased competition in the prime space," said Jason Kulas, president and chief executive officer. Source
Credy was founded in 2016 and has been gaining some ground in India's P2P lending market; the firm is emerging from the Y Combinator Winter 2017 program and seeks to capitalize on two factors supporting the growth of P2P in India: 1) the use of the Aadhaar ID system and 2) the country's demonetization which eliminated 85% of the country's currency and shifted the economy towards a focus on digital transactions; using digital IDs and a technology platform for underwriting and instant approvals will allow the firm to capitalize on a $50 billion personal lending market; the firm's average loan size varies from $500 to $1,000 with repayment terms up to nine months; led by former Goldman Sachs bankers, the P2P platform has already processed approximately $3 million in loans. Source
WSJ published a story on China’s consumer credit rating ecosystem: the fact that China doesn’t have a widely accepted system to gauge individual’s creditworthiness leads technology giants (Ant Financial, Tencent among others) to developing their own credit-rating systems, but none of these projects has emerged as a single nationwide standard either yet; problems with generating credit scores in the private sector include data accuracy and privacy; the story says the lack of a single accepted standard is holding back the growth of borrowing among rising middle class in China. Source
SoFi has received preliminary ratings from Kroll Bond Rating Agency for a securitization portfolio including prime jumbo residential mortgage loans; the securitization includes 36 classes with 270 mortgage loans; 31 classes are rated AAA; the remaining classes are rated AA to B with one unrated class accounting for $1 million of the portfolio; the portfolio includes high quality mortgage loans with a comprehensive weighted average credit score of 777; the total principal balance of the portfolio is $168,790,946. Source
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two companies who they claim were operating fraudulent ICOs; REcoin Group Foundation and DRC World were claimed to defraud investors and sold unregistered securities; both companies claimed they had significant operations and networks when in reality they were shell companies; this continues a worldwide trend by financial regulators who are beginning to come down on the exploding ICO market. Source.
Marketplace lending loan servicer First Associates has announced the opening of a new operations center; the operations center is located in Baja California, Mexico with capacity for 1,000 seats; in comments regarding the announcement, First Associates CEO David Johnson said: "We couldn’t be more excited about our new Baja facility. We are able to deliver the same outstanding quality and service as our San Diego operations center, offer an economically advantageous option to our clients and provide significant opportunities in a developing business community that is an important part of the greater San Diego/Tijuana metro area." Source
Two cases involving sexual harassment charges have been filed against SoFi; CEO Mike Cagney wrote an open letter regarding the cases, stressing that he is taking the complaints seriously; Cagney and SoFi's legal team are in the process of investigating and responding to the filings. Source
JP Morgan Chase made their first fintech acquisition with the purchase of payments company WePay; financial terms were not disclosed but the WSJ reports the price was above their 2015 valuation of $220mn; this deal points to a larger trend in the payments space with 2017 seeing deals for 166 companies worth $29.3mn. Source.
Ron Suber has invested in online commercial lending platform Money360 and will also join the firm as a strategic advisor; Money360 has been growing fast and estimates loan originations will exceed $500 million by 2017; the investment will add to Ron Suber's fintech portfolio which he is managing from a family office; his equity investment follows positive returns from loan investments on the platform. Source
Italian invoice trading platform Workinvoice has packaged 5 million euros ($5.31 million) worth of receivables financed through its platform in a securitization vehicle; the receivables portfolio was purchased by Italian portfolio manager Factor@Work; the securitization deal represents a new source of capital interest for the invoice receivables market. Source