The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold a fintech forum focusing on blockchain and artificial intelligence on March 9, 2017; the forum will be the third fintech forum for the FTC; event will be free and open to the public at the University of California, Berkeley. Source
The Marketplace Lending Association has announced the addition of 11 new members bringing its total membership to 14; the organization launched in April 2016 with three founding members: Lending Club, Prosper and Funding Circle; LendIt has joined the consortium as an associate member along with dv01; all together the expanded membership broadens the scope of representation within the industry and also helps to give the association a more powerful voice in Washington as marketplace lending regulations evolve in 2017. Source
The Japan Exchange Group has been approved to use blockchain in trading and will begin testing blockchain on the Tokyo Stock Exchange; its approval follows a previous restriction on blockchain's use in exchange trading; with the approval the Japan Exchange Group may also explore artificial intelligence; other market exchanges working on blockchain developments include Myanmar's Yangon Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq; the Bank of Japan has also reported increased research in the use of fintech. Source
CreditEase Wealth Management announced the first close of their second fund dedicated to investing in Israeli tech startups; the amount raised was $32.2 million; final target for the fund is $50 million; the focus of investments will include virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, digital healthcare, internet of things technology, cloud and data storage, and advanced manufacturing. Source
Biz2Credit has released its monthly Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index report which provides approval rates on small business loans; large lenders increased approval rates while alternative and credit union lenders reported decreases; big banks reported an approval rate of 23.9% in December, an increase of 0.02% from November and 1% from December 2015; the small bank approval rate increased to 48.9% and the institutional lenders approval rate increased to 63.4%; alternative lending approval rates decreased to 58.6% and the approval rate from credit unions decreased to 40.9%. Source
Orchard's January 13 Snapshot highlights Funding Circle's new investments, Marcus and final comments on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's fintech charter proposal; in publicly traded marketplace lending stocks OnDeck led returns with a monthly return of 14.12% followed by Square with a monthly return of 4.76%; in UK listed funds the P2P Global Investment Fund led monthly returns with a gain of 4.08%; in the US the RiverNorth Marketplace Lending Fund reported a monthly return of -1.02%. Source
Government-owned British Business Bank has added challenger bank OakNorth to its Help to Grow program; allows the company to receive loan funding of up to 2 million British pounds ($2.43 million); OakNorth is the first challenger bank to join the Help to Grow program; the funding follows a recent announcement of three new executive hires for OakNorth to support anticipated lending of 500 million British pounds ($608.39 million) in 2017. Source
HouseCanary is working to provide better real estate property valuations through its fintech services; uses machine learning and algorithms to analyze data and identify home values; the company has reported a funding round with $33 million in new capital from investors including Eric Schmidt and Kobe Bryant. Source
Northwestern Mutual has formed Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures which will invest in fintech firms; according to the press release, the commitment will focus on innovation to build greater digital relevance for clients, increase data-driven decision making and create back-end efficiencies with the goal of creating value for its more than four million clients; investments will range from $500,000 to $3 million; the company has already seen benefits from the acquisition of LearnVest in 2015 and is looking to invest more in similar companies. Source
PeerIQ released its fourth quarter "Marketplace Lending Securitization Tracker" this week; marketplace lending accounted for $2.4 billion of the securitization market in the fourth quarter; data from the fourth quarter report shows securitization investments as an increasingly important source of capital for marketplace lending platforms; in 2016 70% of loans were invested in through securitizations. Source
