President Donald Trump is expected to ease regulatory burdens across the financial services industry; some marketplace lenders believe this could help to cause less friction; “We want to deliver a frictionless experience but there’s all this friction—hopefully this administration will be helpful,” said Marlette Funding CEO and Founder Jeffrey Meiler on a panel at LendIt USA 2017; the current market environment includes expectations for rising rates and less regulation which seems to be helping the outlook for a growing marketplace lending industry with opportunities across a range of categories including mortgage lending and business lending. Source
Orchard has been working for a long time on their new platform called Orchard Deals; the platform has been redesigned from the ground up and boasts more than just a secondary market; features include deal listings, capital management, advanced analytics, data services and news & insights; Peter Renton from Lend Academy spoke with Orchard CEO Matt Burton and outlines what’s new in the blog post. Source
According to a report from UN-based Better Than Cash, between Alibaba's Alipay and Tencent's WeChat, customers sent over $3 trillion in payments in 2016; the chart above shows how far the services have come since 2012; percentage of digital payments (online & mobile) went from 3.5% to 17% of all transactions over the same time period; Alipay and WeChat own 63% of the market for digital payments. Source
PayPal has launched a new service, Money Pools, to allow users to create fundraising pages where their network can contribute; the pages are similar to other crowdfunding sites but with a greater emphasis on social media; the thought is this can become another revenue generating product for PayPal, though they currently are not charging for the use of Money Pools. Source.
Robots have begun helping to take over menial tasks at banks and now there is talk that a full back office operation is not far away; "I think we're going to see it move from a few narrow functions to across the enterprise," said Alan McIntyre, the industry managing director for banking at Accenture; making these changes will help banks to cut costs and improve efficiency, at least when times get extremely busy; banks won't yet fully remove the human component but the trend is moving in the direction of more automation when running the back office. Source
Zopa provides 2016 year end stats; in total they lent 680 million British pounds ($830 million); helped 20,000 people improve their home and 29,000 buy a car; the company also highlights several awards they won including Most Trusted Loan Provider by Moneywise for the seventh year in a row; the company struck many partnerships including offering phone finance with Unshackled, loans through personal finance app Pariti and a partnership with Airbnb; company also launched three new lending products for investors with varying risk and return profiles; in 2016 we also saw the first securitization of Zopa loans and learned of Zopa's plans to apply for a banking license. Source
Online multi-lender, Bizfi, has announced a new partnership with Internex Capital; Bizfi will add Internex to its network of lenders on the platform; Internex will offer asset-based revolving lines of credit from $250,000 to $5 million for small to mid-sized businesses in manufacturing, wholesale, trucking, business and consulting services; through its online lending platform Bizfi originates loans and also matches borrowers with its network of over 45 lenders. Source
As online financial services expand, marketers are seeking new ways to get in front of their customers; Facebook Messenger chatbots are one example and TD Ameritrade is taking full advantage of this source; it has launched a Facebook Messenger chatbot that gives customers instant updates on their portfolios and trades; the firm has worked through a number of security and encryption issues and is now offering one of the industry's leading Facebook Messenger chatbot services. Source
The Norway Global Government Pension Fund is cited as the world's largest sovereign wealth fund by assets; Fund managers have proposed some new changes to the investment guidelines for the Fund which has total assets of £723 billion ($898.27 billion); they are planning to increase the equity allocation threshold to 70% from 60%; the change would increase access to investments with higher returns during a time when fixed income investment yields are extremely low. Source
In their weekly update PeerIQ covers the Trump tax plan, the recent Transunion consumer lending report and marketplace lending securitization news; the Transunion report shows that fintech companies have originated 30 percent of unsecured consumer loans in 2016; Darien Rowayton Bank and SoFi filed securitization deals; PeerIQ also took a closer look at SoFi’s SCLP 2017-6 deal which was the largest on SoFi’s shelf so far. Source.