A new study has found that borrowers in China are taking out loans from multiple platforms; of 61 online lenders in the study, 44% of their customers borrowed from multiple sources; it is difficult to prevent against this since p2p lenders don’t have access to all of the credit data of their borrowers and there is no centralized place for platforms to share data; the study was done by the Beijing Internet Finance Industry Association. Source
The CEO and Co-Founder of Nav talks small business finance and how his company is helping small business owners become more successful. Source
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JPMorgan Chase and Barclays have joined IBM’s quantum computing network as they look to use the technology to assess risk and stay secure; Barclays is beginning to test potential uses and JPMorgan Chase is looking to leverage quantum computing for trading, portfolio optimization and risk analysis; there is a lot happening in quantum computing these days as big tech firms look to master the technology seen as potentially 100,000 times faster than classic computers; while there are clear benefits to quantum computing banks are also looking at protecting themselves from the cyber threat that hackers could exploit using the same technology. Source.
Ant Financial’s Yu’e Bao fund has grown since launch in 2013 to become the largest money market fund in the world; JP Morgan’s fund, which launched in 1993, was recently passed by Yu’e Bao in assets and is still seen as the safer fund; according to a report by Fitch Ratings Yu’e Bao is a lot riskier in terms of market concentration, credit quality, liquidity and regulatory risk. Source.
M-Pesa is now in 11 countries, has more than 30 million users and helped to lift thousands of people out of poverty; Business Insider took a trip to Kenya to get a look at how the app works and the effect it has had on the region; 80 percent of mobile banking in Kenya is done through M-Pesa and people use the service for groceries, paying off debts with friends and more. Source.
Amazon is speaking with the Bengaluru-based company; the company is focused on small businesses but is also looking to lend to consumers on Amazon’s platform; According to sources Amazon may invest $5-10 million; Capital Float recently raised $45 million in a Series C; Amazon has recently done other deals with fintech companies in India. Source
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft, or GAFAM as they are beginning to be know are continuing their move towards financial services; payments have become one area in particular where they have seen the tech giants making inroads; mobile wallets for in-store payments, money transfers between friends and even loans to small businesses; tech giants have only started to disrupt fintech as they look to become bigger players in consumers financial lives. Source.
As the government cracks down on riskier lenders the more established brands of Ant Financial and Lufax look to become even more dominant; China’s top ten online lenders account for 36 percent of all loans and that number looks to continue to rise as smaller lenders look to be on their way out; the top lenders use spending analysis, AI and more to determine creditworthiness of borrowers; with the rise in wealth and spending power in China the dominant fintech firms are ideally positioned. Source.
The platform grew 104% year over year; its investor base includes banks, pension and infrastructure funds, family offices and private clients; According to the company, LendInvest has the largest institutional funding base of any European Fintech lender on record; the platform offers loans made to professional property investors and developers. Source