China's fintech sector is growing with new technologies and companies developing solutions for payments, loans and online investing; Forbes provides details on the market and discusses challenges; while the market has been conducive to new innovation, tighter regulations could be a factor and a lack of skilled workers could also affect the market's development. Source
Pepper Hamilton provides details on their recent podcast and webinar in their featured blog post; the firm's January 5 podcast provided insight on what the Donald Trump presidency means for the financial services industry; on January 24 the firm provided a webinar on factors for considering the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's new fintech charter. Sponsored Blog Post
Schwab Intelligent Portfolios now boasts $24 billion assets under management and has hired Cynthia Loh, the ex-general manager of Betterment for Business; article reports on Schwab’s robo-advice platform growth, the cannibalization the firm saw with the offering, and what the new hire might mean for Schwab’s future plans. Source
Business Insider released the below chart this week highlighting what banks fear the most; for 2016, banks view existing large incumbents as their biggest threat followed by fintech startups; BI posits this is due to the incumbents having large customer bases and significant capital to fund projects; the perception of threats from fintechs increased from 14% in 2015 to 18% in 2016.
The Asset provides details on recent decreases in China's P2P lending market; the chart above notes a significant decrease in transaction volume for P2P lenders in China since December 2016; the publication also reports on the number of Chinese P2P platforms and the number of problematic P2P platforms from January 2014 through February 2017. Source
American Banker profiles Instant Financial which was founded in 2015; the company aims to shorten the time frame to when employees get paid; using the app employees can unlock portions of their paychecks which can provide an alternative to payday loans; they recently partnered with Sutton Bank in Ohio for their US expansion. Source
Channel Partners Capital has announced it will utilize Tamarack's Lease/Loan Origination Accelerator built on Salesforce; Channel Partners Capital is a working capital business lender; Tamarack's Lease/Loan Origination Accelerator will help the firm improve its loan origination operations and audit controls. Source
The below chart was taken from a Business Insider article discussing subprime auto lending. Since 2010, auto originations have been increasing steadily, topping $465.6 billion in 2016. This increase has been in part due to the low interest rate environment. Many people have speculated that the increase in subprime auto loans should be cause for concern. The subprime share of auto loans currently sits at around 17% as shown below. Data from Equifax and VantageScore from 2015 to 2016 shows auto loan delinquencies have increased from historical lows. In 2015, severe delinquencies (60 days+ past due) were 1.24% compared to 1.35% today. As of December 2016, 13.1% of the portfolios at banks and credit unions were considered subprime, defined as having a credit score less than 620, compared to 34.8% of other finance companies. Source
CB Insights has provided a market map of artificial intelligence (AI) companies in fintech; the map is grouped by nine categories; top companies using innovative AI solutions for credit scoring and direct lending include Affirm and ZestFinance; the analysis also provides insight on each of the firm's investors. Source
CB Insights provides a market map with 102 lending, investing and personal finance startups; gives retail consumers an array of options to choose from; includes companies providing innovative solutions across the entire retail banking market. Source