LendIt Europe 2017 is just one week away and we've compiled a list of the speakers to follow. 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.
According to reporting in CoinDesk last month money manager VanEck filed to create the VanEck Vectors Bitcoin Strategy ETF and last week that effort was given bad news by the SEC; the SEC sent a letter to VanEck stating that they cannot review the offering because "the underlying instruments in which the fund intends to primarily invest are not yet available." Source.
The CBRC issued a warning that the surge in consumer loans could pose a risk to the country's lending system; they noted that lenders should not try to push up the consumer leverage ratio and they should take lessons from the US subprime mortgage crisis; recent reviews of loan books show misuse of loans for housing down payments and banks need to stay closer to lending regulations. Source.
Zopa's Chief Product Office Andrew Lawson told investors last week they launched a new credit risk scorecard; the scorecard is meant to better help the platform assess borrowers and what is behind their approval/denial; Zopa has seen higher than expected losses and has also cut down on lending to higher risk customers; Lawson explained how the new model will use traditional credit methodology mixed with data science. Source.
American Banker reports on the lobbying group called Financial Innovation Now and that some technology giants are meeting individually with government agencies; Amazon met with the OCC starting in the second quarter of 2016 and met again this year; PayPal has also met with OCC officials in several quarters last year. Source
Trading cryptocurrencies has shown itself to be quite a lucrative business, at the same time the exchanges where trading occurs underscores how risky trading might be; exchanges can lack basics controls on know your customer (KYC), fraud prevention and more; there have also been a number of significant thefts or hacks where millions were lost; while the risk is real it has now slowed the market's growth as total value of all digital currencies has soared to over $140bn. Source.
Zopa launched a pilot with provide Uber drivers with low credit scores car loans; however the partnership didn’t attract the amount of customers it had hoped; Zopa stated in the FT article, “The pilot was interesting, but demonstrated that the potential opportunity was limited for us, and we had other priorities.”; Bryan Zhang, co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance discusses one of the problems in the industry today, attracting borrowers . Source
According to Peer2Peer Finance News, "The inaugural Peer2Peer Finance News Power 50 list aims to identify the big names in the industry who have helped it grow into a force to contend with over the past decade and who will play a key role in its future."; rounding out the top 10 include executives from RateSetter, Zopa, Funding Circle as well as Christine Farnish from the P2PFA, Bruce Davis, co-founder of Abundance, Mark Carney, governor, Bank of England and Andrew Bailey, chief executive, Financial Conduct Authority. Source