LendingRobot is planning to offer its clients a new marketplace lending credit fund with blockchain automated fund reporting; algorithms will automate investors' fund preferences into one of four options based on risk tolerance and investment horizons; the fund offering will add to the company's current business which allows customers to invest in multiple loan platforms from a single account. Source
After more than a decade of conferences and content, fintech has evolved past online lending alternatives: Fintech Nexus brides the gap.
Prosper released its October 2016 performance report with the month's estimated return of 7.12% just below the estimate of 7.17% for the third quarter; in October, vintage prepayment rates continued to trend higher; delinquencies and loss patterns since 2013 are below levels in 2012; cumulative gross charge-offs appear to be a factor trending higher; average FICO of the portfolio was 714.1 in October. Source
Join LendIt on Monday, August 14 at 2:00 PM EST for a webinar about blockchain technology and insurance; the webinar will discuss how blockchain can streamline operations for wealth managers and insurance back office operations; presenters include Jayant Khadilkar, global head of analytics and technology at Tiger Risk, and Ryan Rugg, business development at R3. Source
WSFS Financial, which is the parent company of WSFS Bank, announced a Private Student Lending Solutions offering; the new offering will expand their current consumer business and they believe this will help bridge the gap created in the student lending space; WSFS is partnering with leading technology provider LendKey to leverage their application, disbursement and servicing of the loans; Rick Wright, WSFS executive vice president and chief retail banking officer, said, "We want to be that valued resource that customers turn to when they start the difficult process of figuring out how to fund college." Source
"Orebits Corp. has created a new asset class, enabled by Symbiont's distributed ledger technology, which will change the precious metals financing marketplace forever," says Scott Mehlman, CEO of Orebits Corp.; through support from Symbiont's blockchain technology, Orebits will offer clients digitized "smart certificates" called "orebits" that are tied to gold reserves setting up a new form of gold trading; additionally the exchange for the new gold orebits will operate based on a peer-to-peer structure; Symbiont reports that the innovation has created a completely new trading alternative for investors to gain exposure to gold and Orebits says the exchange will operate without margins, storage and insurance, creating a considerable advantage over other current methods for investing in gold. Source
BlackRock's new investment management executive Mark Wiseman has reorganized the business with a greater focus on automated investing for its active funds; the changes will focus on the actively-managed equities business and include pricing changes and increased use of computer models for active investment funds; the firm's passive investments have helped it grow assets under management to $5.1 trillion however its active fund performance has lagged and in 2016 reported $275.1 billion invested, a decrease from $317.3 billion three years prior. Source
Steve McLaughlin has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to M&A in fintech, having advised on many deals in the space; he founded his firm FT Partners when he was 32 years old; according to data from KPMG, M&A was down in 2016 by 68% compared to 2015; McLaughlin shares his thoughts on what has contributed to the decline and where the industry is going from here; believes that the ability for companies to raise financing rounds has contributed to the lower amount of M&A deals; many companies in fintech are also fairly young when it comes to the earnings which makes M&A not as attractive to banks; McLaughlin also talks about the deals that have occurred in fintech and the sectors that are hot in 2017. Source
Boston-based Eastern Bank hired a former Capital One executive, Dan O'Malley, to help the bank learn how it can compete with the growing online lending industry; through his research Dan learned that 5% of Eastern's business customers used an online lender and the primary reason for this was quick access to capital; Eastern now has a competing product to offer small business customers and has even begun to license out their technology to fellow banks; Eastern believes their credit scorecard will allow for banks to utilize their new technology more than they would with an online lender because of their adherence to banking regulations. Source
iPayment, Inc. has created a new business unit, iPayment Capital, to offer merchant cash advances; the new business unit will utilize the firm's 137,000 SMB customers for merchant cash advance lending; the service will add to payment processing and point of sale services currently offered by iPayment, Inc. Source


