The Madden v. Midland case has been a closely followed case for over two years by the marketplace lending industry; bills are now being introduced to hopefully fix the ambiguity around the case; Lend Academy shares the history of the case and perspectives from Adam Levitin, professor of law at Georgetown University, Nat Hoopes, executive director of the Marketplace Lending Association, and Brian Korn, partner at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Source
Hybrid digital wealth management firm Personal Capital now has $5 billion of assets under management (AUM) after accelerating growth with $2 billion in AUM added in 2017; Jay Shah, CEO of Personal Capital, tells Robo Advice News, "For investors with complex financial lives or for those who are just too busy to manage their own investments, we take the time and worry out of building an investment strategy."; new investors now invest $395,000 as compared to $289,000 since the start of the year, a 37% increase; the company has also launched a number of new features and closed a $40 million Series E round. Source
American Express' Pay It Plan It mobile feature allows for installment payments on purchases of over $100; the mobile feature is associated with a customer's American Express card; the company says Pay It Plan It is available now on several consumer credit and co-branded cards and cards issued after June 1 will have the feature added by 2018. Source
Rating agency DBRS has reviewed 12 US SoFi securitization transactions encompassing 36 different classes; the rating agency has upgraded 12 classes and confirmed 24; according to the agency, the confirmed classes are performing within expectations and the credit enhancement levels for the upgraded classes are sufficient to cover their new requirements. Source
Peerform has been around the marketplace lending space since 2010; they are the third oldest platform behind Prosper and Lending Club; since 2014 a lot has happened at the firm including the acquisition of the company late last year by Strategic Financial Solutions; the firm has three products today: marketplace loans, direct pay consolidation loans and debt negotiation loans; the company recently formed an investment partnership with Random Forest Capital which focuses on data science and machine learning; article discusses how the two companies have partnered, overhauling Peerform's APIs and creating proprietary credit models. Source
On August 23 and 24, officials from the People's Bank of China and scholars from Peking University arrived in San Francisco and had in-depth discussions with delegates at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as well as some fintech companies including Coinbase, Prosper, Sofi, Circle and Ripple; discussion topics focused on digital currency, regtech, lending and inclusive finance; Sun Guofeng, the head of the Research Institute of PBoC, and Yao Qian, the head of Digital Currency Research Institute of PBoC, attended the tour; a report on the status quo of US fintech market, regulatory environment and its implications on China will be written after this visit. Source (Chinese)
Since launching in 2007, OnDeck has provided over $7 billion in capital to more than 70,000 customers in 700 different industries across the United States, Canada and Australia; creating a new type of commercial loan product for small businesses has been the company's focus since the beginning; its loans support small business activity in the regions it lends and its partnership with JPMorgan is an industry leading example of collaboration between fintechs and banks. Source
SuperMoney reviews the new US consumer lending platform founded by Renaud Laplanche; firm is an online lender focused on personal loans, also offering consumer credit monitoring and education for its customers with benefits for high quality borrowers; SuperMoney outlines the platform's underwriting standards, application process, and pros and cons versus competitors. Source
Podcast talks with former SEC Enforcement Division attorney Nick Morgan; Nick Morgan says the SEC is reviewing all types of cases and using the Howey Test to determine whether the deals are considered an offering of securities; explains that the Howey Test considers whether the expectation of profit relies on efforts of investors and also says that the investigations center around whether the investors are passively investing or actively involved in creating value; Morgan also noted that the SEC's resources are limited given the vast number of ICOs being offered and reports that the investigations will likely focus first on any fraudulent activity with potential investigation efforts also on exchanges that encompass the inclusion of many ICOs. Source
Reports on the efforts of Kevin Karrels at First Tennessee, a bank with $29.4 billion in assets; joining the digital team, Karrels was involved in ensuring that the bank caught up with digital market competition; American Banker outlines factors involved with the digital initiative including the replacement of vendors with D3 Banking and the implementation of D3 Banking's online and mobile banking technologies. Source