Lend Academy discusses the changes to the home equity line of credit tax interest deduction with the new tax law and how it may affect unsecured lenders. Source
TD Bank surveyed 340 corporate treasurers and found that innovative technology is top of their mind for the coming years; 31 percent see automatics processes, 23 percent see blockchain and 15 percent see AI or robotics as the top disruptive technologies; while most respondents were keeping a close eye on technology there was 29 percent who said they would wait and see; seeing the results points to the fact that traditional finance professionals are starting to focus on technology changes, though not ready to fully jump in. Source.
Federal Reserve Board data shows that consumer debt reached all-time highs in November; the previous highs were in April 2008 when consumer debt totaled $1.021 trillion; according to the CFPB, “Most origination metrics we observe are near pre-recession levels. This is true across credit score tiers for both general purpose and private label cards. Approval rates have climbed for all credit score tiers since post-recession lows, even as application volumes have stabilized.” Source
Investors across the US will now be able to invest in real estate loans originated by Groundfloor with as little as $10. Source
Petal uses information beyond credit scores like earnings, spending and savings to identify people who are a good fit for a credit card; users can then use the Petal card to build their credit history; the company raised $13 million led by Valar Ventures. Source
Alkami’s white label technology has helped to provide mobile banking apps for credit unions and banks; they just raised a $70mn series D round led by General Atlantic, with participation from MissionOG, S3 Ventures and Argonaut Private Equity; the company has a SaaS model where they charge banks on the number of users per month; they plan to use the new infusion of capital to grow their sales and invest in innovation. Source.
Current Expected Credit Loses Standard or CECL goes into effect in 2020, though banks are now starting to experiment with technology solutions to solve the problem it causes; the requirement forces banks to put potential loan losses on their books when they put an asset on their books; right now it can take a bank almost a week to go through a largely excel driven process; beginning to implement changes now can help banks stay ahead and begin using technology to solve other data driven problems; Bank Independent of Sheffield, Alabama has said since using technology from Sageworks they have cut down time from a week to a day. Source.
The report shares the highlights of securitization in the space which totaled $7.8 billion in 2017, up from $4.6 billion in 2016; SoFi was the leader in both volume and total number of ABS deals; report includes KBRA’s outlook for 2018, loan origination and ABS issuance by platform, performance and rating trends and more. Source
TD Bank is looking to boost their AI driven technologies by their recent acquisition of Toronto based Layer 6; Layer 6 provides AI powered prediction engine for data; Michael Rhodes, group head, innovation, technology and shared services, TD Bank, says to Banking Technology that AI has “potential to power a new generation of data-driven applications from personalized and real-time advice to predictive analytics that will shape the future of banking for millions of individuals”.; the deal represents the fourth AI focused move by the bank in the past couple of years. Source.
ProShares and VanEck have both decided to withdraw their ETF filings with the SEC; VanEck filed for an actively managed Bitcoin Strategy ETF and ProShares said it was launching a suite of bitcoin ETFs; neither company responded to requests for comment; it is widely believed that bitcoin ETFs are the next step for the new currency. Source.