According to the WSJ, Credit Karma isn’t receiving any proceeds or issuing new shares as part of the deal; Silver Lake will instead be purchasing shares from early investors and employees in a secondary sale; the investment values the company around $4 billion; Credit Karma generated $500 million in revenue in 2016 and according to CEO Kenneth Lin they have been growing at a double-digit pace since; Credit Karma last raised money in 2015. Source
Citi recently announced an upgrade to their mobile app to help add features and streamline the app offering; the new app features more financial management tools, you can open an account on your device and pay bills; they also added a 360 Financial View tool to give the customer a full understanding and view into all their accounts, Citi and non Citi accounts; the app is part of a broader digital strategy the bank has been pushing in recent weeks. Source.
Kabbage's study shows the increased usage of mobile devices for loan applications. Source
Online mortgage lender Lenda has plans to make the mortgage process last 30 minutes from start to finish; right now the company takes about 2 weeks to complete the process and has made more than $200mn worth or mortgages to date; Jason van den Brand, its co-founder and CEO, tells American Banker, "The big banks are working on technology that was built in the '70s. We cater to the customer who lives on their phone, laptop and tablet and shops online and compares online."; the biggest impediment is the appraisal process as that is still human intensive; the company has also been testing digital signatures by connecting via video chat with a notary. Source.
Betterment is looking to cater to their wealthier clients as they make portfolios more personalized; they launched the Betterment Flexible Portfolio which allows customers to shoes how assets weights are allocated; the typical Betterment client uses the asset weights set by the robo advisor, but this feature is meant to personalize the wealth clients portfolio; the move will try to help the company to position themselves as a full service firm that can cater to different levels of clientele, not just the younger investor. Source.
BBVA Compass says there is plenty of room in the market for the bank to wade into online unsecured consumer loans; Shayan Khwaja, BBVA Compass' executive director of consumer lending, told American Banker, “We’ve seen the asset class grow, and fintech has shined a light on how we can take this value proposition to the consumers. The general population is fairly savvy with digital products. They’re not just used to it, but they’re demanding it.”; the move follows Barclays and PNC who have recently launched into the same market; analysts are not as bullish on the moving citing fraud concerns and the recent spike in personal loan losses.
The former Treasury Secretary is being replaced by Stanford Economics Professor Susan Athley. Source
The startup donated its digital currency (XRP) to public schools in the United States; Ripple shared it is the largest cryptocurrency gift to a single charity and will be used to buy materials at over 28,000 schools in all 50 states; Ripple currently owns 60 billion of the 100 billion XRP in existence and has a market cap around $35 billion; the cryptocurrency will be liquidated over a two period in order to not disrupt the market price. Source
The LendIt Content Team discusses LendIt Fintech USA 2018 in San Francisco on April 9-11. Source
This week’s PeerIQ Industry Update covers the upwards revision of U.S. GDP growth to 2.9 percent from 2.5 percent; they provide a sneak peek into the PeerIQ Credit Facility Management Suite; Prosper announced 2017 results, former Avant founder John Sun raised $15mn for a new startup and the Arizona AG helped start the first fintech sandbox in a U.S. state in Arizona; Citi is building out their mobile app as the push by incumbent banks into digital becomes bigger. Source.