Rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act is a welcomed sign by banks like Ally Bank who does not use branches and misses out on benefits awarded to banks with branch networks; focusing on where banks lend would be a better way to assess potential credit instead of where the bank is physically located. Source.
Last week the sixth annual LendIt Fintech USA conference took place in San Francisco. Here are Peter Renton’s thoughts on some of the ideas that were shared by the keynote speakers as well as a summary of the rest of the event. Source.
Banks can take a lot of lessons from Facebook in regards to the ongoing data problems with Cambridge Analytica; as data sharing becomes commonplace in banking, banks and their partners need to ensure information is kept secure and not used for nefarious reasons. Source.
There is a growing competition brewing in the payments space and Affirm is look to stay near the top as they recently announced the move into financing small ticket purchases; the move comes after Visa and MasterCard made similar announcements; the payments space has become a highly competitive market where customers look for the simplest, most transparent way to make a purchase of any size. Source.
Banks know they need to update legacy technology, but investors are beginning to question at what cost can the banks innovate versus making profits; ensuring they stay competitive when it comes to technology, though keeping costs from skyrocketing is a tightrope more second and third tier banks are trying to navigate every day. Source.
Securitization continues to grow for the marketplace lending sector. As they do at this time every quarter PeerIQ released their Securitization Tracker. It showed another strong quarter with $4.3 billion of total issuance. This total was up 34% from Q1 2017 but down slightly from the record total in Q4 2017. Source.
Barclays US is trying to ensure they use AI in a efficient yet non intrusive way so their customers can get the most out of the technology; Tearsheet spoke with Mona Jantzi, managing director of strategic analytics and customer experience at Barclays US, to learn more about how the bank uses AI; topics discussed include using data to shape customer experience, going beyond product offerings, the dangers of AI use with data and more. Source.
The CEO and Founder of Juvo shares how he plans to bring billions of unbanked people into the financial system for the first time. Source
Crunchbase shares the top seed, early and late-stage investors by total number investments since January 2017; topping the list in seed stage investments was Y Combinator with 28 total fintech investments followed by Plug and Play and 500 Startups; Plug and Play topped the list in the early-stage category; Bain Capital Ventures led in late stage investments with 6 followed by General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures who all completed 5 deals in the time frame. Source
BB&T suffered a technical glitch that knocked out their ATMs, online and mobile banking in February; during a recent earnings call BB&T Chief Executive Kelly King described how they handled the incident and how it effected revenues; there are many lessons other banks can take from BB&T as this will not be the last tech hiccup, ensuring technology is full tested and then tested again is one of the main lessons others can take away. Source.