In this week’s PeerIQ Industry Update they cover the rising volatility in credit markets and the recent Q4 economic numbers; while at SFIG in Vegas PeerIQ shared comments from investors which show a lot of optimism and demand for MPL; they also talk about their recent product offerings and the continued push by banks to work with fintechs. Source.
The CEO of the U.S. Network of Accion gives us the CDFI perspective on small business lending in underserved communities. Source
Jason Gottlieb, a partner at Morrison Cohen, told Crowdfund Insider that, in his opinion, “Despite its firm view that most (and maybe all) ICOs were unregistered securities offerings, the courts have not yet decided whether the “coins” or “utility tokens” are truly securities.”; the reports point to the SEC investigating at least 12 ICOs and their gatekeepers; regulators have been increasing their understanding of the space in the last year as the ICO market has taken off. Source.
Both Marlette and LendingClub now have their own securitization platforms which has broadened their investor base; Sid Jajodia, chief investment officer at LendingClub spoke at the Structured Finance Industry Group’s conference in Las Vegas this week and discussed the importance of brining LendingClub’s loans in-house; he also spoke about their new whole-loan structured product announced in December as well as changes that might make sense for the company in the future; Karan Mehta, head of capital markets for Marlette discussed changes they are making to their whole-loan program. Source
Content marketing has become a widely used trend among financial firms to build brand awareness about products; what most companies find is cutting through the noise is quite hard as most companies share content that can seem the same from the user perspective; some are trying different techniques like having users write content or testing different visuals; companies need to figure out the types of pieces that work best for their particular segment. Source.
Seed offers small businesses of all stripes the ability to open an account in less than 5 minutes on their website or mobile app; they now offer banks software to help them digitize account openings; they are one of a handful of fintech companies offering banks a white label solution to increase small business deposits; Seed comes with KYC procedures but has the ability to adapt to the bank as they know banks need customization. Source.
“Bitcoin, for us, is not stopping at buying and selling," Square CEO Jack Dorsey told analysts on their earnings call as reported by Business Insider. "We do believe that this is a transformational technology for our industry and we want to learn as quickly as possible."; bitcoin has yet to effect Square’s earnings as they have only recently started crypto payments; they currently include a margin to account for the volatility of bitcoin; shares were down slightly after releasing earnings. Source.
JPMorgan Chase is the only U.S. bank with scalable businesses in every payments vertical; the bank has been investing and partnering heavily the last few years into payments innovation; they see checking accounts as checking and payments accounts; they have made moves into digital wallets, p2p payments, order and pay ahead apps and recently partnered to allow customers to send an receive electronic payments and invoices; the bank sees payments and banking as one in the same and with the recent news of their heavy tech investment for 2018 more innovation looks to be on the way. Source.
Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 is marketed as having a better camera and can take clear pictures in low light; the technology could solve one of the bigger facial recognition issues which is poor quality pictures in low lighting; thus far banks have been slow to adopt the new technology as they have yet to be comfortable wit the way it currently works; with Samsung and Apple continuing to improve their cameras and a younger generation of customers increasing, facial recognition will soon be an important piece for all banks. Source.
American Banker has published a rebuttal to a recent article about the “Madden fix bill” by Steve Astrada; article discusses how the bill will increase access to credit and benefit customers instead of increasing predatory lending; it also shares the consequences of the Madden decision and reviews the details of the case. Source