Beyond Blend more suppliers could be coming soon such as Roostify, BankVOD, LendSnap and Quovo; FinLocker, Plaid and PointServ are also currently running pilots with Fannie Mae; Only Blend, Finicity and FormFree are approved suppliers while there are more than 40 approved vendors; there are 20 approved vendors of income and employment validation reports, but only DataVerify and Equifax are approved suppliers of these reports. Source
There is no standard for data sharing between banks and fintechs which often results in screen scraping; this leads to concerns around data security and is also an inefficient way to gather data; the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center released an updated version of their recommendations around data sharing called the Durable Data API specification; this could eventually become the standard adopted by the industry; American Banker compares this to PSD2 in the UK and shares more about the new specification. Source
Forbes has released their third edition of the Fintech 50 list which includes 22 new companies; companies included all have operations, customers or impact in the US. Source
Only 8 percent of cybersecurity heads at U.S. financial firms report directly to the CEO; a survey done by the Financial Services Information Sharing & Analysis Center showed the lack of access for cyber heads and pointed to other vulnerabilities; one of the biggest areas for improvement of defenses is better employee training as people can click the wrong link and open systems up; most firms, 54 percent, compile quarterly security reports while 18 percent do bi-annual reports and 16 percent do annual reports. Source.
With more customers being active on Twitter, TD Ameritrade sees an opportunity to better engage and so they are rolling out a Twitter trading bot; the bot allows traders to execute trades, get market updates and look at educational content; this rollout follows the recent release of the Facebook messenger bot last August; using social media within trading has become a wider trend in the wealth management community as advisors look to cater to younger investors. Source.
The new lender, run by former Funding Circle execs, will offer loans between $5 million and $60 million. Source
BlockFi offers loans to those who own cryptocurrencies; the company is currently in a beta launch and is lending in 35 states; ConsenSys Ventures, Kenetic Capital, PJC, SoFi, Purple Arch Ventures and Lumenary participated in the round. Source
SoFi said it missed their internal 4th quarter earnings projections due to lower than expected loan performance, increased hiring costs and expenses related to management changes according to the WSJ; the company also said they expect the loan performance trend to continue into 2018 as the look to refine their credit model; the company is also looking to improve fraud prevention, automate loan processing and get better at collections. Source.
Writing a piece for Crowdfund Insider BankMobile’s Co-Founder, President and Chief Strategy Officer Luvleen Sidhu talks through the current banking makeover; new technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain are becoming more prevalent; competition in the digital banking space is beginning to increase as banks look to close branches and move more focus online; banks are currently upgrading their cybersecurity defenses in the wake of the recent Equifax breach; these changes and more are happening now as banks better understand their customers and look to become more efficient. Source.
There are four companies that the government contracts to process student loan payments; two firms, Nelnet and Great Lakes Educational Loan Services inc. are now merging; this will result in one company handling over 40% of student loan payments; according to this MarketWatch article, processors play an important role in whether a student pays down debt or defaults. Source