The Curo Group targets underbanked consumers through WageDayAdvance in the UK and Speedy Cash in the US; they went public on Wednesday at $14 a share and were up more than 2.4 percent in their first day of trading; the former head of the CFPB led a Industry crackdown on payday lenders but new leadership points to those restrictions being lifted; the company charges about $25 per $100 borrowed and are backed by private equity group Friedman Fleischer & Lowe. Source.
TCF Financial has stepped away from the auto lending business while Regions Financial and Fifth Third Bancorp are tapping the breaks according to American Banker; lenders are concerned with credit, regulation as well as low yields; some expect the trend to continue while creating an opportunity for lenders who stick around. Source
The Futures Industry Association, the main futures industry group, is sending a letter to the CFTC expressing concerns over bitcoin futures; the FT saw a draft of the letter and it states that they did not allow for proper public transparency and input; futures brokers are concerned over holding more risk and have expressed concerns to the FT that they will not immediately clear the products. Source.
Coinbase has been the top cryptocurrency exchange for the US market as it’s process makes signing up and buying bitcoin simple; they have seen accounts jump from 5.5 million to more than 13 million in less than a year; their success has not been without growing pains with a number of outages occurring and customers lodging complaints that no one was available to help them; recently they also came to an agreement with the IRS to hand over records of customers involving more than $20,000 which was a compromise from a year long battle. Source.
Bittrex customers are unable to withdraw money from the cryptocurrency exchange and they have not heard from the company as to why this is occurring; the main issues appear to be involving verification of identities when they try to withdraw the money; the issues have been going on for close to 30 days for some customers and the company said the issue has only affected a small number of accounts. Source.
FICO CEO Will Lansing said some banks are confusing customers by using a different score which he has dubbed Fako; VantageScore, the company behind the alternative scores, says their scoring is used by thousands of lenders for credit decisions and FICO is upset over competition; FICO is the most widely used credit scoring method as trillions worth of loans have been extended using FICO; JP Morgan Chase and Capital One both use VantageScore to help customers stay alerted about their credit health and not necessarily to underwrite loans. Source.
Open banking is around the corner in the UK and recently the CFPB released guidelines on data sharing that has banks concerned about cybersecurity; Kathryn Petralia, chief operating officer of the online lender Kabbage believes banks and Fintechs should be held to the same standard regarding data; concerns over data include responsibility on data breaches, encryption and entry points for hackers; as data sharing becomes the norm both banks and fintechs will need to protect themselves at many levels. Source.
Over $3 billion has been raised this year by initial coin offerings; Tech Crunch shares the current warnings that the market has received from regulators; some market participants report that they have spoken with with the SEC and it is expected that we will hear much more from regulators as we enter 2018. Source
After completing a 16 month pilot program Morgan Stanley has announced their robo advisor Morgan Stanley Access Investing; there is a $5,000 minimum with a 0.35 percent fee and they will offer 11 portfolios, including a socially responsible option; the goal of the new service is to offer current clients’ children a better, more affordable wealth management option. Source.
According to Bloomberg, the company is in advanced talks for the latest round; the valuation would be about double of Affirm’s last round in April 2016; Affirm works with over 1,000 retailers and also recently rolled out a mobile app which includes a virtual credit card; the point of sale loans have annual percentage rates between 10-30%. Source