The $5.8 billion in receivables sold to Synchrony according to a TechCrunch article, “also includes Synchrony’s acquisition of $1 billion in participation interests in PayPal receivables held by certain investors and a chartered financial institution.”; the two companies have partnered since 2004 to offer PayPal users branded credit cards; Synchrony will now be the exclusive issuer of the PayPal Credit online consumer financing program. Source
News of CFPB Director Cordray’s departure could see regulations on payday lenders lessened; one of Director Corday’s main missions was to crack down on predatory lenders; Director Cordray plans to leave at the end of the months and no long term successor has been chosen yet. Source.
The report will be released on a quarterly basis going forward and will look to cover credit performance trends; highlights of the report include continued credit re-normalization across all major lending groups and consumer installment lenders are not anticipating an increase in loss rates; they also cover the shift in the competitive landscape where more banks are investing heavily in tech and that the US consumer is quite healthy right now. Source.
Innovate Finance published their annual list of women in fintech and while progress has been made, more work is needed; Innovate Finance CEO Charlotte Crosswell said "We’ve still got work to be done. When you look at statistics of women in fintech — it’s not there yet.”; other leaders like Anne Boden of Starling Bank said we all need to try harder; studies also show that the more diverse a team the better they perform. Source.
Coinbase built the platform, Coinbase Custody, to serve investors like hedge funds and family offices; "We are designing Coinbase Custody to meet the needs of institutional clients," Armstrong said in a Medium post as reported by Business Insider; the features include account representatives and support, multi-user accounts and insurance in some cases. Source.
Lend Academy looks at the shift of returns and interest rates at LendingClub; the company recently brought F & G loans in house and there is a noticeable shift in loan grades offered by the platform. Source
Kabbage now has debt funding capacity of $750 million; the additional facility will allow the company to offer higher lines of credit with longer terms; Deepesh Jain stated, “The new, DBRS-rated facility, provided by Credit Suisse, speaks to Kabbage’s maturity in the financial markets and gives us diverse funding options to serve our small business customers. To earn an investment-grade rating requires a rigorous evaluation of not only our lending models, automated risk analysis, and successful history of reducing bad debt to an industry-low, but also our operational processes – from exceptional customer service to unmatched technology development.” Source
The first head of the CFPB has decided to step down at the end of the month without giving a formal reason; the bureau was established in the wake of the financial crisis in 2011; Mr. Cordray sent an email to all CFPB staff saying he thought the agency made a lasting difference to improve people’s lives and that new leadership will preserve what they have done; he is rumored to be interested in running for Governor of Ohio in 2018. Source.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has shifted back to a softer stance since the Trump administration took office; according to the New York Times the agency is using directives from the interim head to ease back regulations enacted during the Obama administration; the move is part of a wider push to set back financial regulations that some say have hurt banks in recent years. Source.
A recent report by the Cleveland Fed on online lending has caused quite the controversy over its content; the Marketplace Lending Association said the Fed should retract the report; even TransUnion, whose data the report relied upon, took issue with how they presented the material; “We have no understanding of how the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland could have used our data to reach the conclusions they did,” Ezra Becker, SVP at TransUnion, said to American Banker; the Fed stated the terminology used in the report has caused confusion but have yet to retract the report. Source.