Lending Club and Prosper were the first and for a long time the only online lending platforms available to retail investors; recently companies have leveraged Regulation A+ in order to open offerings across real estate and small business lending to retail investors; Lend Academy outlines additional companies open to retail investors including: Fundrise, RealtyMogul.com, Groundfloor and StreetShares. Source
American Banker has released their inaugural “Best Fintechs to Work For” list; they highlight some of the unique perks fintech companies are offering their employees; some of the names making the list are Best Egg, PeerStreet, nChino, SmartBiz Loans, Nav, Cross River Bank, Jumio and Oportun. Source
Banking data aggregator Plaid has acquired their main competitor Quovo in a deal that Bloomberg said could reach $200mn; the...
Anchorage is launching a new cryptocustody service as an alternative to financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Fidelity; the startup...
The smart contracts will help facilitate faster commerce agreements and transactions; Arizona is the first state to pass legislation on blockchain smart contracts; it encompasses various uses for blockchain smart contracts including data, electronic signatures and electronic records transmitted and tracked through blockchain operations, making the use of blockchain transactions comparable to previous methods of communication and documentation. Source
Minnesota based Sunrise Bank, like most other banks, needed to make some quick decisions about how they would lend Paycheck...
Online auto insurance company, EverQuote, has raised $23 million in Series B funding; the funding is part of a pre-IPO plan to provide liquidity to its founders and employees; the firm will also use the funding to hire 120 employees focused on sales and data; plans also include directly selling insurance on the platform with the use of proprietary data from the firm's app, EverDrive. Source
Two reports share that the federal government may not profit or break even on their $1.4 trillion student loan portfolio; there has been an increase in borrowing in recent years and some graduate students are opting for income-driven repayment plans; these students are expected to pay back less than they took to pay for tuition; there are concerns that the interest payments of those paying the full amount on their loans may not be enough to offset those that are entering these plans. Source
AutoGravity CEO Andy Hinrichs was interviewed by CNBC’s On the Money program with Becky Quick; Andy explains the AutoGravity solution of simplifying the car buying process; successes to date include availability in 49 states, 500,00 app downloads and 20,000 dealership members since launch in 2016; they also discuss who the target buyer is for their product and how they generate revenue. Source
Everett Cook and Alex Wheldon launched Rho Business Banking in October last year dubbing it a “modern commercial banking platform”...