Lending Club has closed five of its investment funds under LC Advisors; the loans have been sold off to various buyers and the company has rebranded its investment management business to LendingClub Asset Management. Source
Personal credit and financial management firm Credit Sesame raised $42mn in equity and venture debt; investors include Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital and SF Capital; the capital will be used for growth, hiring, customer acquisition and to build out their machine learning technologies. Source.
Since launching BankMobile as a digital only bank in 2015 Customers Bancorp has seen the venture have some success but not yet reach profitability; after a deal with Flagship Community Bank for BankMobile fell through they are now looking to spin the business off; American Banker interviewed Luvleen Sidhu, BankMobiles’ President, about the spinoff deal and the future of the firm; topics discussed include why they chose a spinoff strategy, the future of the leadership, profitability and potential future ventures. Source.
The platform aims to provide a better process for both lenders and consumers; Fannie Mae is partnering with various fintechs including Yodlee, FormFree, and Plaid to help build out the platform’s features. Source
Many of the major US banks are now adopting digital strategies into their business; Lend Academy shares progress from JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi and Goldman Sachs. Source
After more than a year of research focused on how millennials bank JP Morgan announced the launch of Finn by Chase; the app includes checking & savings accounts, a debit card, personal financial management tools and other features that would appeal to a younger user base; the thinking behind the app is to give customers another option and grow their customer base in regions that don’t include many branches. Source.
Customers are becoming more demanding as interest rates climb; the average interest rate paid by the biggest US Banks jumped to 0.40% in the third quarter; sophisticated customers are now reconsidering where they hold their cash accounts; Fifth Third is one bank that is raising rates for these types of customers; wealth management deposits have decreased at Bank of America, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo in the third quarter according to Autonomous Research. Source
Business Insider takes a look at a growing trend in fintech as companies look to offer blockchain technology as a service; companies offering this already include Amazon AWS, IBM, Microsoft Azure and R3 Corda; this trend is seen as something that will only increase in the coming years as more adoption of this technology occurs in financial services and beyond. Source.
deBanked spoke with ID Analytics and learned that the firm has increased its visibility into the consumer lending market to 85%; ID Analytics offers a tool which allows lenders to see where a borrower is at with other lenders which is only accomplished with this kind of visibility into the market; ID Analytics also helps lenders combat fraud by analyzing applications for credit; the company analyzes about 1 million credit applications a day. Source
Fintech companies have found it increasingly hard to work with tier one banks; while most talk openly in private some companies have begun talking publicly about the frustrations; issues the commonly deal with include sense of entitlement, questions about intellectual property, failure to pay and long lead times. Source.