Kathryn Petralia, co-founder and head of operations of Kabbage talks about their SoftBank deal, tech partnerships, culture and more. Source
Lend Academy looks at 10 years of data from Lending Club and Prosper; shares data on returns over the time period and where current returns are trending. Source
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two companies who they claim were operating fraudulent ICOs; REcoin Group Foundation and DRC World were claimed to defraud investors and sold unregistered securities; both companies claimed they had significant operations and networks when in reality they were shell companies; this continues a worldwide trend by financial regulators who are beginning to come down on the exploding ICO market. Source.
American Banker reports on the lobbying group called Financial Innovation Now and that some technology giants are meeting individually with government agencies; Amazon met with the OCC starting in the second quarter of 2016 and met again this year; PayPal has also met with OCC officials in several quarters last year. Source
According to reporting in CoinDesk last month money manager VanEck filed to create the VanEck Vectors Bitcoin Strategy ETF and last week that effort was given bad news by the SEC; the SEC sent a letter to VanEck stating that they cannot review the offering because "the underlying instruments in which the fund intends to primarily invest are not yet available." Source.
Trading cryptocurrencies has shown itself to be quite a lucrative business, at the same time the exchanges where trading occurs underscores how risky trading might be; exchanges can lack basics controls on know your customer (KYC), fraud prevention and more; there have also been a number of significant thefts or hacks where millions were lost; while the risk is real it has now slowed the market's growth as total value of all digital currencies has soared to over $140bn. Source.
Acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika confirmed that the fintech charter was open to commercial firms like Walmart & Google; this is a departure from former OCC head Thomas Curry who said the charter was designed for companies primarily involved in financial services; Mr. Noreika talked through this issue and others wile speaking at a fintech conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Source.
An article in Business Insider highlights a $96 billion hedge fund, Man Group; the firm initially held off on rolling out their AI powered trading bot out broadly until recently; by 2015 AI was contributing half of the profits to Man Group’s largest funds. Source
Fidelity’s chief executive Abigail Johnson spoke about the company’s current projects involving cryptocurrency at the Consensus conference; they have made venture investments and are also looking at applications of blockchain technology; Fidelity has set up a mining operation which is making money for the company. Source
Former Securities Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt, Sarah Friar, chief financial officer at Square, and Scott Sanborn, CEO of Lending Club recently spoke on a panel about regulation for fintech companies and recent improprieties; Sanborn noted that sound corporate governance is not unique to fintech, referencing the Wells Fargo story; panelists discussed that regulation is always behind innovation and how regulators and fintech companies may strike a balance. Source