Rob Pfeifer has been appointed to chief risk officer at Affirm; was previously chief financial officer; Pfeifer has been with Affirm since March 2013; prior to Affirm, Pfeifer worked in various financial analysis roles; he has extensive experience in forecasting, reporting and deal transactions.
Sofi has been leading the US fintech market with new products and record originations from its core student loan business; they recently acquired Zenbanx to offer deposit products; they are also expanding into nearly all aspects of financial services; Lend Academy talks with Mike Cagney in their podcast; Mike talks about their business model and how they are different from other top US lenders; also provides insight on their securitization funding and strategy. Source
Business Insider reached out to Bail Capital Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Edison Partners, Jump Capital, RBC, and Rosenblatt Securities to...
Bank of America has filed over 20 blockchain and cryptocurrency-related patent applications since 2014; recent applications include the use of blockchain as a distributed database supporting the flow of certain actions; other patents involve the control of data, information verification, peer-to-peer payments and the protection of a generic cryptocurrency. Source
Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Mick Mulvaney has testified on numerous occasions about the risk of data breaches; in December he helped put a freeze on data collection, though collection resumed a few weeks later without much talk or solutions; Mr. Mulvaney has not been clear on the types of breaches that have occurred and what has been done to plug the holes; experts believe this could be more about politics so the bureau is cast in a bad light. Source.
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) first proposed the concept of a regulatory sandbox back in September last year...
Online lender Earnest is working with Barclays to find a potential buyer; seeking buyout at approximately $200 million; firm has raised over $300 million since 2013 and grown to 200 employees. Source
JPMorgan Chase launched a new account for low income consumers that offers access to their mobile app, branches and ATMs...
This week's industry update from PeerIQ focuses on some good fundraising news for the market; OnDeck extended their credit facility with Deutsche Bank to 2019 and increased the borrowing capacity to $214 million; SoFi is looking to launch a risk retention fund soon and their most recent securitization deal worth $461 million deal was rated by S&P, Moody's and DBRS; Marlette closed on their third securitization deal, MFT-2017 1, which was their largest transaction; the deal was originally set for $257 million but was oversubscribed and priced at $333 million on Friday; PeerIQ listed a few other interesting items of note on the deal; the deal pricing of this transaction is tighter than past Marlette securitizations and they are using a step function for cumulative net loss triggers. Source
An investigation by The NY Times found that the price of a taxi medallion jumped from $200,000 to more than...