Yunfeng Financial Group (Yunfeng FG) said it would be the main investor in a $1.7 billion acquisition of insurer MassMutual International's Hong Kong unit; Yunfeng FG will hold 60% of MassMutual Asia and the rest will be owned by other investors such as Ant Financial, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Private Ltd and China's internet giant Sina; the deal will add insurance products to Yunfeng's existing fintech-focused financial services. Source
At Lang Di Fintech (LendIt's Chinese event), Peter Renton, the founder of Lend Academy, conducted an interview with ZhongAn Insurance CEO Jeffrey Chen; they talked about how the biggest insurtech company uses big data and artificial intelligence to measure risk, the scale of ZhongAn's business, regulatory issues and the future of the company; the article provides five key takeaways from the interview. Source
NTT Data, Japan's largest IT services firm, has announced a new blockchain consortium; 13 participating members including three of Japan's megabanks: the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho and the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation; other notable participants represent industries such as insurance, logistics, and import and export trade; the consortium's objectives include exploring the lead up to and validation of the feasibility of blockchain applications; the consortium will be officially launched on August 30 and expected to last until March 2018. Source
Amartha is an Indonesian fintech startup focused on using the peer-to-peer business model in rural areas of Indonesia; Amartha originally started as a microfinance institution in 2010, but that business model did not work; they moved to a peer-to-peer model where individual Indonesian investors fund the loans; they focus on small rural villages and to assess borrower risk they blend demographic profiling and psychometric tests to determine the probability of repayment; they currently have 5,000 investors and generate returns of about 15% to 17% structured as a profit-sharing scheme. Source
Fox Fintech, an affiliate of Sohu.com, was able to obtain the first micro-credit license by the Ningbo City Government in China; Alex Ho, Fox Fintech Group's founder and CEO, commented, "We are applying advanced technologies in big data, facial recognition, machine learning and self-developed algorithms to bring efficient, convenient and inclusive credit service to China."; the internet micro-credit license allows for Fox Fintech to lend across the country, traditional micro-credit licenses are limited to the city where they are approved. Source
China Rapid Finance (CRF) reports Q2 EPS of $1.93; revenue for the quarter came in at $15.15 million versus the consensus estimate of $10.46 million; for the full year ending December 31, 2017, CRF expects to add between 2.5 to 3.0 million new borrowers, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 350% to 400%; CRF also expects total gross billings on transactions and service fees to be in the range of $110 to $120 million in 2017, as compared with $67.9 million in the prior year. Source
Tokyo-based fintech company MoneyForward could go public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Mothers market by September; its market cap is expected to be JPY10 to 20 billion ($90 to $180 million); founded in 2012, MoneyForward is a personal financial management app which includes accounting functions, payroll service, statement collection, expense reporting, financial projections and the ability to send an invoice; MoneyForward has over four million individual users in Japan. Source
Lend Academy Article: Hongling Capital: The Worst Victim of China’s P2P Lending Regulatory Crackdown
China's P2P platform Hongling Capital is shutting down; Lend Academy details its business highlights and subsequent shutdown in their article; continued losses, large loans and payment guarantees were a few of the factors that led to its closing; the article also highlights some of the issues with guaranteeing principal or interest and includes Hongling's plans for the future. Source
Alibaba will bring a version of its smartphone-based payment platform to Japan as early as 2018 spring; the Japanese unit of Ant Financial will offer a version of the Alipay digital payment system tailored for the Japanese market under a new brand. Source
9F Group has invested in a blockchain company called Wyre in Silicon Valley; the Group will establish its Southeast Asia headquarters in Singapore soon; plus it already has 9F Primasia Securities in Hong Kong. Source (Chinese)