Yirendai released its Q4 2016 earnings after the closing bell on March 15; the Chinese online lender issued a US initial public offering of its stock in December 2015; Lend Academy provides an analysis of the company's Q4 2016 results in their article; the firm has been growing online loan originations by over 100% per year since 2013; mobile has been a significant factor for the company with 98.8% of online volume generated through Yirendai's mobile application and 85% of investors using the mobile application for investment; as a well-established firm, Yirendai is also benefiting from China's P2P regulatory focus and a higher quality portfolio of borrowers and lenders; the firm is expanding its product lines and also offering a new platform as a service product, the Yirendai Enabling Platform; it expects a similar pace of growth in 2017 with minimum projected loan originations of RMB 33 billion ($4.753 billion) compared to RMB 20.28 billion ($2.9 billion) in 2016 and minimum revenue of RMB 4.4 billion ($634 million) compared to RMB 3.2 billion ($466.4 million) in 2016. Source
Ant Financial has formed a strategic partnership with Kakao Pay which includes a $200 million investment and partnership to offer enhanced digital financial services in South Korea; services will include enhanced bill payment, remittance and payment transactions; according to Young-Joon Ryu, Kakao Pay's CEO-elect, "The combination of Ant Financial's global payment platform Alipay and numerous financial and commerce service networks and Kakao's platform capabilities will result in more effective and convenient financial solutions for both businesses and consumers." Source
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck was hacked and saw the theft of $543mn worth of customer holdings; the Japanese regulator, FSA, said it was concerned that most of the funds were kept in hot wallets online, instead of cold wallets offline; seeing that this is not the first hack of a hot wallet model the regulators might start mandating customer funds be held offline; nothing has been passed yet but the more thefts we see the more regulators will look to try and mitigate future issues. Source.
Though fairly young, fintech in China has really taken off the last few years as Yihan Fang, CEO of Yirendai explained in her LendIt USA 2017 keynote; when compared to other industries like insurance, fintech has shown a great deal of promise; payments have become widespread, online lending is growing steadily and new technologies like blockchain have taken off; this has allowed Yirendai to help the underbanked and create a credit data infrastructure; after a few high profile fraud cases the government has started to regulate the industry closely and the number of lenders has been consolidated; Yihan is optimistic about the future, she expects to be lending $15 billion per year by 2020 and hopes to increase the average assets under management of each high net worth investor on their platform. Source
CredEX has created an intermediary peer-to-peer lending technology solution which allows banks to facilitate peer-to-peer loans; the company participated in a roundtable forum at LendIt USA 2017 with Peter Renton, founder of LendIt and Jo Ann Barefoot, former deputy comptroller of the currency and Harvard professor; in comments regarding CredEX, Peter says: "Their instant credit decisions and the robust underwriting platform they have built has allowed them to become a leading fintech company in China in a very short time. Unlike most fintech companies they are 100% app-based, they are funded by banks and they are doing more than US$1 billion in loans annually. They represent the future of lending." Source
Scott Morrison, Australia's treasurer, spoke about regtech at the Fintech Australia Summit; the treasurer discussed a regtech collision occurring in fintech where both crowdfunding firms and traditional banks are benefiting from increased technological innovation around regulation; likely that the marketplace lending ecosystem could see expansion in regulatory technology innovation. Source
The new private equity fund will invest in internet and other technology investments including artificial intelligence and internet finance; China Life will contribute up to 5.6 billion yuan ($840 million) and Baidu will contribute up to 1.4 billion yuan ($210 million); investments will focus on middle to late stage financing and according to Reuters will have a "significant association" with China. Source
Indonesia-based mobile payments and micro-loan startup Pundi-Pundi raised $4 million in a pre-A round of funding; the company plans to use the funds for user and partner growth in Indonesia and expand into other Southeast Asian markets like Singapore; they have over 100,000 users and 500 merchants in Indonesia; Pundi-Pundi translates to "wallet" and they are looking to help create a cashless society in Southeast Asia. Source
Sources report that Chinese online property and casualty insurance company Zhong An is planning for an initial public offering (IPO) in China; the firm was founded by Alibaba's Jack Ma, Tencent's Pony Ma and Ma Mingzhe from Ping An Insurance Group of China; a primary product for the firm is e-commerce shipping insurance which accounts for approximately 50% of the business; currently the firm's major shareholders include Ant Financial with 16% and Tencent Holdings Ltd. with 12%; in 2015 it reported a valuation of $8 billion and it currently plans to raise an additional 2 billion yuan ($290 million) to help it prepare for the IPO. Source