Below you will find the presentations of several speakers at LendIt USA 2015. This includes, Renaud Laplanche (Founder & CEO, Lending Club), Ron Suber (President, Prosper) and Lawrence Summers (Former U.S. Treasury Secretary) and Karen Mills (Former Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration). See the bottom of this post for other videos that are currently available. We will be adding more videos to LendIt.co in the coming weeks.
Renaud Laplanche’s keynote focused on leveraging technology as he spoke about the topic Is Banking an Engineering Problem? This included topics on making credit more affordable, providing an enhanced customer experience, better compliance and risk management, as well as increased transparency. As he has done with past LendIt conferences, he announced a $150 million deal with Citigroup. It’s clear that Lending Club is also thinking about the future as they unveiled the Lending Club Cube, much like automakers reveal concept cars. This concept was billed as a point of sale solution.
Ron Suber provided a perspective of the industry in his closing keynote. Ron spoke to the major accomplishments over the course of the last year for not just Prosper, but the industry as a whole. He believes that we are between being an interesting new niche and being a great idea. We have not yet become something that people can’t live without, but we are reaching escape velocity. He talked about what it means to be a successful platform and how important each aspect of product, capital, and what’s under the hood is to being a successful marketplace. The presentation wrapped up with insights to where we are headed and also warned of developments that may cause the industry to falter.
Larry Summer’s presentation was entitled New Lending For a New Economy. He provided his full endorsement to the marketplace lending industry. Larry believes that now is the time for the renewal of the financial system following the financial crisis. He stressed that we are all stakeholders in the success of the financial system and spoke to the need of transparency and disclosure within the industry. In addition, he touched on the need and several aspects of regulatory frameworks for this industry.
Karen Mills spoke about the integral part that small businesses play in the US jobs scene and how small businesses access credit. She highlights that half of the jobs in our country come from the 23 million small businesses and of those, only 5 million have employees. These types of small businesses were affected significantly by the financial crisis. Community banks have previously provided a large percentage of small business loans, but the number of banks doing these loans has dropped 50%. Karen Mills explains how the needs of small businesses are simply not being met.
More Videos From LendIt USA 2015
- Global Overview of marketplace lending from Peter Renton (Conference Chairman of LendIt and Co-Founder & Partner of Lend Academy)
- Special Presentation from Sam Hodges (Co-Founder & U.S. Managing Director of Funding Circle)
- Special Presentation from Noah Breslow (CEO of OnDeck)
- Lessons from the Installment Loan Business from Frank Rotman (Partner of QED Investors)
