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
Invoice financing platform, BillFront, has secured $35 million in financing from a Series A funding round which included 4Finance, NIBC Bank and FinLeap; BillFront offers a working capital solution to media companies; uses advanced technology to evaluate a company's invoices for financing approval; the firm will use the new capital for company expansion and continued development of its technology. Source
German-based marketplace lender Bitbond has partnered with African payments provider BitPesa to improve the lending experience for small and medium enterprise (SME) borrowers; Bitbond will enhance the blockchain lending services of its platform by incorporating cross-border payments through BitPesa; the BitPesa payments platform can make payments in 20 minutes and is now live in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania. Source
Marketplace lender, Bitbond, has been an industry leader, providing the first global P2P lending platform for small businesses and now known as the world's first P2P lender allowing transactions with digital currency; Radoslav Albrecht, Bitbond's founder, sees digital currency, and specifically Bitcoin, as an opportunity to expand lending availability to borrowers and help returns for investors; Bitbond is able to offer digital currency transactions through its licensing from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority which took three years and required in-depth investigation of the company's operations including their know your customer and anti-money laundering procedures. Source
Bitbond has raised $1.2 million in new equity capital to grow its user base and further its product development; the firm offers loans globally to small and medium-sized enterprises and uses the bitcoin blockchain for global cross-border lending; since its launch the platform has originated over 1,600 loans worth approximately $1.2 million; it currently has 76,000 registered users in 120 countries. Source
Citigroup has a new small business loan offering offered through a branded partnership with Biz2Credit; the partnership follows new small business offerings from JPMorgan and Wells Fargo; Rohit Arora from Biz2Credit said the partnership has not been widely publicized because it is in very early stages; small business lenders use a website interface managed by Biz2Credit that submits their information to a Citigroup banker for follow up; Arora also said the new small business loan offering is part of the bank's Community Reinvestment Act obligations. Source
Biz2Credit has announced a new partnership with Tradeshift for expanded small business access to capital; Tradeshift is a cloud-based business procurement network supporting over 800,000 businesses; companies that use Tradeshift will gain access to the Biz2Credit platform for financing options; Biz2Credit says the partnership will help Tradeshift's clients secure financing more quickly and easily. Source
Biz2Credit has released its monthly Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index report which provides approval rates on small business loans; large lenders increased approval rates while alternative and credit union lenders reported decreases; big banks reported an approval rate of 23.9% in December, an increase of 0.02% from November and 1% from December 2015; the small bank approval rate increased to 48.9% and the institutional lenders approval rate increased to 63.4%; alternative lending approval rates decreased to 58.6% and the approval rate from credit unions decreased to 40.9%. Source
Biz2Credit has released data from its monthly small business lending index which analyzes 1,000 small business loan applications processed by the multi-lender; the results show that approval rates from banks and institutional lenders continued to increase while approval rates from alternative lenders and credit unions were lower; Biz2Credit's CEO Rohit Arora attributed some of the increases from larger lenders to improvements in technology at banks which is helping them approve a higher percentage of loans with lower default risk. Source
Institutional investors and small banks increased their small business lending in March, according to the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index report; institutional lending approvals increased to 63.6% and small bank approvals increased to 48.9%; the approval rate at big banks was unchanged at 24.1%; the approval rate at credit unions decreased to 40.7%; the approval rate at alternative lenders decreased to 58.2%. Source