Europe's Baltics region has seen significant growth in fintech and specifically P2P lending in recent years; growing P2P lenders in the region include: Viainvest, Twino, Savy, Mintos, Investly and Bondora; in Continental Europe Twino is the third largest P2P consumer lending platform and Bondora recently obtained full authorization from the UK Financial Conduct Authority. Source
LendIt will be hosting a LendIt Forum today featuring speakers Peter Renton from LendIt and Andrew Dix from Crowdfund Insider; participants can submit questions for the speakers to learn more about the evolution of the industry and how to effectively invest in marketplace loans; the forum will take place at 2:00 PM EST; register here and join the webinar today. Source
Prosper released its October 2016 performance report with the month's estimated return of 7.12% just below the estimate of 7.17% for the third quarter; in October, vintage prepayment rates continued to trend higher; delinquencies and loss patterns since 2013 are below levels in 2012; cumulative gross charge-offs appear to be a factor trending higher; average FICO of the portfolio was 714.1 in October. Source
Dianrong has obtained $220 million from a Series D funding round; this latest funding was led by GIC Private Limited (Singapore's sovereign wealth fund), CMIG Leasing, and Simone Investment Managers, among others. Source
LendFoundry has enhanced its lending operating system (LOS); the LOS can now support loan processing and management for point of sale, auto loans, working capital loans and unsecured consumer loans; it also offers one of the industry's best suite of APIs for connecting with industry fintech companies including Clarity Services, Whitepages Pro, FEDChex, Yodlee, Towerdata, Twilio, Plaid, LOB and more; the platform has significantly expanded its API offerings to allow for increased integration across the industry; Brent Fausett, senior vice president and chief commercial officer at LendFoundry says: "Our product development team has built 50+ pre-configured APIs. We will continue on our vision and keep adding new APIs as we believe that a pre-integrated platform places lenders miles ahead of the competition." Source
Sub-prime lender Elevate, while still awaiting the right time to go public, has expanded their product line by offering customers a line of credit for up to $3,500 called Elastic; Republic Bank is the issuer of the credit line and according to Elevate's CEO, Ken Rees, there are other institutions showing interest; Rees explains further, "Banks are terrible at lending outside of their branch footprint and they are not good at customer acquisition. We provide products and a set of underwriting tools that fits for non-prime customers." Source
Chase has announced it will launch a digital mortgage lending platform in 2017; Chase will collaborate with technology provider Roostify for the new digital lending offering; the digital mortgage lending platform will allow customers to complete their loan completely through online communication with features allowing for comprehensive loan comparison, processing, connectivity and approval. Source
Nuoyuan Technology is optimistic about financial innovation in China and globally; the firm is growing its business in China and through its subordinate business, Nuoyuan Online Platform, offers a service that connects borrowers with lenders; Nuoyuan Online has now helped to finance over 5 billion RMB and has over 600,000 users; in their featured blog post they discuss the global market for fintech innovation and their expectations for the future. Sponsored Blog Post
The current market perspective is that banks aren't lending because of regulatory constraints; President Donald Trump even says that many of his friends in the business world would like to borrow money but can't because of regulatory restrictions; while market statistics show that banks are lending and have been doing so at an increasingly higher rate, it is true that there are constraints; however insight from the New York Times suggests that efforts to deregulate could be futile and that with lower capital requirements banks would instead prefer to use capital for increasing dividends and stock buybacks. Source
Small business online multi-lender Lendio has announced the launch of a new lending program for franchises; in addition to business loans, participating lenders will have access to new technology, comprehensive training, branded marketing tools, partnerships and Lendio's franchise support team; Lendio facilitates lending by matching online applicants with lenders; the firm has originated over $240 million in loans. Source