Innovate Finance has released a report on fintech investment showing global investment in fintech increasing but decreasing in the UK; global fintech investment increased by 10.9% in 2016 to $17.4 billion; in the UK, fintech investment decreased by 33.7% to $783 million; fintech investment in China and the US accounted for $13.9 billion of the total $17.4 billion. Source
Asset allocation is an emerging concept increasingly being introduced to Chinese retail investors who have historically invested in highly volatile markets; CreditEase is one fintech company in the region seeking to educate and support more strategic investing through robo advisory services; the fintech company launched its Toumi robo adviser service in May 2016; the automated service provides advice for clients based on age, risk aversion and other preferences; it offers stable returns with low fees; with numerous cases of fraud from fintech investing in China more of the retail population is interested in safer robo advisory investment options; the country currently has approximately RMB 100 trillion ($14.5 trillion) in personal investable assets with nearly all the major banks developing new robo adviser services. Source
Koubei was founded in 2015 with investment from Alibaba and Ant Financial; the firm offers online e-commerce services for merchants and is part of a diversified group of Alibaba affiliates; in January the firm reported new capital of $1.1 billion from external investors; investors now supporting the firm include Silver Lake, CDH Investments, Yunfeng Capital and Primavera Capital. Source
A study by Citigroup shows China as the world's investment leader in fintech; says investment is being led by success from "Chinese dragons" including Ant Financial, Lu.com, JD Finance and Qufenqi; in the first nine months of 2016 fintech venture capital investment increased to 46% of the global total; the full Citi report can be found here. Source
Ning Tang, founder of CreditEase speaks about 2016 headwinds faced by Yirendai, the company's P2P lending arm; in August, 2016 the stock declined after new rules were put in place by Chinese authorities on P2P lenders; according to Ning Tang, "We need to do more in terms of investor education and communication as most of the international investors do not have a clear understanding of China's credit market and financial innovation."; 2016 transaction volume was 20 billion yuan ($2.92 billion) in 2016; Tang eyes 100 billion yuan ($14.59 billion) by 2020; looking forward, the company plans to form closer relationships with traditional banks to reach offline customers. Source
In an opinion article, one investor shares emails that have been leaked at Chinese marketplace lender Yirendai (NYSE: YRD); leaked emails show the company's chairman requiring parent company employees at CreditEase to invest in a fund to purchase undisclosed US equities; the author states the fund is likely purchasing shares of YRD and presents his case for shorting the stock; the stock recently saw volatility following China's new regulatory guidance for P2P lenders. Source
Red envelope gifting is a Chinese New Year tradition that has become digitized as a result of advanced payment processing; the January 27 weekend marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year and the country is expected to transact over 100 billion digital envelopes, an increase from 32 billion in 2015 which reported a 1,000% increase from the prior year; payment processors integrated with social media have increasingly been gaining market share and supporting digital transaction growth; bitcoin transactions are also expected to increase for the Chinese New Year. Source
<p>China has accounted for over 90% of bitcoin's trading volume in recent weeks as no trading costs and a devaluing yuan have attracted the attention of traders; the country has approximately 10 of the world's leading bitcoin exchanges which have seen some intervention from Chinese regulators in recent weeks; beginning on Tuesday, three of the largest Chinese bitcoin exchanges implemented a flat fee of 0.2% per transaction to manage manipulation and volatility; trading volumes were significantly impacted following the new fee structure with volumes down approximately 90% on Chinese bitcoin exchanges.
Ppdai is reportedly looking to a US IPO and plans to raise $200 million; it would be the second lender to do so after Yirendai in 2015 who raised $75 million; the company was founded in 2007 and offers unsecured loans. Source
Credit China Fintech is forming a consortium to acquire a 36.58% equity interest in Ping An Securities Group (Holdings) Limited; upon completion the consortium intends to make a cash offer for all of the issued shares of Ping An Securities; Credit China Fintech's CEO Phang Yew Kiat says, "Ping An Securities' product offerings are valuable resources that we believe will generate significant synergies with our existing businesses." Source