During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news on Twitter as it happens. Then every Saturday I take the most interesting news items and blog posts from the past week and share them here.
Jack Ma’s Giant Financial Startup Is Shaking the Chinese Banking System from The Wall Street Journal – Fascinating piece on Ant Financial and the incredible financial power they have amassed in a short time. Chinese banks and even the government are starting to push back.
Human Bankers Are Losing to Robots as Nordea Sets a New Standard from Bloomberg – Interesting that a large European bank is already reducing its workforce in response to more automation.
The Adventurous Investor: ‘the FCA has made a major category error’ from AltFi – Not everyone thinks the recent proposals by the FCA are a good thing for the p2p lending industry in the UK. David Stevenson shares his thoughts on why he thinks the FCA has made a blunder here.
After years of debate, OCC to offer fintech charter from American Banker – More on the announcement by the OCC on their new fintech charter.
UK fintech scores the global top spot for investment in the first half of 2018 from City A.M. – A new report from KPMG has the UK as the country that received the most fintech investment in the first half of this year.
INSIKT Completes $25 Million Social Bond Securitization; Drives Social Impact, CRA and Economic Returns for Investors from Business Wire – Short term lender Insikt closed its 7th micro-securitization in June, a $25 million deal, bringing their total to $145m in less than two years (press release).
Will Europe’s fintech banks conquer North America? from AltFi – Two European fintech leaders, Revolut and n26, are launching in the US soon. It will be fascinating to see how they do.
With OCC’s door officially open, will fintechs enter? from American Banker – Now here is the big question after the news this week of the OCC fintech charter becoming a reality. Who will actually apply?
Barclays partners with MarketInvoice from MarketInvoice – Big new fintech/bank partnership announced in the UK today. MarketInvoice has partnered with Barclays to expand its invoice finance platform to more UK businesses.
PayActiv Partners with ADP Marketplace from Finovate – Financial wellness platform PayActiv scored a deal with Walmart a few months back to help employees get early access to pay. Now, they have inked a new deal with ADP Marketplace.
P2P lender Zopa raises £44m to fund new bank from Financial Times – Leading UK p2p lending platform Zopa has closed a new £44m funding round to aid in its expansion into traditional banking.
International P2P Lending Volumes July 2018 from P2P-Banking – Interesting to watch the growth of Latvian marketplace Mintos into one of the largest platforms in Europe. They held the top spot in P2P-Banking’s July p2p lending loan volume report.
Online Lender CommonBond Issues 2nd AAA Rated Securitization from Crowdfund Insider – Leading online lending platform CommonBond has closed its largest securitization ever and yes it is AAA-rated again.
Experian Enlists Machine Learning to Gauge App Performance from The Wall Street Journal – Interesting use of machine learning at credit bureau Experian, they are looking to better understand how their own applications behave.
From the Lend Academy Forum
The Lend Academy forum is where investors go to discuss p2p lending. Below are some topics that were being discussed this week.
What features do you still use on IR? – The creator of InterestRadar is looking for feedback on the most used features and talks about some of the fixes that have already been made.
Don’t Just Auto Invest – Proving Systematic Bias at LendingClub – A forum member shares an article they wrote on the performance of LendingClub loans based on several filters.
New Platform, Part 2 – There are many changes that investors would like to see to the LendingClub user interface.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.