Marketplace Lending News Roundup – December 24

News

During the week I share the latest marketplace lending 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.

Wishing everyone a Happy Holidays! Enjoy your long weekend.

CAN Capital Woes Continue – Layoffs Commence from deBanked – It won’t be a happy holiday season for many CAN Capital employees, they just laid off 100+ people.

Weekly Industry Update: December 18, 2016 from PeerIQ – This week the PeerIQ newsletter digs into the new SoFi RMBS deal, their first residential mortgage deal.

SoFi Pushes Back IPO Plans Amid Financial Tech Sector Struggles from Bloomberg – Looks like there will be no SoFi IPO any time soon as they are planning a new $500 million funding round.

Online Consumer Lender Argon Credit Files Chapter 11 from deBanked – Argon Credit brings this year’s failure count to 4.

Online Lender SoFi Plans to Compete Directly With Traditional Banks from Inc. – According to Mike Cagney in 2017 SoFi will offer a bank account with a debit and/or credit card.

Fluid Offers 0% Interest “Social Credit” in New Twist for Online Lending from Crowdfund Insider – The latest venture from Timothy Li is a social lending platform targeted at college students.

How Fintech Can Address Income Volatility: A Conversation with Sasha Orloff from The Aspen Institute –  Improving access to credit is critical for low income consumers and LendUp is a leader here.

Numerous alleged improprieties at Argon Credit, possibly including fraud from Lending Times – And we round out 2016 with some more bad news for marketplace lending this time from Argon Credit.

VPC Sells Peer-To-Peer Loan Portfolio, Seeks Less Volatile Returns from Morningstar – Victory Park has sold its Funding Circle portfolio to concentrate on balance sheet lenders.

Landbay granted full FCA authorisation from Landbay – Congrats to John Goodall and the Landbay team on receiving full authorization from the FCA. Nice Christmas present.

Citizens Bank to Add Digital Lending Capability for Small Business Customers from Patch – The bank partnerships keep coming. This week Citizens Bank and Fundation announce a tie-up on small business loans.

What to Expect for Marketplace Lending in 2017 from Crowdfund Insider – Interesting story on the most pressing issues facing marketplace lending in 2017.

What Happens When You Roll an Online Lender, a Robo-Adviser, and Bitcoin into One? from The Wall Street Journal – Nice writeup of LendingRobot and their new marketplace lending fund.

RateSetter sells off bad loans in latest attempt to bolster provision fund from AltFi – In the UK Ratesetter becomes the first platform to sell non-performing loans to a debt buyer.

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.

Peerstreet looking good to me – Investors discuss the real estate crowdfunding landscape and resources where you can learn more.

What are trades? – An investor asks about some of the terms that show up on a borrower’s credit report.

Default rates by employment title – An investor does an analysis on employment title on Lending Club loans.

  • Peter Renton

    Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of Fintech Nexus, the world’s largest digital media 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.