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.
Under Noto, SoFi Trying to Raise Money for Deals from The Wall Street Journal – Interesting piece about SoFi. They have a new head of M&A and so appear to be on the lookout for acquisitions. And it looks like late 2019 is the earliest date for a possible IPO.
Three Is A Magic Number from The FinTech Junkie – The latest from Frank Rotman introduces us to the perfect business model and the business trinity of product, pricing and channel.
Zopa Announces £1.5 Million Profit; Revenues Raise By 40% to £46.5 Million from Crowdfund Insider – The original p2p lending platform Zopa has announced a return to profitability even as it grows its lending business by 43% and readies for a banking license.
LendInvest notches another year of profit from AltFi – Meanwhile LendInvest has also reported a profit last year, while growing their lending business by 91%. Well done Christian Faes and team.
Personal Loans Surge to a Record High from Bloomberg – Interesting piece on Bloomberg about the personal loan market. It is booming and online lending platforms made 36% of all loans in 2017 as compared to less than 1% in 2010.
Open Banking – a complete failure? from Chris Skinner’s Blog – When it comes to open banking Chris Skinner takes a look at why, after six months, no consumer facing service using publicly available APIs has been implemented.
SoFi Elects Peggy Alford & Magdalena Ye?il to Board of Directors from Crowdfund Insider – On Tuesday SoFi announced the appointment of two new board members.
International P2P Lending Volumes June 2018 from P2P-Banking – The June p2p lending loan volumes for Europe are out with Assetz Capital showing a strong monthly gain.
German mid-market lender Creditshelf to go public from AltFi – Another online small business lender in continental Europe is getting ready to go public soon. German platform creditshelf is looking to raise €15-20m in a Frankfurt IPO in Q3.
Square quietly withdraws bank application from American Banker – Square has pulled its banking charter application with the FDIC, although its Utah application remains active. Looks to be just a temporary setback on Square’s journey to obtaining a banking license.
PayPal Closes On Its Deal With Synchrony from PYMNTS.com – Synchrony has paid PayPal $7.6 billion for its consumer lending portfolio and the companies also agreed to a 10-year deal for future financing of PayPal customers.
JPMorgan built an online bank for millennials, and it should have apps like Acorns and Stash worried from Business Insider – Good profile of Finn by Chase, an online bank built for millennials that is surprisingly good.
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.
Higher Interest Rates – LendingClub recently raised rates about 0.50% across loan grades.
New Platform – Investors discuss some changes that have been made to LendingClub’s user interface.
Balance Drop Without Activity – Investors discuss the timing of when recoveries and related activity/charges as well as fees are reported on LendingClub accounts.
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