Marketplace Lending News Roundup – March 31

News

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.

Why OakNorth is posting profits when other challenger banks aren’t from Tearsheet – UK challenger bank OakNorth is different to pretty much all its competitors, it is actually making a profit. Tearsheet has the scoop on how they do it.

Our future with MoneyLion from MoneyLion – The Godfather of fintech Ron Suber has joined the board of MoneyLion. In this post he explains why.

Bank accounts could disappear within 15 years according to one of Deutsche Bank’s most senior execs from Business Insider – The co-head of investment banking at Deutsche Bank sees a very different future for banks after his recent trip to China.

Upstart Seeks $100 Million, Testing VCs’ Appetite for Online Lending from Bloomberg – According to Bloomberg Technology consumer lending platform Upstart is testing the waters on a $100M equity funding round.

Latest weapon in battle for deposits: A digital-only bank from American Banker – Many large banks are creating new brands as they dip their toes into digital-only banking.

Avant Founders Raise $15 Million for Blockchain Firm, Token Sale from Bloomberg – This is really interesting. The Avant co-founders have started a blockchain company to help build out a new ecosystem for identity and credit worthiness.

Exclusive: Revolut to launch business marketplace, but will underwrite its own loans from AltFi – In the UK it looks like popular neo-bank Revolut will be launching a business marketplace which will include offering small business loans.

Banco BNI Europa & Varengold Bank AG Add £135 Million in Total Funds to MarketInvoice Platform from Crowdfund Insider – Leading UK invoice finance platform MarketInvoice continues to attract banking capital. Portuguese bank Banco BNI Europa and German bank Varengold are investing a total of £135M.

Silver Lake Buys $500 Million Stake in Credit Karma from The Wall Street Journal – Scoop today by Peter Rudegeair in the WSJ: Credit Karma has closed a $500M secondary round valuing the company at roughly $4 billion.

This young lending startup just secured $70 million to lend $2 at a time from TechCrunch – Great profile of Branch as they announce their $70 million Series B to help them expand beyond Africa.

Petal, WebBank to launch card for ‘credit invisibles’ from American Banker – Fintech startup Petal is getting closer to launching their new credit card for the underserved. Today they announced their partnership with WebBank.

Small Business Confidence Is Up, What Does that Mean? from The LendIt Blog – The CEO of OnDeck Capital Noah Breslow says that small business confidence is at an all time high. What does this mean for online lending in 2018?

Consumers crave automation in home-equity lending: J.D. Power from American Banker – Maybe this is the reason that Mike Cagney decided on the home equity space for his new startup. There has been little innovation from banks in this space to date.

Famous for hoarding cash, Chinese families are now racking up debt on an unprecedented scale from South China Morning Post – As Chinese people get wealthier they are doing a very western thing: accumulating household debt.

Why Marcus Has Changed Everything from Orchard – My guest post on Orchard on why Marcus is a game changer for the online lending space.

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.

LC interest rates updated 2/20/2018 – LendingClub has made some minor changes to interest rates.

Are things improving? – Forum members discuss recent trends with their LendingClub portfolios.

Investing with Bondora – Investors discuss their experience investing in overseas platform Bondora.

 

  • 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.