LendIt Fintech Industry Awards Archives

LendIt Fintech Industry Awards: Nomination Deadline Extended

Due to popular demand we are extending the deadline for awards submissions until Friday, February 15th.

January 31, 2019 By Todd Anderson Leave a Comment

LendIt Fintech USA 2018 Awards Dinner

One of the highlights of the year is the LendIt Fintech Industry Awards Dinner which will take place on the evening of April 9th at the conclusion of LendIt Fintech USA 2019. In its third year, the dinner highlights the great accomplishments of the people and companies that are driving the fintech industry forward. The event includes a pre-dinner networking reception, a three-course dinner, live entertainment and the awards ceremony.

First and foremost, this is an event for the industry. It will be an evening of celebration where the industry recognizes the outstanding achievements of the past year. While LendIt will organize the event, it will be the industry judging its own and deciding who exactly are the standout people and companies. A large selection of judges will be chosen that will contain no LendIt staff and will decide on the winners in different categories. The large team of judges will be carefully selected to ensure no conflicts of interest with different judges being responsible for different categories.

Scott Sanborn of Lending Club, Yihan Fang of Yirendai and Brendan Ross of Direct Lending Investments at the 2018 Awards

We are currently accepting award applications on the LendIt website. Keep in mind that you are supposed to nominate yourself and/or your company. So don’t be shy, let us hear from you. You now have until February 15 to get your entries in and the more complete your entry the better your chances are of winning.

There has been over 450 applications submitted so far in the more than 20 categories listed below:

Best Journalist Coverage
Blockchain Innovator of the Year
Customer Alignment
Emerging Lending Platform of the Year
Excellence in Financial Inclusion
Executive of the Year
Fintech Innovator of the Year
Fintech Woman of the Year
International Innovator of the Year
Most Innovative Bank
Most Innovative Mobile Technology
Most Promising Partnership
Most Successful Cross-Border Partnership
Top Accounting Firm
Top Consumer Lending Platform
Top Emerging Technology Company
Top Enterprise Technology Company
Top Fintech Equity Investor
Top Law Firm
Top Real Estate Platform
Top Service Provider
Top Small Business Lending Platform

LendIt Industry Awards at the LendIt USA 2018 conference in San Francisco, CA on April 10, 2018. (photo by Gabe Palacio)

Don’t miss your chance to be recognized by your peers. If you have any questions about the awards please let us know.

Customer Alignment and The Future of Banking

The bank of the future will have a business model that is designed to win when customers win

August 21, 2018 By Peter Renton Leave a Comment

I have been thinking more about customer alignment lately. We are adding this category in the LendIt Fintech Awards in 2019 as Scott Sanborn, the CEO of LendingClub mentioned in his opening keynote in April. It is an issue which gets to the heart of what is wrong with banking today and how fintech can help create change.

First, let me begin with a personal story. I have had a banking relationship with the same large bank since 1993. I opened two accounts, business and personal, when I was getting my first business off the ground. Needless to say money was really tight. I would occasionally bounce checks and I used credit cards as a way to borrow money but I managed to get by. What I really needed back then, but didn’t have, was a financial institution that had my best interests in mind.

I remember one time when I mailed a batch of checks without the money in the bank but was confident by the time the checks were deposited the money would be there to cover them all. It wasn’t. So, I ended up bouncing four or five checks and paying a fortune in overdraft fees. But here was the kicker. The bank could have processed two of these checks but instead the largest one came out first, so all the checks bounced.

Thankfully not all banks do this but it is common practice in many banks and back in the 1990s I am guessing it happened a lot more. But I believe the days are numbered for this kind of program.

A Win-Lose Proposition is a Losing Game

[Read more…]

Wrap-Up of LendIt Fintech USA 2018

Highlights from the many keynotes and more at LendIt Fintech USA 2018 held in San Francisco April 9-11

April 18, 2018 By Peter Renton 1 Comment

Peter Renton, Bo Brustkern and Jason Jones open LendIt Fintech USA 2018

Last week the sixth annual LendIt USA conference took place in San Francisco. Officially known as LendIt Fintech USA 2018 this event was, in my opinion, the best we have ever produced. As I do at this time after every LendIt event, here are my thoughts on some of the ideas that were shared by the keynote speakers as well as a summary of the rest of the event.

The opening keynote, for the second year in a row, was delivered by Scott Sanborn, the CEO of LendingClub. He gave a different kind of presentation this year. He didn’t talk much about LendingClub at all, instead choosing to focus his keynote on financial health and the looming crisis that maybe coming. He gave us all something to consider beyond just disruption, he said we should think about three key areas: financial inclusion, regulatory innovation and customer alignment. He ended with a call to action for the industry. He wanted everyone to focus on what problem you are solving and what you can do to help restore financial health to all Americans.

Scott Sanborn, the CEO of LendingClub, delivers the opening keynote at LendIt Fintech USA 2018

For the first time ever we had the CEO of Quicken Loans, Jay Farner, on stage at LendIt. Quicken Loans has become the largest mortgage lender in the country, bigger than all the banks. It was interesting to hear Jay talk about innovation. He said it is not enough today to just be faster. You need to fundamentally rethink the process, do it in a new and different way. This is where good entrepreneurial businesses will succeed because they start with a blank sheet of paper. He said there is no reason a mortgage should take longer than 10 days.

Long time readers of Lend Academy will know the name Chris Larsen. He was the co-founder and former CEO of Prosper. He left Prosper in 2012 to start Ripple, his most ambitious startup yet. Ripple is trying to revolutionize the way money is sent around the world. As he said in his discussion with Jo Ann Barefoot in finance, when it comes to moving money, we are living in a pre-internet world. It takes days to send money around the world and yet email moves instantly. It is inevitable that this will change and when it does Chris said there will be a Cambrian explosion in innovation and economic development.

Max Levchin first made a name for himself as a co-founder of PayPal but today he is most well known as the CEO and co-founder of Affirm. Affirm is attacking point of sale financing, a space that is somewhat fragmented with few big incumbent lenders. In his discussion Max said that software is eventually going to eat the credit card. We are going to move to payments made by phone but we have more work to do on the software side before that becomes the standard way people pay. Interestingly, he also attacked the APR (annual percentage rate) standard as a bad way of judging credit products. We need to reinvent a way to compare financial products that is not just focused on the APR.

[Read more…]

Finalists Announced for the LendIt Fintech Industry Awards 2018

The LendIt team has combed through hundreds of applications to determine the finalists in 21 categories.

February 15, 2018 By Ryan Lichtenwald Leave a Comment

The LendIt Fintech Industry Awards recognizes the leaders in the fintech community. Last year we held the inaugural Awards show and it was a big hit. We quickly realized how much an event like this was appreciated and needed to shine the spotlight on people and companies who are working hard to innovate in financial services.

For 2018 we have built on last year’s success and received a tremendous amount of applications. The LendIt content team went through over 450 submissions and carefully chose the finalists listed below. Congratulations to all of the finalists!

From here we hand off to a community of judges who will then select the winners for each category. The winners will be announced at the 2018 Industry Awards ceremony held on April 10 (Day two of LendIt Fintech) in San Francisco. There are still a limited number of tickets left for the event, you can learn more and register for a ticket here.

Here is the list of all the awards finalists for 2018.

Fintech Innovator of the Year

Affirm
Varo Money
Better Mortgage
Upstart
Plaid
Circle
loanDepot

Executive of the Year

Raul Vazquez, Oportun
Anthony Hsieh, loanDepot
Max Levchin, Affirm
David Klein, CommonBond
Renaud Laplanche, Upgrade Inc.
David Kimball, Prosper
Yihan Fang, Yirendai

Fintech Woman of the Year

Blythe Masters, Digital Asset
Kathryn Petralia, Kabbage
Stephanie Alsbrooks, defi SOLUTIONS
Marla Blow, FS Card
Denise Thomas, ApplePie Capital
Olympia De Castro, Community Investment Management
Stephanie Klein, Braviant Holdings

Blockchain Innovator of the Year [Read more…]