A partnership with DomaCom has helped ThinCats Australia offer its first mortgage loan on residential property; the funder of the firm's first mortgage-backed loan requested a loan-to-value ratio of 36% resulting in a A$212,000 interest-only loan with a term of 24 months and interest rate of 6.5%; prior to the residential property lending expansion, ThinCats has primarily been focused on small business loans. Source
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Austrade have signed an agreement with the UK that will facilitate fintech innovation in both countries; the agreement will help to support introductions and the sharing of information on regional fintech business; as part of the agreement the CBA will also utilize its London Innovation Lab for UK and European networking. Source
European online lender Spotcap has received A$20 million (USD$15.15 million) from New Zealand Bank, Heartland; Spotcap has also launched its platform in New Zealand and will be accelerating growth in Australia, helping to expand its business in the Asia Pacific region; Spotcap's lending targets small and medium enterprises with credit lines and loans of up to $250,000. Source
DirectMoney, an online lender in Australia, has received institutional funding to help it continue originating loans for the next 12-24 months; the funding follows the appointment of new CEO, Anthony Nantes on October 5; full terms of the deal and details on the institutional partnership were not disclosed by the source and appear to be available only to the platform's shareholders. Source
Australian Fintech is broadening their industry census to better understand how companies can expand overseas, interact with regulators and handle gender diversity; Ernst & Young is partnering with Australian Fintech on the census and the deadline is set for September 3rd; "Last year's inaugural census - released as part of our 2016 Collab/Collide Summit - provided an extremely robust evidence base to help FinTech Australia advocate on behalf of the industry. This year's census will be even more important as it will for the first time give us trend-based information about the industry," FinTech Australia Vice-Chair Stuart Stoyan tells AltFi. Source
Shares closed Friday at $1.32, above the $1.21 offer price; the company raised a total of $67 million and is now valued at $306.6 million; the IPO was Australia’s biggest tech IPO of the year. Source
Scott Morrison, Australia's treasurer, spoke about regtech at the Fintech Australia Summit; the treasurer discussed a regtech collision occurring in fintech where both crowdfunding firms and traditional banks are benefiting from increased technological innovation around regulation; likely that the marketplace lending ecosystem could see expansion in regulatory technology innovation. Source
The round was led by Five V Capital, who reportedly invested $8.5 million; company plans to boost number of employees from 50 to 80 in the next year; RateSetter Australia has doubled is loan levels since 12 months ago; Daniel Foggo, RateSetter chief executive stated, “In August, we became the largest peer-to-peer lender in Australia — both in terms of the number of lenders, and the number and value of loans funded each month.” Source
The Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) space is probably the hottest vertical in all of fintech. Consumers like the flexibility...
The San Francisco based online marketplace for consumer loans has gone public down under in the biggest tech IPO of the year on the Australian Exchange. Source