Online lender Avant was one company greatly affected by the industry's challenges in 2016; in May it laid off 60 workers with further reductions in July; it also paused its plans to expand into Australia and offer new auto loans and credit cards; a new partnership with Regions Bank has helped revive the company's growth and it also plans to announce another partnership in February; the new business activity has helped it to begin hiring again and it's currently looking for 25 technologists and some additional customer service support; in 2017 Avant's President, Adam Hughes, says the firm will focus on three main initiatives: growing Avant's core lending product, partnering with more brick-and-mortar banks and launching the credit card product; it also has plans to continue its previous initiatives including Australia expansion and auto loans. Source
According to a report by Bloomberg, four bonds comprised of online consumer lending loans have reached or are approaching trigger levels; the four bonds include three securitizations by Avant and one by CircleBack Lending; according to one source, two of Avant's securities breached triggers this month for the first time; the four offerings total over $500 million in size. Source
The new venture called Spring Labs will use blockchain technology in building a network which will allow lenders, banks and data providers to pay each other for access to consumer information; CEO Adam Jiwan gave insight into the problem they are trying to solve stating, “Utility companies or social-media companies or asset managers do not provide data into the existing credit-bureau system. In the existing ecosystem, financial institutions or lenders give up that information to a centralized party — a credit bureau — only for the financial institutions to buy it back in a synthesized form.”; the firm aims to have Avant, the online lender, be its first strategic partner. Source
In this conversation, we chat with Adam Hughes – the Chief Executive Officer at Amount, a technology company focused on accelerating the world’s transition to digital financial services via its digital retail banking platform, world-class digital authentication & fraud prevention tools, and ecommerce point-of-sale financing technology.
More specifically, we touch on digital lending industry Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), as well as the trends of working with large banks and enabling their digital transformation to access some of these themes as part of embedded finance and banking-as-a-service.
Avant has joined the Global Debt Registry (GDR) network; through the network partnership Avant's investors will have enhanced access to loan due diligence services; in comments regarding the partnership, Kevin Friedrich, senior director of treasury at Avant said, "We are delighted to partner with GDR to provide our investors with this independent loan data integrity service and help drive new transparency for the lending industry." Source
