Bank holding company, CRB Group Inc., has received venture capital investment of $28 million from Battery Ventures LP, Andreessen Horowitz and Ribbit Capital; the large investment in a bank is unusual for venture capitalists which have mainly been known for early stage financing in new fintech startups; CRB Group however has been considerably growing its digital banking capabilities making the investment attractive for fintech venture capitalists; New Jersey-chartered, Cross River Bank, was founded in 2008 and has since partnered with numerous fintech startups to offer industry leading services for lending and payments; the bank is expected to use the investment to continue building on its industry leading fintech services; because the bank is FDIC regulated the VC investors will be limited in some of their investment activities. Source
Cross River Bank has issued a media alert detailing involvement in a true lender court case with the state of Colorado; the bank has filed a declaratory judgment action against the state of Colorado to protect its rights to extend credit and freely sell loans nationwide; the declaratory judgment action follows a previous court filing in January 2017 by the Colorado Attorney General suing Marlette Funding for issues with its lending process which involves loans made by Cross River Bank and sold to Marlette. Source
The partnership will allow community banks and other loan purchasers to access the online lending space; it will leverage the Cross River’s expertise in capital, technology and regulatory compliance with PeerIQ’s expertise in data analytics and risk management. Geoffrey Kott, head of finance and strategy at Cross River Bank stated, “PeerIQ’s risk management platform — with its leading loan-level analytics and monitoring capabilities, credit facility management toolkit, and full integration of TransUnion data — will both augment our internal capabilities and provide best-in-class loan-level monitoring tools for our clients and partners.”; Cross River Bank currently works with many big names in fintech, including more than 15 online lenders. Source
Cross River Bank is leveraging its fintech customers to grow its payment transaction services; the firm has digital lending partnerships with 17 companies and is the issuing lender for some of the industry's top marketplace platforms; the firm's business relationships have helped to expand its payments system customers with many of its customers naturally migrating to Cross River Bank's payments system; the firm's CEO Gilles Gades says its payments activity could double next year with help from existing relationships with Stripe and Google Wallet providing access to Mastercard Send; in payments, Cross River currently manages approximately 2 million transactions per month and it sees a substantial opportunity for gaining more market share; industry participants are also watching Cross River Bank's plans for developing a newly branded bank called Almond Bank, which it has recently been investing in. Source
On March 30, banking investor Cross River announced another successful funding round of $620 million, co-led by Andressen Horowitz and Eldridge Capital.
Cross River Bank is looking at new opportunities in business payments; Ben Isaacson of Cross River Bank stated, “Payroll is predominantly set up for traditional salary, ‘regular’ employees. There’s a real opportunity to innovate on that front; businesses can change how their employees get paid to be more consistent with how they’re working.”; they are also looking at how they can better improve payments to suppliers for their customers; Cross River Bank currently works with some of the biggest names in fintech and prides itself as being a technology-first bank. Source