Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance has published a report on the emerging fintech sector; the report finds 433 fintech companies with 346 of the companies actively in business; robo advice had the highest annual growth rate; of the 433 firms, 13 were crowdlending companies with nine of the platforms actively in business; other highlights include transaction volume by segment and industry growth rates. Source
According to P2P-Banking, Lendico has stopped originating consumer loans in Germany; website is referring consumer loan borrowers to Finanzcheck, but the company is still offering business loans in Germany; company has also ended consumer loans in the Netherlands and stopped new loan originations in Brazil and South Africa; recent activity from the firm includes an announcement last week regarding a joint venture with Postfinance in Switzerland. Source
The company reported an increase in profits and sales last year which were helped by growth in the Nordics and Germany; Klarna processed €18bn in transactions last year which was an increase of 42%; the company partnered with Asos, Topshop and JD Sports in the UK to drive further growth; in the US they have partnered with Microsoft. Source
The two companies are both based in Berlin and will collaborate on SME loan financing; solarisBank has initially provided an eight digit investment for financing loans on the Lendico peer-to-peer lending platform; Lendico launched in 2014 and has total lending volume of over EUR100 million. Source
Berlin-based solarisBank has raised 26.3 million euros ($27.95 million) in a Series A funding round; investors included Arvato Financial Solutions, Japanese SBI Group, FinLeap, Hegus and Yabeo Capital; the company offers a banking platform solution that helps companies connect with innovative banking service modules for business integration. Source
Fidor Bank saw in 2016 that incumbent banks were beginning to buy up and partner with fintechs because they needed to stay competitive; other digital banks do not share this view as Starling Bank issued a report back in September saying that collaboration with main street type banks will help to erode what fintechs are attempting to disrupt; 2017 looks to be a pivotal year for partnerships as big banks, regional banks and community banks are all moving in the direction of utilizing different aspects of new innovation. Source
Marketplace lender, Bitbond, has been an industry leader, providing the first global P2P lending platform for small businesses and now known as the world's first P2P lender allowing transactions with digital currency; Radoslav Albrecht, Bitbond's founder, sees digital currency, and specifically Bitcoin, as an opportunity to expand lending availability to borrowers and help returns for investors; Bitbond is able to offer digital currency transactions through its licensing from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority which took three years and required in-depth investigation of the company's operations including their know your customer and anti-money laundering procedures. Source
Germany's central bank is hosting a blockchain workshop as an increasing number of central banks are exploring the use of blockchain; the event is titled, "Blockchain Technology - Opportunities and Challenges"; discussions will be focused primarily for central bankers and regulators; topics will include the success of blockchain, business cases for the technology and the use of bitcoin; workshop participants include European central bankers, European Union Parliament members, financial institution executives, individuals from academia and representatives from blockchain-based companies. Source
Initially a German-only digital bank, N26 is now expanding to 17 countries across the continent including Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland and Slovakia; according to Valentin Stalf, founder and CEO of N26, the company is looking at "disrupting retail banking further" with this expansion; the digital bank offers an eight minute signup process, real time money transfers and budgeting tools; in coming years they are looking to add new products like investments, savings, insurance products and artificial intelligence based features. Source
In our latest guest post Jorrit van Rijswijk of Dynamic Credit digs into all of the European SME support programs...