PayPal's fourth quarter earnings release revealed a number of interesting developments for the company; the firm has been steadily growing its partnerships with e-commerce businesses which has helped increase the number of payment transactions per customer; in the fourth quarter PayPal reported 31.1 transactions per active customer which was an increase from 30.2 in the previous quarter and 27.5 in the comparable quarter; PayPal's CEO Dan Schulman has also discussed a new partnership with Amazon that would allow Amazon customers to pay for purchases with PayPal which would further support increases in its customer account activity. Source
Keith Noreika, the acting Comptroller of the Currency recently signed the first full-service de novo national bank charter since the financial crisis to Winter Park National Bank of Florida; Noreika believes there are still too few new banks and part of the problem is the onerous process; Noreika outlines the lengthy process and discusses his suggested changes in his testimony back in June. Source
The fund, which was set up as storage for excess cash from online spending, has now reached $165.6 billion in assets under management; this now exceeds the amount of JP Morgan's largest money market fund which is $150 billion; since the fund is so big it allows Ant Financial, Alibaba affiliate, to negotiate better rates with banks for capital; while many believe the likes of Google and Facebook could enter the market they have yet to do so. Source
As a thirty year veteran of consumer lending, loanDepot CEO Anthony Hsieh has seen his share of transformative changes; his keynote at LendIt USA 2017 focused on the modern version of consumer lending and how online lenders are only just scratching the surface; while originations have grown each year loanDepot still only accounts for about two percent market share as the second largest non bank consumer lender; he believes online lending is still in the bottom of the first or top of the second inning; non bank mortgage lenders now account for five of the top ten originators, a few years ago only two non bank lenders cracked the top ten; regulations, capital markets and technology have all contributed to the market changing since the crisis of 2008; he also talks about the future of the customer experience and their continued investment in technology. Source
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) ended its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday and released an afternoon announcement reporting no change to the central bank borrowing rate which will remain at 0.25% to 0.50%; as expected the FOMC's statement did indicate that a rate hike in December was likely with new language saying the 2% inflation objective is near and that the Fed only needs "some further evidence" of economic progress for a rate increase; globally the US is one of few central banks tightening monetary policy; many are easing with negative rates; Japan's central bank borrowing rate is -0.10% and the ECB central bank borrowing rate is at 0% for the Eurozone; the Bank of England will be meeting on Thursday and is expected to keep its rate unchanged with further easing in 2017. Source
Shanghai Securities News reported on market statistics and a continued commitment by Chinese authorities this week to manage fraudulent financing activities in the country; 5,197 new criminal cases were reported in 2016 involving 251.1 billion yuan ($36.5 billion); Yang Yuzhu, a Chinese regulatory director involved with a meeting of regulators, says, "The cases severely destroyed the order of financial markets."; in 2016 China approved the arrest of over 9,000 people on suspicion of illegal solicitation of public deposits and it prosecuted over 14,000; regulators plan to continue with enforcement action; they are also considering prohibiting organizations and individuals from publishing investment-related advertisements and are requesting provincial governments to closely examine potential illegal funding activities from May to July. Source
Prospect Marketplace Lending Corp. has filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a fund investing in marketplace loans; the firm has filed an N-8A and an N-2 indicating its investment company status and plans for managing a closed-end fund; the closed-end fund will invest 80% of its assets in marketplace lending investments. Source
UK robo advisor Scalable has doubled its assets under management in the last three months to EUR 200 million ($213 million); this includes approximately 5,000 client portfolios with an average value of EUR 40,000 ($42,659); the firm says it continues to grow steadily adding EUR 1 million ($1.07 million) in assets under management per day; Scalable launched in the UK in the summer of 2016; it has since expanded to Germany and Austria and has reported significant growth from a partnership with Siemens Private Finance for employee investment plans. Source
HSBC has shared insight from the development of its HSBC SmartSave app which it developed within the Financial Conduct Authority's Regulatory Sandbox initiative in partnership with Pariti; the app provides personal finance management services using algorithms and four customer plans; overall the app has proved successful, saving customers 63.17 British pounds ($78.80) per month; of the four service plans HSBC reported "Rounding Up" to be the most popular, allowing customers to round up purchases to save spare change on transactions. Source
Decreased venture capital funding and fintech challenges in 2016 slowed the market for initial public offerings (IPOs); experts believe the IPO market could be revived in 2017 with four companies at the top of the list to watch for a potential public offering; companies include Transferwise, SoFi, Ant Financial and Credit Karma; all four companies have significant venture capital support and are likely leaders for the fintech IPO market in 2017. Source