CircleUp facilitates equity investments in consumer good companies; Rory Eakin, Co-Founder and COO of CircleUp discusses how they conduct due diligence, their unique data analysis tool they have built in house and the new debt product they are piloting. Source
While speaking at an event at Georgetown Law School Acting OCC Head Keith Noreika defended the proposed fintech charter; Mr. Noreika also took questions on the fear of commercial companies being granted banking charters; “A national bank charter is a special thing, and the OCC will not undermine its value by granting charters to companies that are not ready to meet our admittedly high expectations” said Noreika. Source.
Author and fintech expert Chris Skinner discusses the impact of fintech companies on banking services; the idea of free banking will essentially be gone as fintech companies are able to focus on transactional services the banks once dominated; he calls this the democratization of finance and it will help to bring more transparency to banking overall. Source.
There have been many recent launches of digital banks which was a result of regulatory changes in the UK; Metro Bank was the first having launched in 2010, but there are many new names since then; article highlights founders and investors in the space including Eileen Burbidge (Monzo), Sanjeev Gupta (Wyelands Bank), Jonathan Rowland (Redwood Bank), Nick Ogden (ClearBank) and the Pears family (Masthaven Bank). Source
Building off of the $70mn funding round from the summer Betterment is now reportedly worth $1bn; the $1bn mark is significant as it denotes that a company is considered a unicorn; the valuation makes Betterment the first robo advisor to reach unicorn status; the company currently has over $11bn in assets under management. Source.
- OnDeck Collaborates with Ingo Money and Visa to enable real-time Loan Funding to Small Businesses
- The 11 most valuable VC-backed fintech companies in the US
- German app-only bank N26 gears up for UK launch as it recruits country manager
- LedgerX Trades $1 Million in Bitcoin Derivatives in First Week
- Fincera Reports $1 Billion in Loans for Q2 2017
- Mastercard Takes Blockchain Mainstream with API
- Online Small Business Lending Provides Benefits to Small Business Owners, Finds New Survey
- CoinList spins out of AngelList
The blog post comes from Chris Burniske who shares the early days of cryptoasset valuation, theory behind cryptoasset valuations and valuing a bandwidth token: INET. Source
Peter Ryan of the software provider Temenos believes PSD2 has the potential to offer banks the personal touch they have lost; allowing consumers to share their data via APIs can allow banks to learn more about their customers and offer tailored products; while some banks have been proactive there is a fair share of the market who fear open banking; better understanding of the potential in PSD2 will help banks embrace what’s ahead. Source.
This month the CFPB announced a new rule aimed at payday lenders to prevent debt traps; Lend Academy outlines the new rules put in place and shares perspectives from several organizations in the short term loan space. Source
The article aims to answer whether big banks are still interested enough in potential mortgage loan customers to repeatedly follow-up and whether marketshare has anything to do with follow-ups; author applied for home loans with nine different lenders and shares data on their follow-ups over a two week period; Quicken, Citigroup and loanDepot round out the top three for total number of follow-ups. Source