At 23 years old, Paul Gu has attended Yale, been awarded a $100,000 grant as a Thiel fellow, co-founded Upstart,...
The future of lending: intuition is out, intelligence is in Noted Hedge Fund Says Crypto Hasn’t Bottomed Yet Bank of...
Today, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a no-action letter to Upstart, an online consumer lender. A no-action letter...
The no-action letter shows that the CFPB is open to alternative data being used to expand access to credit data; Upstart will report lending and compliance information to the CFPB to mitigate risk to consumers and aid in the Bureau’s understanding of the real-world impact of alternative data on lending decision making; the no-action letter relates to enforcement of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B; Upstart shares in their application how powerful using data points outside of just credit reports is in reducing borrowing rates. Source
The canary is now 10+ years old as prominent platforms like SoFi and Upstart launched in the early 2010s, and Freedom Financial (now Achieve) has been around for two decades.
Upstart's Dave Girourad talks with TechCrunch about the company's new fundraising round which is adding new capital of $32.5 million; the new capital brings total funding to $85 million and this round's investors included Rakuten, Third Point Ventures, Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital; the fundraising will help the firm launch a new software as a service product called Powered by Upstart, an extension of its proprietary credit underwriting platform which utilizes machine learning and modern data science; Upstart will be releasing the new product at LendIt USA 2017. Source
The Student Borrower Protection Center released a report which digs into how education data in underwriting may be causing educational...
Dave Girouard is the founder and CEO of Upstart; Girouard spent almost his entire career working for tech firms including Apple and Google and a lot of Upstart's team actually comes from Google; given that they lean heavier towards the 'tech' side of fintech, Girouard has a unique perspective; shares the general trend of software disrupting every business and that every business will become a tech business; discusses the history of marketplace lending, attributes of a marketplace and the evolution of the marketplaces; reports on how artificial intelligence and machine learning can help in a number of ways including creation of real time analysis, development of customized credit scoring, expanded access to credit through broader underwriting variables and faster processing; also discusses some of the challenges that currently keep machine learning solutions from the mainstream including adverse selection, loan stacking, fraud and regulatory concerns; ends with the benefits of alternative machine learning technology including more inclusion, lower rates, lower costs and greater financial support for consumers. Source
Dave Girouard was first on the Lend Academy podcast back in 2014 which was their first year of operation; since...
In this week’s PeerIQ Industry Update they cover the mixed economic news at the end of 2019 into early 2020;...