Thursday August 3 2017, Daily News Digest

United States

FT Partners’ CEO Monthly Alternative Lending Market Analysis (August ’17) (FT Partners), Rated: AAA

We are pleased to announce our role advising Marqeta on its $25 million financing led by Visa (NYSE:V). In conjunction with the financing, Marqeta and Visa announced a multi-year, global partnership to drive innovation in commercial and consumer payments. FT Partners also advised Marqeta on its Series C $25 million financing in October 2015.

We are also pleased to announce our role advising Addepar on its $140 million Series D financing co-led by Harald McPike, the founder of QuantRes, along with Valor Equity Partners and 8VC.

Read the full analysis here.

SoFi letter to investors (SoFi Email), Rated: AAA

Fintech Startup Bread Raises $ 126 Million In Bid To Finance Big Online Purchases (Forbes), Rated: AAA

When you buy something online, chances are you use your credit card. If it’s a bigger purchase, like a mattress or a washing machine, you might decide to pay it off over time. Bread is among the financial technology start-ups attempting to get you to ditch your plastic and instead opt to finance your purchase with a loan that has lower rates and predictable monthly payments.

Bread said on Wednesday it has raised $126 million through a Series B funding round to expand the number of retailers that offer its financing. Menlo Ventures led the equity portion of the investment, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, RRE Ventures and others. A debt facility was also provided by Victory Park Capital.

The New York-based company was founded in 2014 and offers white-label solutions for retailers who wish to offer convenient financing to their customers.

You can now use PayPal through Skype’s mobile app (TechCrunch), Rated: A

The still growing payments giant today announced a new deal with Skype that will allow users in 22 countries worldwide to send money to other Skype users through an updated version of the Skype mobile app. This extends PayPal’s potential reach by a sizable amount – the Skype app has been downloaded over a billion times to date, and has approximately 300 million monthly active users, according to Skype parent company Microsoft, as of last year.

To be clear, the feature is designed for sending money between friends and family – not payments for goods or services from a business.

How Two Brothers Turned Seven Lines of Code Into a $ 9.2 Billion Startup (Bloomberg), Rated: A

Every day, Americans spend about $1.2 billion online. That figure has roughly doubled in the past five years, according to the Department of Commerce, and it’s likely to double again in the next five as the internet continues to devour traditional retail.

In 2010, Patrick and John Collison, brothers from rural Ireland, began to debug this process. Their company, Stripe Inc., built software that businesses could plug into websites and apps to instantly connect with credit card and banking systems and receive payments.

The company now handles tens of billions of dollars in internet transactions annually, making money by charging a small fee on each one. Half of Americans who bought something online in the past year did so, probably unknowingly, via Stripe. This has given it a $9.2 billion valuation, several times larger than those of its nearest competitors, and made Patrick, 28, and John, 26, two of the world’s youngest billionaires.

One way to justify the number: Stripe’s new partnership with Amazon. com Inc., the largest and most sought-­after customer on the internet. Over the past couple of weeks, Stripe began handling a large, though undisclosed, portion of Amazon’s transactions. Neither company will address the scope of the deal—which was only revealed by Stripe’s addition of Amazon’s logo to its website—but it could help Stripe greatly increase its trans­action volume.

Seven years in, however, Stripe’s mission is less to send more books, vacuums, and grooming kits into the world than to “increase the GDP of the internet,” Patrick says. To do this, the company is beginning to move beyond payments by writing software that helps companies retool the way they incorporate, pay workers, and detect fraud. It’s part of an ambitious bid to revamp how online business has been conducted for 20 years and to give anyone with a bright idea a chance to compete.

Real Estate Lender Zeus CrowdFunding More Than Doubles Its U.S. Service Area (PR.com), Rated: A

Zeus CrowdFunding will now provide fast funding to more of America than ever before. The company more than doubled its service area this month, expanding to eight new states as well as Washington, D.C.

The full list of territories in which Zeus CrowdFunding will provide real estate listings for investment are as follows: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia.

KPMG: ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT INDUSTRY DEAL MOMENTUM CONTINUES (All About Alpha), Rated: A

The auditing giant KPMG says in a recent report on merger and acquisition activityin the alternative asset management world that there was a dip in activity in this space in 2015, that there was a rebound “to more normalized levels” in 2016, and that the momentum off of that rebound continues in 2017, which saw 18 M&A transactions in the first quarter alone.

Stepping back a bit, the report observes that asset managers that have been focused for a long time on the long-only segment of the market are turning to M&A as one good way of capitalizing on the growing retailization of alternative strategies, “the increasing availability of liquid alternative investments to retail investors through registered investment (mutual) funds and retirement accounts.”

Another Big Picture point – various segments of the AI industry want to merge with one another. Private equity firms in particular want to “expand into adjacent asset classes such as real estate, infrastructure and hedge fund.”

RIA headcount, AUM on the rise as more firms embrace robo model (Financial-Planning), Rated: A

The RIA sector is enjoying brisk growth in both personnel and assets under management, but remains dominated by small businesses that cater to specialized sets of clients, including a growing number of firms that are rolling out interactive digital advice services.

Those are among the findings from a new report by the Investment Adviser Association, the group’s annual industry snapshot.

By the numbers, the RIA sector reached an all-time high with 12,172 SEC-registered advisers as of April 2017, up 2.7% from a year ago. Those advisers serve 35.6 million clients and manage $70.7 trillion in assets, according to the IAA’s analysis.

The data show that there are only a handful of mega-advisers serving a vast portfolio of clients, suggesting a heavy reliance on an automated advice platform. Just eight registrants report that they have more than 1 million clients.

Far more common are firms that have fewer than 100 clients, the analysis finds.

By far the largest segment of firms are those with AUMs between $100 million and $1 billion (56% of all registrants), and 87% of all registrants count fewer than 50 employees. Just 1% of registered advisers — only 124 — boast an AUM of $100 billion or more, yet those shops manage 54% of the total assets in the industry.

LendingTree, LeadsCon Announce Judges for First-Ever $ 25,000 Startup Innovation Spotlight (Markets Insider), Rated: A

LendingTree®, the nation’s leading online loan marketplace, and Access Intelligence, a leading business information and marketing company, today announced the judges for its new initiative to showcase the top startup companies in financial technology (fintech) lead generation at LeadsCon this summer.

The judges for the Startup Innovation Spotlight are:

• Doug Lebda, Founder and CEO of LendingTree
• Matt Coffin, Founder of Coffin Capital & Ventures
  
• AJ Agrawal, Founder of Verma Media and Marketing Consultant to Fortune 500 companies
• Chris Fralic, Partner at First Round
• Shawn Colo – Shawn is the Co-Founder & Managing Partner of 3L Capital as well as a senior advisor with Spectrum Equity Investors.

Beware the return of the ILC (American Banker), Rated: A

Recent remarks by acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika and the industrial bank application submitted by Social Finance have raised significant policy questions about the mixing of banking and commerce, really for the first time since Walmart’s and Home Depot’s failed banking bids prior to the financial crisis.

SoFi’s application, meanwhile, indicates that there may be greater interest in the last viable type of FDIC-insured bank charter still legally available to commercial firms. To be sure, the fintech-powered marketplace lender is not a commercial entity like Walmart. As a financial services provider, SoFi could apply for a mainstream bank holding company license. But SoFi’s industrial bank bid could be seen as a stalking horse, potentially opening the door for more companies — including commercial and industrial firms — that want banking powers. In addition, we should question the wisdom of granting SoFi an FDIC-insured banking license without requiring SoFI to accept regulation by the Federal Reserve as a bank holding company, as other financial owners of banks must do.

Ripple’s Product Suite is Growing (Ripple), Rated: A

And now, Ripple’s growing global payments network has 90+ customers, 75+ commercial deployments in progress and a common set of payment standards governing all transactions on the network.

Based on customer feedback, we’ve given our global payments network a name, RippleNet. This is not new – but simply an evolution of the growing network that has been building significant momentum. RippleNet is the world’s only enterprise blockchain solution for global payments.

Cloud Lending Solutions Announces Major Expansion of the CL Solution Suite With New Product: CL Portal (BusinessWire), Rated: A

Cloud Lending Solutions, a leader in cloud-based loan and leasing software, announced upgrades to its end-to-end suite of lending products for its commercial banks, retail banks and credit union clients with the expansion of its latest product CL Portal™ already in production at a Fortune Global 500 Bank.

The new CL Portal provides a differentiated borrowing experience for commercial, small business and consumer loans for borrowers, investors, and stakeholders by seamlessly integrating with loan product workflows and document management to create a personalized, unique experience for loans ranging from fully automated consumer loans to multi-entity, collaborative commercial loans. The CL Portal supports multiple borrower types including:

• Commercial Loan Origination Portal: financial institutions can now design a commercial loan portal and enable borrowers to log on and securely upload required documents and check the status of a loan in progress. The CL Portal extends existing document management functionality already in CL Originate, to display a list of document requirements associated with the borrower and facilitate the document upload process and review process.
• Small Business Loan Application Portal: facilitates a cost-effective, online small business loan origination process leveraging automated scoring criteria and third-party data. Designed to integrate with borrower and back office lending workflows, 3rd party data collections, document collections, and review from CL Originate.
• Consumer Loan Application Portal: providing a multi-channel personalized and differentiated borrowing experience for consumer loan products. Configurable workflows allow banks to manage the complete consumer loan application including acknowledgments, credit, document delivery, offer, and acceptance.
• Investor Portal works in conjunction with CL Marketplace, enables financial institutions to extend investment opportunities to their customers by making portions of loans available for investment. CL Portal enables investors to view investment opportunities, bid on applicable loans and manage existing investments.

15 Creative Ways Large Real Estate & Infrastructure Developers – Raise Millions Outside of Traditional Debt and Equity (Part I) (JDSupra), Rated: A

We know one developer who invested only $10,000 by utilizing just two of these strategies and made $35,000,000 by selling to a national homebuilder, and saving substantial within a tax preferred vehicle that his attorney helped him devise.

1. Forward Sale Funding
2. Overriding Royalty Interests
3. Sponsorships
4. Presales
5. Crowdfunding
6. Options Contracts
7. Pay upon Completion Contracting
8. Corporate Bond Funding
9. Municipality Bonds
10. Private Transfer Fees
11. Sales/Leaseback
12. 3rd Party Subordination & Cross-collateralizations
13. Joint Ventures
14. Subdividing
15. Tax

Presales

Lenders typically require developers to presale or pre-lease a certain percentage (e.g. 50%) of their project before providing construction financing.

This requires that developers have the considerable skills and resources to generate presales.  While a typical sales and marketing budget may represent 5% of sales, the ability to achieve these presales makes the difference between getting funding and not.

Crowdfunding

Real estate crowdfunding continues to be a dynamic and ever-evolving industry, growing to an estimated $3.5 billion in 2016. By 2025, the crowdfunding industry as a whole is anticipated to be valued at more than $300 billion and online real estate marketplaces are primed to capitalize on that explosive growth.

 

Why young women today have a gloomier financial outlook than men (CNBC), Rated: B

Millennial women still trail their male peers when it comes to financial satisfaction, according to a new report from online loan marketplace LendingTree. Other elements point to why: The survey found women earn less, carry almost 30 percent more in outstanding debt, and are less confident about their ability to pay it off.

• 57 percent of millennial men have an annual income of $50,000 or greater, compared to 42 percent of their female counterparts.
• LendingTree, an online loan marketplace, says millennial women also carry almost 30 percent more outstanding total debt.
• The top financial priority for millennial women was increasing savings while their male peers said increasing income.

Somewhat Favorable Media Coverage Somewhat Unlikely to Impact Elevate Credit (NYSE:ELVT) Share Price (Community Financial News), Rated: B

News stories about Elevate Credit (NYSE:ELVT) have trended somewhat positive recently, according to Accern. Elevate Credit earned a news sentiment score of 0.14 on Accern’s scale. Accern also gave media headlines about the company an impact score of 46.2609752435269 out of 100, meaning that recent media coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an impact on the company’s share price in the immediate future.

Fund That Flip plans to expand in Cleveland (Crain’s Cleveland Business), Rated: B

A New York City real estate services company, Fund That Flip, is bringing its sales and back-office operations to Northeast Ohio.

The three-year-old company currently has a small presence here at 1382 W. Ninth Street, and it intends to add 25 employees.

The convergence of fund administration and FinTech (Hedgeweek), Rated: A

The forces shaping industry change demand that the role of the fund administrator increasingly needs to also be that of a technology services firm, rather than simply a provider of financial services. The influence that FinTech is having on the fund administration industry is growing and the long-term demands will be even greater.

United Kingdom

RateSetter spurs on business brokers with summer prize draw (P2P Finance News), Rated: AAA

RATESETTER is giving its business finance brokers an extra incentive to find borrowers over the typically slow summer months, with a “six weeks of summer” prize draw.

The peer-to-peer lender, which originates both consumer and business loans, has previously expressed its intentions to boost its business finance segment.

RateSetter will automatically enter its business loan brokers into the draw, which started on 24 July and ends on 1 September. There is a different prize for each week within this timeframe.

Who will be the first £3bn P2P lender? (P2P Finance News), Rated: AAA

IT HAS been a busy quarter for the “big three” peer-to-peer lenders with Zopa, Funding Circle and RateSetter all reaching the £2bn lending milestone.

But who will be first to £3bn?

Zopa’s loanbook reached £2bn in January and was at £2.4bn as of the end of the second quarter of 2017, P2PFA figures show.

Funding Circle, which hit £2bn in February and was at £2.4bn by the end of the second quarter, saw 12 per cent growth since the first quarter and 45 per cent annually.

Meanwhile, RateSetter, which hit £2bn last week, had £1.9bn at the end of quarter two, up 9.6 per cent since the first quarter and up 35.9 per cent annually.

Going by growth rates, Funding Circle appears to be growing fastest so could hit the £3bn the quickest.

Meet the company behind Nutmeg’s ISA (AltFi), Rated: A

When Nutmeg launched its Lifetime ISA in April, it was through a partnership with digital wealth platform InvestCloud. The cloud computing and API-based technology allowed Nutmeg to quickly on-board clients while complying with regulators.

Asset-backed peer-to-peer lender launches IFISA (AltFi), Rated: A

There’s a new peer-to-peer ISA on the market. Asset-backed lending platform Ablrate has just launched its own take on the Innovative Finance ISA, after receiving full authorisation from the FCA in April.

Chinese investment powering regeneration of the North (Bridging&Commercial), Rated: A

One city that is often overlooked is Sheffield. There are already encouraging signs that Sheffield is a city on the up, however, and a big part of that is down to Chinese investment.

Last year it was announced that Chinese company Sichuan Guodong Construction had tied up a 60-year partnership with Sheffield City Council, with an initial commitment to spend £220m on up to five projects in the city centre over the next three years. It’s the largest Chinese investment deal in a UK city outside of London.

Folk2Folk launches Three Counties Hub (Bridging&Commercial), Rated: B

When bank lenders say no, where does a business go? (RealBusiness), Rated: B

When bank lenders turn business owners away, they should refer them to alternative finance lenders instead. But how does it work?

However, accessing finance is still a bug-bear for many SME owners. Despite the increasing variety of options available, raising awareness is still crucial to the uptake of funding with many business owners still turning to bank lenders.

Tavener suggested aggregating all the funders into one place and creating a market comparison site. This is exactly what happened – pretty much every alternative funder was incorporated into Clifton’s Alternative Business Funding portal.

The platform now incorporates 120 different business funding products.

China

Intelligent finance new trend: UP Financial sets sail with “AI+big data” (PR Newswire), Rated: A

As the root of multiple industries, the financial industry’s evolution will make a significant contribution to the growth of the economy. On July 16, Steven Yuan, CEO of UP Financial, at the LendIT Summit in Shanghai, presented to the whole world at the commercial application of shared AI- geometric stock, which marked the growth and imagination of China’s intelligent finance. In a speech under the title of “technology-driven new finance”, he predicted that wealth management and investment decisions will become highly intelligent for the economy. It can promote financial assets growing in a geometrical progression, and be able todrive the real economy’s development, and create unlimited value. The ultimate goal of the transformation of technological finance is to break the boundary of industrial innovations and increase the social value to the economy. New intelligent finance marks this improving direction.

What’s in a name? Everything, when it comes to China’s stock market (SCMP), Rated: A

You could be forgiven for assuming that a company with a name like Shanghai P2P Financial Information Service might be in the business of, well, peer-to-peer financial information services.

But names can be misleading, particularly when it comes to the Chinese stock market.

As of last Friday, shares of P2P Financial Information traded at 6.66 yuan, more than 72 per cent shy of its close of 23.4 yuan on June 11, 2015.

European Union

Fintech funding on the rebound as Irish start-ups play part (Irish Times), Rated: A

Ireland played its part, recording fintech investments of more than $230 million (€194 million) in the three-month period, led by Plynkwhich raised €25 million in a Series A round from Swiss Privée in June.

Total global funding to fintech firms rose to $8.4 billion (€7.1 billion) from $3.6 billion (€3 billion) with European fintech investment jumping to over $2 billion (€1.7 billion). This is well below the peak investment high of $5.8 billion (€4.9 billion) seen in the fourth quarter of 2015, but up on the $880 million (€741 million) reported in the first three months of 2017.

International

Thomson Reuters adds alternative finance data to Eikon with TAB Dashboard (Finextra), Rated: AAA

Created by Cambridge-based TAB U.K., TAB Dashboard is the world’s most comprehensive source of intelligence on the global alternative finance market, and its deployment on Eikon opens up a significant new asset class for its users.

Data on the alternative finance market is difficult to obtain, with financial professionals forced to gather information on a piecemeal basis, or direct from individual platforms, which is inconsistent between services, languages and definitions and therefore extremely hard to extract insight from. The addition of TAB Dashboard to Eikon allows customers to use extensive data in a format and environment they are comfortable with and which is consistent, shaping their strategy and keeping them aware of regulatory and policy changes.

TAB Dashboard analytics shows that in 2016 an average of $40.9M was raised every single day, more than double the daily average of $18.4M in 2014, with signs that that growth is continuing along the same path.

TAB U.K. analyses data from more than 900 different alternative finance platforms, including equity, bonds, SME debt, P2P and more, and has mapped more than ten million transactions.

Today in Data: Mobile App News Breakdown (PYMNTS), Rated: A

225 million | Current amount of Paytm users prior to new messaging service launch at the end of August

$250 | Amount of coupons offered through grocery operator Food Lion’s new mobile app

31 | Number of European markets P2P payment service Klarna Bank’s new mobile app Wavy enables for mobile money transfers

India

Will RBI Regulations Facilitate Or Inhibit The P2P Lending Market? (Inc42), Rated: AAA

In the absence of proper regulations, people are often hesitant to use P2P platforms for lending and borrowing. To that end, the RBI has highlighted three main reasons peer-to-peer lending should be regulated in India.

In the 2016 paper, the RBI talked at great length about the risks of money laundering associated with peer-to-peer lending. To minimise these risks, the RBI is looking to cap the interest rates charged by P2P lending companies at the same level as NBFCs and microfinance institutions (MFIs). It also raised concerns regarding the lack of transparency in KYC and loan recovery practices.

• The P2P companies would serve only as intermediaries, responsible for matching lenders and borrowers on the platform. The portal would act as the loan originator, without the lending and borrowing actually getting reflected on its balance sheet.
• The platform will be prohibited from giving any assured return either directly or indirectly. It will, however, be allowed to opine on lender suitability and borrower creditworthiness.
• Advertisements should contain adequate mention of P2P lending regulations.
• The funds will have to move directly from the lender’s bank account to the borrower’s bank account to reduce the threat of money laundering.
• Peer-to-peer lending platforms will also be prohibited from participating in cross-border transactions, under the FEMA guidelines for transactions between residents and nonresidents.

Fintech startups like Lendingkart, KredX move towards hybrid lending model  (India Times), Rated: A

Lendingkart, which has been lending through its own books as a nonbanking financial company, is set to start co-lending with banks and other financial firms through a marketplace platform in six-nine months, chief executive Harshvardhan Lunia said.

On the other hand, KredX, an invoice discounting marketplace platform for small and medium enterprises, has applied for an NBFC licence. Consumer lending company ZestMoney is also seeking to become a non-banking financial company.

Capital Float, which started its marketplace model last year and currently co-lends with five financial institutions, is set to scale up loans disbursed through its partners to 50% of its total disbursals by the end of this fiscal year. Currently, that’s at 40%.

Sebi forms panel to study fintech impact on securities market (Livemint), Rated: A

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Wednesday formed a 10-member committee on financial and regulatory technologies, headed by Manipal Global Education chairman T.V. Mohandas Pai.

Sebi said the panel will recommend to the regulator the utilization of fintech solutions for further widening and deepening of the Indian securities market. For this, the committee has to advise Sebi on better usage of existing financing platforms, both traditional and alternative (e.g. peer to peer lending and equity crowd-funding).

The panel will also advise Sebi on how to enhance market access and improve mobilization of household savings through new delivery channels of financial products, Robo Finance, investment advisory and portfolio management services.

Asia

Polytechnics in Singapore to add fintech courses in banking and IT diplomas (Tech in Asia), Rated: A

Polytechnics in Singapore are about to start teaching fintech with the help of Germany-headquartered Fidor Bank.

The bank is working with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to insert the Fidor Student Academy Singapore program into the curriculum of banking and IT-related diplomas offered by five polytechnics in the city-state.

Canada

OnDeck partners with Payment Source in Canada (PR Newswire), Rated: AAA

OnDeck® (NYSE: ONDK), the leader in online lending for small business, announced today a partnership with Payment Source, the largest retail distribution network for prepaid products in Canada, to offer Payment Source’s Now Prepay customers access to the OnDeck online small business lending platform.

Payment Source operates the Now Prepay brand and provides prepaid mobile top ups, gift cards and financial products and services to more than 15,000 retailers throughout Canada.

Africa

Synthesis named as one of top ten fintech firms to watch (Synthesis), Rated: A

Synthesis, founded in 1997, offers highly specialised software development, consulting and integration services and technology based product solutions to banking and financial institutions in South Africa and other emerging markets.

Philippines

JG Summit diversifies into digital financing (The Standard), Rated: AAA

Conglomerate JG Summit Holdings Inc. said a unit teamed up with the founders of internet giants Skype and LU.com to form digital financial services marketplace to address the financial needs of underbanked consumers and micro and small and medium enterprises in the Philippines.

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