Marketplace Lending News Roundup – September 16

News

During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter as it happens. Then every Saturday I take the most interesting news items and blog posts from the past week and share them here.

Goldman Sachs to take on UK retail banks from Financial Times – Both banks and fintech lending platforms in the UK should be paying attention to this latest move from Goldman Sachs.

‘Once you’re a pirate, serving in the navy is hard’: Dan Kimerling goes back to his VC roots from Tearsheet – Interesting piece on an entrepreneur turned banker and the tension between those two worlds.

CECL Overview, Square’s Bid To Be A Bank, Equifax Data Breach from PeerIQ – The PeerIQ weekly newsletter analyzes a recent accounting standard change for expected credit losses.

Zopa’s Andrews warns on post-Brexit skills shortage from Peer2Peer Finance News – One of the negatives of Brexit is going to be a shortage of skilled workers argues Giles Andrews.

Employees of Fintech Firm SoFi Allege Women Are Treated Improperly from The Wall Street Journal – More from Peter Rudegeair on the treatment of women and the current allegations at SoFi.

Sex Scandal Simmered for Years Before Silicon Valley C.E.O.’s Swift Fall from The New York Times – More details from the New York Times on a history of inappropriate conduct by high level execs within SoFi.

Goldman Banks on Lending to Grow from The Wall Street Journal – Goldman Sachs is going all in on lending as an engine for future revenue growth.

Personal finance app MoneyLion is experimenting with augmented reality from Tearsheet – Augmented reality has not impacted fintech much yet but you can be sure it is coming. MoneyLion is testing it.

This 35-year-old banker left Goldman Sachs to start a fintech inspired by his mother — 5 years later Goldman gave him £100 million from Business Insider – Great piece by Oscar Williams-Grut on the £100M investment in Neyber by Goldman Sachs.

Zopa’s Janardana among confirmed speakers at LendIt Europe from Peer2Peer Finance News – A quick review of next month’s LendIt Europe conference LendIt is hosting in London.

Starling Bank launches fintech marketplace from AltFi – One of the UK’s leading digital banks Starling Bank has launched a marketplace for financial products.

Mosaic Will Sell $300 Million Worth of Solar Loans to Goldman Sachs from Greentech Media – Goldman Sachs is everywhere this week. Here they are buying $300M from solar loan provider Mosaic.

Responding to The New York Times from SoFi – SoFi responds to the recent New York Times article about their business culture and CEO Mike Cagney.

dv01 Closes $5.5M Series A Led by OCA Ventures, With Participation by Ribbit Capital, Illuminate Financial, CreditEase, Leucadia National Corporation, and Pivot Investment Partners from PR Newswire – Congrats to Perry Rahbar and the dv01 team on closing their $5.5M Series A.

Goldman Nabs Fintech Group in Push to Boost Online Lending from The Wall Street Journal – It looks like Bond Street has stopped lending and Goldman Sachs has hired most of its staff.

RealtyShares raises $28 million for commercial real estate investing from TechCrunch – Good fintech companies continue to get funded. Here is RealtyShares with a $28M Series C.

SoFi’s “FICO-Free Zone” Loan Process Was Maybe Actually Rather Full Of FICO from Dealbreaker – The horrible week for SoFi just keeps getting worse. This article accuses them of misleading borrowers around FICO.

Credit Karma to launch free ID monitoring following Equifax hack from Reuters – Responding to the Equifax hack Credit Karma will begin offering free ID monitoring next month.

Bankers see faster horses; technologists imagine cars from The Finanser – Chris Skinner responds to Jamie Dimon’s comment on bitcoin and explains why Dimon’s view is limited.

From the Lend Academy Forum

The Lend Academy forum is where investors go to discuss p2p lending. Below are some topics that were being discussed this week.

LC Email: “The Next Generation Credit Model” – Forum members share their perspective on Lending Club’s updated credit models.

Groundfloor Annoucement – Groundfloor announced their first institutional investor who will fund loans on the platform.

Throwing in the Towel – An investor discusses their decision to stop investing on Lending Club.

  • Peter Renton

    Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of Fintech Nexus, the world’s largest digital media company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series.