Unison has reported new funding that brings its total capital raised to $300 million also announcing new leadership appointments; the new capital will help the company continue its focus on providing more affordable home ownership for US consumers; the funding round included Ron Suber of Prosper Marketplace who will also join the firm as a strategic advisor; the firm has recently added several new executives focused on sales and marketing. Source
Upgrade has launched for consumer lending; Lend Academy provides details on the platform's fundraising, lending criteria and lending structure; Renaud Laplanche has raised $60 million for the new company; its loans will focus on high credit quality borrowers with low debt-to-income and minimum monthly free cash flow of $1,000; loans range from $2,000 to $50,000; the platform will be partnering with WebBank for loan originations and will then acquire the loans and sell them to institutional investors with some portion of the loans retained on the firm's balance sheet. Source
Company is offering 7.7 million shares at $12 - $14 per share and may raise up to $124 million; Elevate will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange with ticker ELVT; UBS is leading the IPO with participation from Credit Suisse and Jefferies; according to Elevate CEO Ken Rees: "When we began our IPO process over a year ago, we told you we would grow revenue and profits throughout 2016, while continuing to provide the most responsible credit products in our space. In fact, we improved the company in almost every way." Source
Upstart has been steadily growing its online lending business and has now announced a new fundraising as well as the launch of a white label software as a service (SaaS) product; the fundraising will add $32.5 million in new capital from investors including: Rakuten, a large US-based asset manager, Third Point Ventures, Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital; Upstart has emerged with many significant developments in the online loan business including next-day funding and a robust proprietary credit underwriting platform built on machine learning and modern technology; with the evolution of the business, the firm has developed a new white label SaaS product called by Powered by Upstart which it is launching at LendIt USA; the service is an extension of the firm's proprietary credit underwriting system driven by machine learning and modern data science. Source
Marketplace lending originations have been increasing significantly in the US and China however in 2016 both countries saw a number of challenges influencing the market and increasing risk; Moody's analyzes market similarities and differences in the two countries; reports on the variance in lending model structuring; notes that US marketplace lenders are more deeply integrated with partner-bank relationships; while structuring and partnerships vary considerably between the two countries, there are similarities, including reliance on big data, lack of credit cycle testing and ongoing development of regulatory standards. Source
In October 2016, Prospect Marketplace Lending Corp. filed an N-8A and an N-2 indicating the company's investment status and plans for managing a closed-end fund investing 80% of the assets in marketplace lending investments; the firm has now filed a Form 40-APP; the Form 40-APP requests permission to offer multiple share classes, each with its own fee and expense structure. Source
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index increased to 105.9 in January and reported its highest level since December 2004; in December 2016 the Index increased 7.4 points and has since continued to gain; small businesses have reported plans to increase workers and their optimism overall has been helped by policy proposals from the Trump administration. Source
Crain's talked with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon this week as he toured the Midwest, meeting with bank employees; Dimon discussed the credit market; also gave his perspective on online lending, noting some of the risks from depending on investor capital versus bank capital. Source
Skype users can now make P2P payments with PayPal in 22 countries; the partnership is a first on mobile for the two companies however they have partnered in the past for P2P payments through the desktop application; the deal adds to numerous partnerships PayPal has made in recent months, helping to expand its services to a broader network. Source
The US District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a decision in Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC; in determining whether New York or Delaware law governed the contractual relationship of the parties, the judge ruled that applying Delaware law would violate usury policies in New York which limit interest to 25% per year. Source