I first became aware of CreditEase back in June 2013 at the inaugural LendIt conference in New York. We met...
There was an article published in American Banker yesterday titled, Bank Branches Don’t Die, They Evolve. For those who don’t...
The Wall Street Journal reports on publicly listed funds that will purchase marketplace lending loans; the new funds are setup as interval funds and will open access to investors who might not otherwise consider investing in loans made by marketplace lenders; article highlights fees and minimums of offerings by RiverNorth and Stone Ridge. Source
Prospect Marketplace Lending Corp. has filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a fund investing in marketplace loans; the firm has filed an N-8A and an N-2 indicating its investment company status and plans for managing a closed-end fund; the closed-end fund will invest 80% of its assets in marketplace lending investments. Source
Maples Fund Services has announced it will extend its fund administration services to include marketplace lending; seeks to capitalize on the growing number of funds emerging in the space; firm has made significant investment in technology to provide a leading market service which will include reconciliation, loan-level record keeping, third-party valuations, and risk and performance reports. Source
[Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Tharon Smith, Managing Director of LendIt China. Tharon is an expert in...
Analysts at asset manager, Bernstein, believe the future is bright for robo advisors; in a recent client memo the firm concluded that BlackRock and Fidelity will eventually incorporate them into their business and technology giants Google and Facebook could be their main competition; though the current disruption from robo advisors is minimal, the largest one has $60 billion AUM as compared to Fidelity with $5.1 trillion AUM, the technology is what will be most useful for the wealth management industry; you have already seen big names like Deutsche Bank and UBS launch robo advisors, while BlackRock and Invesco have made acquisitions of the technology. Source
Fund manager, Ben Conway of Hawksmoor, promotes alternative credit as a risk averse investment in the current market; with cash levels reaching 15 year highs according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, many investment managers have significantly increased their low risk fixed income allocations; Hawksmoor says the growing number of alternative credit investments are providing a good area of value across all markets and a strong fixed income alternative. Source
State Street and the Alternative Investment Management Association have released a report on decreased liquidity in the investment market; approximately half of respondents see less market liquidity as a long-term factor and three-fifths of respondents are considering less trading liquidity in their investment strategies; report cites new market entrants, electronic platforms and peer-to-peer lending as reasons for increased illiquidity in the market overall; report says investors are focusing on three areas to adapt to the shift in market liquidity including rationalizing risk, optimizing for liquidity, and implementing new rules and tools. Source
The Ranger Direct Lending Fund has reported plans for share issuance totaling 200 million British pounds through 2017; the Fund currently has a 40 million British pound issuance planned for December; it also raised 30 million British pounds in July and 23.2 million British pounds in November of 2016; according to a statement from Ranger Direct Lending, "The company believes that debt instruments originated or issued by direct lending platforms are an attractive and growing asset class that have the potential to provide higher returns for investors than other, more widely available, fixed income products."; growth from the asset class and potential returns are factors driving the new issuances. Source