Lending Club Taps New CEO, Cuts 179 Jobs as Revenues Weigh
#Lending #Club has chosen a new CEO to help guide them out of a lackluster 2016 fiscal year thus far.
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Wrap of Week #24: Robo-advisors, Blockchain; Insurtech and Small Business; in-store mobile payments; Marketplace lending
The UK is in the spotlight for many reasons (some good, some bad). We gave it first position this #week but we also traveled from Australia to the US. 21 #roboinvesting ventures in the UK & the Blackrock tale. Sizing the UK #robo-advisory market, which seems on the way to triple its size. An in…Read more #Wrap of Week #24: Robo-advisors, #Blockchain; #Insurtech and #Small Business; in-store #mobile #payments; #Marketplace #lending
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The Emerging Value Chain Ecosystem in Marketplace Lending
In ye olden days it was called P2P #Lending. You can still see the vestiges of that model in services such as Lending Club and Prosper. Everything happened on one service. However as these marketplaces grew, a networked #ecosystem has started to emerge. We are 100% confident that this networkedRead More
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Marketplace Lending: Attractive, Stable Returns in a Zero Interest Rate World.
“Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history. $10 trillion of negative interest rate bonds. This is a supernova that will explode one day”
-Bill Gross, Co-founder of PIMCO
Legendary bond investor Bill Gross doesn´t mince words here. The coming supernova will destroy the life savings of countless hard working people worldwide. Yet most investors continue sleepwalking toward an impoverished future. Not only is a very large percentage of private savings held in today´s radically overvalued government and corporate bonds, but most public and private pension savings as well are invested in these same markets.
Why do savings continue to pour into government and corporate bonds despite very low or even negative yields and the potential for huge losses when interest rates normalize at some future time? Based on my twenty-five years of experience as an #investment advisor, my guess would be simply momentum, along with a self-serving investment management industry that consistently puts the customer´s interest last. Asset management is a huge industry that continues to turn its wheels as it has for decades, investing a large share of the savings of its customers in government and corporate bonds. The fact that the endless quantitative-easing bond purchasing programs by leading central #banks has distorted the fixed-income capital markets to a very dangerous extent is not sufficient to stop these wheels, especially while billions of dollars in fees and commissions depend on continuing to do “business as usual”.
What is an investor to do? The answer is surprisingly simple. The first step to get out of a hole is to stop digging. Accept Bill Gross´ wake-up call, and invest no further in traditional bonds or bond funds that hold overvalued, often negative yielding fixed income instruments. Rather, take some time, do some research, and educate oneself about the growing alternatives to traditional fixed income that do provide for steady, attractive returns without the risk of being burned in the supernova that Bill Gross predicts. In short, my recommendation is to turn to #marketplace #lending.
Marketplace lending, also known as marketplace finance, is where savers can secure attractive returns by lending funds to individuals and businesses directly without the intervention of banks or purchasing bonds on the public exchanges. These loans can be made directly through any number of online platforms, or through investment in specialized investment vehicles (mutual funds or unit investment trusts) that focus on marketplace finance. At this point, the track-record is sufficiently clear, and the new investment vehicles sufficiently developed for me to make this recommendation to any serious client who is willing to learn new ways of building their savings without accepting the risks of grossly overvalued bonds.
A further advantage of this approach to achieving reasonable returns on savings is that marketplace finance largely focuses on short maturities (as short as 60 to 90 days, and almost never more than 3 years). These short maturities reflect the needs of business and individuals for loans (often secured by assets or insurance policies) for inventory acquisition, trade finance, small business expansion, aircraft leasing, consumer loans, factoring, discounting invoices, or any of a myriad of alternatives that allow investors to earn returns from deploying their savings into the real economy of commerce and trade, rather than the quantitative easing bubble in the public bond markets created by central banks since the 2007 financial meltdown. An important advantage of these short maturities is that they permit “self liquidation”, allowing the investor to recover invested funds if necessary through maturity of the underlying loans, even if secondary markets are disrupted during a financial crisis.
Let´s look at the track-record now. For US investors, the Orchard US Consumer Marketplace Lending Index demonstrates a 6% return in the last twelve months, with notable stability and predictability that will allow even anxious investors to sleep at night.
In case one believes that the US experience is exceptional, let´s look at the UK market, where the Liberum Alfi Returns index tracks investor returns from the leading marketplace lending platforms in Great Britain. Once again, the twelve month lagging return is approximately 6%. It is noteworthy that this index demonstrates that even in the midst of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, investor returns never were lower than 5%.
Finally, for investors who prefer to delegate to professional management rather than lend directly on platforms, I would recommend the pioneering and innovative Luxembourg SICAV-SIF, Synthesis Market-Based Financing Fund. Founder and CEO Spyros Papadopoulos has built an attractive track record of over three years of positive returns month after month through employing a variety of lending strategies moving well beyond #P2P lending, with a particular expertise in trade finance.
As per the warning from Bill Gross, there is a clear and present danger in the bond markets today that could have catastrophic consequences for savers, as well as wiping out their public and private pension plans. The good news is that there are alternatives available for investors who are willing to face the facts and make the effort now to learn about the attractive and low volatility returns that marketplace finance can provide.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameslevy01″ connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”James Levy”] is Partner at Clearwater Private Investment and this post was originally published on linkedin.
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Wrap of Week #23: Crowdfunding, Digital wallets & POS, Marketplace lending
  Last #week we crossed the 10,000 subscribers milestone. We are taking a moment in this weekly #wrap to celebrate with our community. Bring a colleague to join the&160;community and enrich our open-source research. Coverage last week was global; The West, with a German, French, and Canadian focus. The East with Australia. Enjoy. Is a…Read more Wrap of Week #23: #Crowdfunding, #Digital #wallets & POS, #Marketplace&160;#lending
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Lenny Includes Personal Finance Services in Lending App
Two months in, #Lenny – millennial-focused mobile #lending app – is ready to hit the market with new budgeting and billpay products. Launched mid-March, Lenny’s goal is to help millennials build credit scores while still in school, with loans up to $ 10,000 and 0% interest (if paid on time). So far,Read More
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What’s the Trojan Horse Distribution Strategy for Online Business Lending?
An efficient and unique product #distribution model is critical if you want to scale your business. This is evident in the small business #online #lending space. Why? Well, as competition increases in the sector within well-trodden distribution channels, two things happen: Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) in popular channels will increaseRead More
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Marketplace Lending Depends on Savers Moving on From Bank Deposits
The #Fintech is dead meme is now in full flood. Authoritative sources such as this Deloitte report (with sensationalist headline #from Business Insider) add credibility to this meme. This feels like the Internet is dead consensus in 2002. At the time I vividly recall the relief with which media companiesRead More
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100 Kreditprojekte und kein einziger Ausfall. Schweizer Peer to Peer Lending Plattform Creditgate24 Im Interview
Finanzprodukt.ch hat den CEO von der #Schweizer #Peer to Peer #Lending #Plattform #CreditGate24 interviewt. Das #Fintech Unternehmen will zur grössten Plattform der Schweiz avancieren und hat einige weitere spannende Facts zum Online Kreditgeschäft verraten. –
Die Schweizer Peer to Peer Lending Plattform will zur grössten dieser Art in der Schweiz aufsteigen und sagt damit den Konkurrenten den Kampf an. Im #Interview erklärt der CEO zudem auch wie das mit den spannenden Geschäfts- P2P-Krediten funktioniert.
Lesen Sie das Interview mit dem CEO Christoph Müller hier:The post 100 Kreditprojekte und kein einziger Ausfall. Schweizer Peer to Peer Lending Plattform Creditgate24 Im Interview appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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FinAccel takes on Southeast Asia’s lending industry with easy online credit service
#Credit card penetration is one of those problems that isn’t really a ‘problem&8217; in the West. In the U.S. alone, 232 million adults are said to own at least one credit card, with 18 percent of consumers in the country owning two or three cards. Read More
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