Featured Headlines

November 26, 2015 @ 8:43 am By Conrad Ford  |  

Overdrafts have been small businesses’ go-to source of working capital for years now — a dependable way to cover short-term cash flow issues and ride out periods of instability. But since 2011, the banks have reduced or removed business overdrafts at a rate of £5… Read More

November 25, 2015 @ 10:46 am By JD Alois  |  

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne gave a rousing speech highlighting the government’s success and pinpointing areas for economic improvement today in his annual trip to Parliament. The Autumn Statement delivered by Osborne can certainly be viewed as a success once you compare the UK economy… Read More

November 24, 2015 @ 10:31 pm By JD Alois  |  

Dianrong, a leading peer to peer lending platform in China, raised a respectable $207 million a couple months back.  Now the online lender is considering its next funding round which may hit half a billion dollars as the Chinese P2P market continues to outpace traditional… Read More

November 24, 2015 @ 12:02 pm By JD Alois  |  

The  future of banking is almost here and Atom Bank, a digital only platform, has just received a solid £45 million investment from BBVA. The capital injection will give BBVA a 29.5% ownership stake in Atom. According to Atom, this completes the company’s £85 million… Read More

November 24, 2015 @ 8:34 am By Erin Hobey  |  

  “Our prediction is that the marketplace lending industry will undergo continued and increasing growth, opening up new investment opportunities and new avenues of capital formation for start-ups and small businesses.” It’s not too late to participate in the 2015 Americas Alternative Finance Benchmarking Survey;… Read More

November 23, 2015 @ 8:00 am By Georgia Quinn  |  

  In the wake of the recent passage of the final rules implementing Title III of the JOBS Act and Regulation CF, Indiegogo has been on my mind. And why not, they are one of the leaders in the US crowdfunding industry, focused on rewards… Read More

November 20, 2015 @ 8:24 pm By Anthony Zeoli  |  

In what is one of the largest equity crowdfunding rounds in the world, Elio Motors has received approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to seek $25 million in equity capital under the recently released Regulation A+ rules.. Elio, one of the very first… Read More

November 20, 2015 @ 9:25 am By JD Alois  |  

Kevin Laws, Chief Operating Officer of AngelList, delivered an “illuminating” presentation at the SEC Government Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation yesterday. AngelList, a leader in the equity crowdfunding sector, has become an important catalyst in the online finance space innovating and expanding its… Read More

November 19, 2015 @ 11:19 pm By Spencer Li  |  

When the State Council of China issued its guidelines for the internet finance industry in July, the single most talked about guideline among platform operators is the government’s encouragement of banks to provide custodian services for investor funds used for platform transactions. Many have interpreted… Read More

November 18, 2015 @ 9:00 am By Erin Hobey  |  

“As the crowdfunding economy grows it will spur economic prosperity, create new jobs and ultimately improve follow-on funding outcomes for scalable ventures looking to succeed in the incredibly dynamic and connected global markets we live in today.” As readers know, The Centre for Alternative Finance at University of… Read More

November 18, 2015 @ 4:00 am By JD Alois  |  

Taking a page out of the august Economist, Bitbond has launched BitcoinPPI; an index that measures bitcoin purchasing power measured in Big Macs.  Yes, that eternal benchmark of consumable wealth is put to use once again. The hamburger. The Big Mac index was launched by the… Read More

November 17, 2015 @ 10:32 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  A co-founder of Funding Societies in his 20s, Reynold Wijaya is now the peer-to-peer lending company’s chief operations (Singapore) leader, and has helped bring the company’s funding to near $1.25 million. Funding Societies was among the first homegrown P2P lending companies to bring in a trustee registered with the… Read More

November 16, 2015 @ 10:00 am By Georgia Quinn  |  

At a time when some are claiming that marketplace lending has not gone far enough to challenge the traditional banking system, Sam Hodges and Funding Circle have quietly proven that steadily acting on your principles and advancing your mission, can achieve meaningful change. It had… Read More

November 15, 2015 @ 1:00 pm By Erin Hobey  |  

  “I think that what OurCrowd and others have done in this space until now has been quite subversive and wonderful and democratic.” OurCrowd, which is run by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jon Medved, has put at least $170 million to work in roughly… Read More

November 12, 2015 @ 8:13 pm By Erin Hobey  |  

  “I think Fintech, particularly as it applies to lending, has the capacity to completely transform how consumers and small business use credit. The best platforms are true innovators, underwriting consumers and small businesses in new ways using data that was simply unavailable ten or… Read More

November 12, 2015 @ 10:08 am By Samantha Hurst  |  

Just a couple of months after announcing Big Blue Parrot as its first investment exit, Israel-based co-investment crowdfunding platform iAngels, revealed on Thursday that portfolio company Flayvr, operating as My Roll, was acquired by security software giant AVG Technologies NV (NYSE:AVG). Details of the transaction were not released. iAngels is an… Read More

November 11, 2015 @ 6:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

The study is supported by KPMG, CME Group Foundation, the ACCA and 20 leading industry and academic research partners. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School, the Tsinghua University Graduate School of Shenzhen and the University of Sydney Business School are… Read More

November 10, 2015 @ 8:00 am By JD Alois  |  

Steve Wallman spent a good portion of the 90’s at the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Wallman’s official bio at the SEC notes that his tenure was marked by the creation of the first Advisory Committee on Capital Formation… Read More

November 9, 2015 @ 9:00 am By Georgia Quinn  |  

  It has been almost a year and a half since my last visit to Lending Club and my last interview with Renaud Laplanche its CEO. A lot has changed since then, but even more has stayed the same. Lending Club is now a public… Read More

November 9, 2015 @ 8:00 am By Nicholas Tommarello  |  

I spent a lovely weekend reading (and re-reading) all 685 pages of the final SEC rules of Title III the Jobs Act. Ah, the joy of memorizing regulations! We helped Congress pass the JOBS Act back in 2012, to help everyone — no matter how wealthy — invest as… Read More