Tagged: perspective

August 30, 2016 @ 4:43 pm By Oleg Seydak  |  

In recent weeks, marketplace lenders have hit a rough patch. Once the darlings of Wall Street, they have now come under fire, after a string of internal scandals and disappointing earnings. For the traditional banks – who have been saying, “we need to disrupt these… Read More

August 30, 2016 @ 9:04 am By Jason Best  |  

As any entrepreneur knows, when you are creating something new, there are no shortage of naysayers.  Among the 3 types of clients we work with (investors, corporates and financial regulators) the regulators tend to look at new things most skeptically.  But, of the many questions… Read More

August 28, 2016 @ 5:33 pm By JD Alois  |  

Steven Dresner of Dealflow.com is one of the regular suspects in the online capital formation sector.  He has been an active voice and participant in the shift to leverage the power of the internet to make capital formation more efficient. Working with broker-dealers and other… Read More

August 25, 2016 @ 3:41 pm By JD Alois  |  

Publishing on the pages of American Banker, Todd Baker has written off the entire industry of marketplace lending. Baker states, “it should be obvious now that marketplace lending is unsustainable.” A pretty strong statement for a sector of alternative finance that has, until recently, experienced… Read More

August 25, 2016 @ 12:11 am By JD Alois  |  

Apple, Google, Amazon, PayPal & Intuit Provide the Firepower Behind Fintech Advocacy Group Financial Innovation Now. Back in the fall of 2015, an announcement was made regarding the creation of a new public policy coalition representing some of the largest names in tech: Apple, Google,… Read More

August 22, 2016 @ 12:06 pm By JD Alois  |  

An article in WSJ.com today states the “regulatory advantage may be fleeting” for online lenders. The author pointed to an initiative by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that may add new rules for banks working with online lenders that could add cost to these… Read More

August 19, 2016 @ 2:57 pm By JD Alois  |  

  A few weeks back Crowdfund Insider published an article on the regulatory environment in Canada that labeled new crowdfunding securities exemptions as “Dead in the Water“.  In brief, regulators in multiple provinces have enacted rules that were ostensibly created to foster entrepreneurship and access… Read More

August 19, 2016 @ 2:07 pm By JD Alois  |  

The youngest financial regulatory agency of them all, the Consumer and Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has announced its new Advisory Board and Council Members. The CFPB, established under Dodd-Frank, was mandated to create these advisory boards and councils. While the various groups were represented by many… Read More

August 18, 2016 @ 8:00 am By JD Alois  |  

Under Reg D more than a trillion dollars is raised each year for companies that are not publicly traded. This market is huge – far larger than the annual rate of IPOs. Yet these private placements are only available to “accredited investors”: Individuals who earn… Read More

August 16, 2016 @ 5:17 pm By Amy Wan & Darren Marble  |  

I read an article in WIRED the other day about the LaFerrari, the world’s most coveted supercar, and one particular sentence stuck out. As writer Jordan Golson plainly stated, “When it comes to this car, you don’t choose Ferrari. Ferrari chooses you.” Well, ladies and… Read More

August 12, 2016 @ 8:34 am By Bret Conkin  |  

So you want to start a Crowdfunding Portal…. Crowdfunding and Fintech in general are demonstrating dramatic growth due to many factors including the growth of the sharing economy, technology innovations and the liberalization of securities regulations in the US and Canada. A sure indicator of… Read More

August 9, 2016 @ 10:20 pm By JD Alois  |  

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Chief Executive Andrew Bailey gave a Parliament Treasury Committee a crash course on Crowdfunding 101 this past June.  The letter by Bailey was recently posted on the Treasury Committee website, along with a statement from Andrew Tyrie MP, Chairman of the Committee,… Read More

August 8, 2016 @ 12:13 pm By JD Alois  |  

Orchard Marketplace is a platform that is uniquely positioned at the intersection of institutional money and online lending. If you are a large investor you are using Orchard to manage and access loans on all marketplace lending platforms. This perspective means that Orchard can easily… Read More

August 5, 2016 @ 11:46 am By JD Alois  |  

Earlier this week PwC (under the DeNovo label) published a wide-ranging report on the evolution of Fintech. The document was the production of many PwC executives covering topics like blockchain, payments, banking and the overall transformation of financial services. In one respect the report is… Read More

August 3, 2016 @ 12:45 pm By Dave Van Niekerk  |  

We’ve heard the sensationalism before – That the unbridled array of opportunities in Africa are either being “squandered”, “exploited” or just now seeping to the surface for globalization to capitalize on the ‘Rising Continent’ in a timely fashion. Though rhetoric, it’s no doubt significant, though that… Read More

August 3, 2016 @ 10:45 am By JD Alois  |  

China is the largest Fintech market in the world. This is due in part to the fact that China has a population that is north of 1.3 billion and economically is first in GDP (PPP) at over $20 trillion. But it is also due to… Read More

July 28, 2016 @ 5:45 pm By Anthony Zeoli  |  

In early June, the U.S. House of Representatives, Financial Services Committee, approved the “Fix Crowdfunding Act” bill (HR 4855). Maybe it’s the title of the bill that is misleading, but since then I have seen multiple articles which incorrectly describe what this legislation, if fully… Read More

July 27, 2016 @ 10:34 pm By JD Alois  |  

  Canada is the second largest country in the world by land mass and the 10th largest economy by nominal GDP. At around 35 million in total population, Canada is a country that has consistently punched above its weight class economically. The extensive border with… Read More

July 25, 2016 @ 1:46 pm By JD Alois  |  

Gillian Roche-Saunders, is a partner at the law firm of Bates, Wells & Braithwaite in London.  She is a leading regulatory consultant in the Fintech sector having been engaged in alternative finance for the past five years – before the FCA jumped in to officially… Read More

July 22, 2016 @ 9:06 am By Odysseas Papadimitriou  |  

Entrepreneurship is a tough slog no matter where you live, considering that 51% of all new businesses fail within five years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. But location still matters, despite what the digitized nature of contemporary commerce might lead you to believe. Sure,… Read More