Marketplace lending

Marketplace lenders seek to disrupt traditional financial services with online platforms that connect borrowers to investors. But in real estate, this burgeoning sector has taken an approach that seeks to coexist with, rather than supplant, the traditional mortgage market.

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions is calling for stricter regulation of marketplace lending.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and from our social media platforms.

In a rapidly growing market outside the purview of the Truth in Lending Act or state usury caps, online lenders' rates and fees can be next to impossible to compare.

A growing number of fintech startups are appealing to the sensibilities of millennials by meeting social missions and, in some cases, by tying the amount of business they generate to the amount they give back to charity or to their customers.

Wall Street banks are scaling back their role in supporting debt sales that have helped online lending companies double their originations every year since 2010.

Marketplace lenders and other alternative finance companiesshould be perceived not as a threat, but rather as a group of pioneers opening up opportunities for those banks that elect to buy, build or partner in this market.

Many community banks seem to have forgotten that they are most valuable for their ability to identify customers' pain and put an end to it. But fierce competition from fintech startups like Lending Club and Kabbage offers a reminder that they cannot afford to disregard this reality.

Freshly minted Capify combines subsidiaries in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, aiming to strike multinational partnerships.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and from our social media platforms.