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As banks struggle to make sense of their wealth of customer information, the burgeoning industry of online marketplace lending is finding novel ways to glean insights from unconventional data points.
November 5 -
Blue Elephant Capital Management is planning a second fund to buy loans originated on online marketplaces. Unlike its first fund, this one will be unlevered, backed entirely by institutional investors' cash.
December 3
Orchard Platform,a company that provides analytics and data support for the online marketplace lending industry, has launched an online dating site of sorts to help investors find online lenders from which to buy loans.
The database will provide basic information about online lenders, including the asset classes and terms of the loans they make and the track records of the firms themselves. It will be marketed to institutional investors as a way to assess which originators to back. It will also provide originators a clearinghouse for their data.
Online marketplace lenders have relied heavily on
"As institutional investors have entered the marketplace lending space they bring a more mature set of expectations to the market," Matt Burton, chief executive officer of Orchard, said in a press release. "Being able to research and compare loan originators is a valuable tool and something were excited to offer."
Orchard, whose founders came from the banking and tech startup industries, launched last year. In October, Orchard received $12 million in investments from former officers of Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Capital One. Prior to that Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, Thomas Glocer of Thomson Reuters, and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin had backed the company.
