Commercial lending

From Beijing to Paris to Dublin, peer-to-peer lending is blossoming. A quick look at the industry in various parts of the globe.

The combination of swelling deposits and weak loan growth continues to be a tough problem for regional banks. U.S. Bancorp's Richard Davis thinks higher loan growth is just around the corner to solve the problem, but PNC's Bill Demchak fears deposits could flee faster than lending will ramp up.

ZestFinance in Los Angeles has introduced a loan product for subprime borrowers whose credit scores nearly qualify as prime.

Pave, a marketplace lender, has partnered with Cross River Bank of Teaneck, N.J., to help it expand its online, short-term loan product nationwide.

RealtyMogul.com, a Los Angeles-based marketplace lending platform, announced a new $35 million round in venture capital funding Tuesday.

Signature Bank in New York has partnered with Financial Software Solutions to expand the products and services that it offers bankruptcy trustees.

Signature Bank in New York has formed a subsidiary to specialize in municipal finance and hired three executives for the division.

CommonBond Chief Executive David Klein discusses the company's strategy to cross-sell financial products to the firm's student loan borrowers, many of whom are young and affluent.

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.

A new crop of P-to-P loan platforms is focusing on commercial real estate loans that get ignored by banks.

Requiring brokers to come clean with customers about conflicts of interest sounds like an easy way to address biases. But disclosures are only effective if recipients understand how the conflict has influenced the advisor and have a way to correct that influence.

While some predict that fintech startups will soon overthrow banks, a boom in partnerships between the two industries is far more likely. Startups will benefit from access to new markets and infrastructure, while banks will stay on the cutting edge of innovation.

Moody's managing director Will Black questions whether marketplace lenders, which generally don’t retain credit risk, have enough incentive to maintain the quality of the loans they're facilitating. He also praises the P-to-P firms for publishing detailed loan-level data.

The Detroit automaker's lending arm is teaming up with a peer-to-peer car-sharing app — a move that could foreshadow changes in how the industry underwrites auto loans.

At this year's EMERGE Forum in Austin, Texas, the Financial Solutions Lab — a $30 million, five-year initiative managed by the Center for Financial Services innovation with founding partner JPMorgan Chase — revealed the winners of a recent competition for apps that tackle consumers' cash flow challenges. The nine winning organizations, chosen from 298 applicants and 14 finalists, received a combined $3 million, along with mentorship, networking, peer learning and national partnership opportunities. The following is a look at their solutions to the problems of the working poor and others ill-served by traditional financial products.

PayPal, Amazon, Square and American Express have all built new businesses by extending credit to merchants that already rely on their payment networks. Their client relationships give them certain advantages over banks, marketplace lenders and others.

After it all but stopped making real estate and development loans following the housing crash, Farmers & Merchants Bank has increased its real estate loans by more than 61% over the last two years. It's a figure that's likely to keep rising as California's real estate market heats up and the $5.6 billion-asset bank continues to add commercial real estate, construction and mortgage lending specialists to keep pace.

As investment dollars flood into the alternative lending sector, fueling the rapid growth of early entrants such as Lending Club, lots of smaller online loan platforms are also popping up. Many of these new firms are specializing in narrow lending niches, touting their expertise in underwriting particular forms of credit. Here's a rundown of some of these specialties.

CircleBack Lending, an online marketplace that offers installment loans to consumers, has completed its first securitization deal, the Boca Raton, Fla., firm said Friday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service is raising the cost of its home-loan guarantees that enable borrowers to purchase homes in certain areas without down payments.