Marketplace lending

The marketplace lender CommonBond announced that it has raised $35 million, which it plans to use to expand its operations across the country.

The San Francisco company hopes to lower its costs by driving out human intervention as much as possible. To get there, it has made the counterintuitive decision to locate its operations staff in one of the country’s most expensive cities.

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.

Tech investors love fast-growing marketplace lenders like Social Finance, but Wall Street has taken a dimmer view of them. A huge equity fundraising round should allow SoFi to keep fueling rapid growth while remaining privately owned.

The Chicago-based online consumer lender, which focuses on borrowers with less than pristine credit histories, is getting a boost from JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and Jefferies.

Regulated by multiple agencies, marketplace lenders reduce the financial system's leverage, provide greater financial transparency and ultimately deliver a better product to consumers and investors.

The global loan platforms present an extreme example of the ongoing clash between the fast-moving financial technology sphere and the staid world of financial regulation.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Springstone Financial, acquired last year by Lending Club, misled borrowers into thinking loans carried zero interest.

The Treasury Department announced Tuesday that members of the public will have an additional month to submit comments about the online marketplace lending industry.

Social Finance Inc. has hired Joanne Bradford, a veteran of the technology and media industries, as chief operating officer.

While marketplace lenders have introduced valuable innovation into financial services, they carry a fundamental flaw that threatens to undermine their business, destabilize financial markets and cause real economic hardship.