Letter From The Editor – Sept/Oct 2016

What is marketplace lending? Lately it’s been looking more and more like Wall Street and banking. Goldman Sachs is now playing a more prominent role in the space while the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is considering a limited-charter framework, which would make the non-bank lenders more bank-like. Not to mention that things like securitizations, bond ratings and vintage performance are dominating news headlines. It all sounds very Wall Street indeed.

But while a segment of the industry looks to effectively merge back into the traditional banking system [ I suppose they are becoming “reBanked” 😉 ], there’s another segment chugging along just fine without the banks and we write with you in mind.

To that end, we asked, what are the challenges with funding merchants in Puerto Rico? Is it okay to fund marijuana-based businesses in states where it’s legal? And what’s the latest challenge to affect telemarketing efforts?

Maybe you are surprised to hear that telemarketing even has a place in the world of fintech especially since the media hype over the last few years has imagined an online-only Internet utopia where all lending happens in the cloud. Meanwhile, millions upon millions of dollars of transactions start with a guy or gal and a cold call.

There are rules, of course. You can’t just call anybody using whatever means you want and some people on the receiving end of those phone calls know that. Woe betide you who calls the wrong person the wrong way, our research discovered. The TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) is creating another burdensome layer of cost and some of the tactics being employed to extract penalties warrant close attention. It might not be future regulations that cause problems but existing ones. In this issue, we’ll show you why smiling and dialing do not always go hand in hand.

Sean Murray is the President and Chief Editor of deBanked and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on twitter. You can view all future deBanked events here.