Articles by deBanked Staff
Judge Okays Leave to Add Additional Defendants in Kalamata Capital / Biz2Credit Lawsuit
December 12, 2017A three-year-old lawsuit pending in the New York Supreme Court has experienced a flurry of motion practice, according to the docket. The latest order issued by the Honorable Kelly O’Neill Levy granted Kalamata Capital leave to amend the complaint to include both Direct Lending Investments, LLC and Direct Lending Income Fund LP as defendants.
A key claim in this case is the allegation of tortious interference. A previous legal brief on the matter can be read here.
The case can be found in the New York Supreme Court under index number 653749/2014.
Yellowstone Capital Surpasses $2 Billion in Originations
December 8, 2017Jersey City-based Yellowstone Capital has surpassed $2 billion in originated deals. The milestone was announced Thursday evening at the company’s year-end holiday soirée.
The company was founded in 2009.
Yellowstone Capital Funds $100 Million Over Last 60 Days
December 1, 2017An email circulated by Jersey City-based Yellowstone Capital yesterday, confirmed that the company had originated $50 million in deals for the month of November. The figured tied the record set in the previous month, bringing the 60-day total to $100 million.
Two sales representatives ended up in a tie for top performer of the month, each originating $4.65 million. Juan Monegro, whom deBanked interviewed almost two years ago, was right behind them at $4.55 million.
Cleveland Fed Retracts Their Report on P2P Lending
November 18, 2017Here’s something you don’t see every day. A paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland about peer-to-peer lending was so dubious, that it has been taken down.
Since working paper no. 17-18 and related commentary on peer-to-peer lending were posted on our website on November 9, the authors have received several questions about the composition of the underlying data set they used in their analysis. In light of the comments received, the authors are currently revising their paper to further clarify the data sample they used in the study. Their revised paper will be posted as soon as it is completed.
– Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland after analysts poked major holes in their findings
P2P Lending evangelist Peter Renton, a LendIt co-founder, was one of the first to challenge it. One issue was a chart purporting to plot delinquency rates in p2p lending going back to 2006.
“This chart shows that the lowest delinquencies from P2P loans occurred in 2006. Really?” Renton wrote on his blog. “I am sorry but this is just plain wrong and I challenge the authors to show me the actual data this is based upon. In 2006, the only consumer P2P lending (or any significant online lending) platform in existence in this country was Prosper and their 2006 vintage was terrible.”
Nat Hoopes, executive director of the Marketplace Lending Association (MLA), was even more vocal. In an op-ed he wrote for American Banker, Hoopes says, “In our view, this paper — ‘The Taste of Peer-to-Peer Loans’ — and its accompanying materials show that a lack of precision and understanding of subject matter can result in significant inaccuracies. The report’s authors presented findings that seemed to reflect issues with the P-to-P industry, but they actually relied on data from a much broader category of loans. The result was a misleading and brutally critical report about the P-to-P industry that was actually based in part on data from more traditional loans.”
Online lenders had reason to fret over the report as the Cleveland Fed did more than just publish charts. “P2P loans resemble predatory loans in terms of the segment of the consumer market they serve and their impact on consumers’ finances,” the Fed concluded. “Given that P2P lenders are not regulated or supervised for antipredatory laws, lawmakers and regulators may need to revisit their position on online-lending marketplaces.”
The worst offense, according to MLA’s Hoopes, was that the data the Cleveland Fed relied on was not even p2p lending data. A senior VP at Transunion had reportedly admitted that the data used comprised of both traditional loans and online loans that had been requested by the Fed a long time ago to use for a different study.
Oops.
Check Out The Preliminary Agenda of Broker Fair 2018
November 15, 2017The preliminary agenda of Broker Fair 2018 was published to the event’s website on Tuesday evening. While subject to revisions between now and May 14th, Broker Fair is already shaping up to be the hallmark event for the MCA and small business lending industry. Fifteen sponsors have already signed on including National Funding, RapidAdvance, and Funding Metrics as Platinum-level and CFG Merchant Solutions as Gold-level.
Broker Fair 2018 will be the largest gathering of merchant cash advance and business loan brokers in the country. Until now, there’s never been anything like it.
To register, sign up online or contact Sarah@brokerfair.org
We hope to see you in Brooklyn at The William Vale in May!
Update 4-26-18:/strong> Most recent version of the agenda below
Don’t Forget About FastFlex
November 13, 2017
The OnDeck-Chase partnership isn’t the only game in town when it comes to fast weekly payment bank loans. Wells Fargo announced their own program, called FastFlex, in 2016 as part of a goal to lend $100 Billion to small businesses over five years.
deBanked was shown an anonymized bank statement snippet recently of a merchant that was purportedly being debited daily by Wells Fargo. So we reached out to Wells to ask if there might be a daily payment loan product that had not yet been announced.
“[F]or Wells Fargo’s FastFlex Small Business Loan, we only offer the weekly payment option, in which required payments are made on a weekly basis automatically deducted from the customer’s business-deposit account,” they responded. “None of our Small Business loan products have daily payments.”
While the mystery remains unsolved, Wells already compares its FastFlex product to OnDeck, Kabbage, and CAN Capital on their website. Loan amounts ranging from $10,000 to $35,000 come with 1-year terms, weekly repayment, and interest rates starting at 13.99%. Their loan calculator approximates a 1.09 total cost factor on a $25,000 loan.
Their underwriting criteria comprises of cash flow history, existing credit obligations, credit experience, payment history, and relationship status with Wells Fargo. Merchants are funded the day after accepting the terms.
Users on a handful of message boards have reported that cash flow history weighs heavily in the approval.
MCA Funder Asks Court to Set Aside Default Judgment in Usury Case
November 10, 2017If it wasn’t for the Usury Law Blog, an MCA company may never have known about the default judgment entered against it in Florida for usury, according to documents filed in the case.
On Wednesday, the funding company filed a motion to set aside the default judgment and reopen the case on the basis that the in-house attorney handling the case for them left the company in September. The company had no way of receiving case notices after he left, they say, because the attorney had used a non-company email address as the email of record with the Court.
The funding company’s new attorney only became aware of the case when the Usury Law Blog published an analysis of it, they say.
The Court has initially denied their motion without prejudice on the basis that procedure requires that they certify that they have conferred, or describe a reasonable effort to confer, with the parties affected in good faith effort to resolve the dispute. Presumably, the funder can refile the motion once the defect has been cured.
ISO Alleged to Have Forged a Confession of Judgment
November 6, 2017
Underwriters, keep your eyes on the notary stamps.
A lawsuit filed in the New York Supreme Court last week by a merchant cash advance company against an ISO and several co-defendants, alleges that an ISO was partially responsible for damages when a merchant defaulted.
And they make a compelling argument. In this case where a Confession of Judgment (COJ) was required to approve the deal, the merchant, who defaulted within 30 days of being funded, claims to have never signed one, despite the ISO having delivered a signed one to the funder.
Well then who signed it?
Upon inspection, the notary stamp on the COJ belonged to a notary in Nassau County, NY, where the contract logically would’ve been notarized. But the merchant is based in Florida and claims to have been in Florida at the time the COJ was allegedly signed.
So who would’ve been in Nassau County that day?
According to the funder, it was the ISO, since the ISO is based on Long Island and the ISO is the one that delivered the signed COJ to them.
These are just the allegations at this point, of course, since the defendants have not even yet had a chance to respond.
The complaint, however, adds another twist, that after the ISO got the deal funded, they then referred it to a debt settlement company, who assisted the merchant in defaulting.
As you might imagine, the debt settlement company is a named co-defendant.
The case is filed under Index Number: 656692/2017 in the New York Supreme Court. You can view the entire complaint here.
