Online Lending
A Dialogue with Peter Renton: Cryptocurrency and Beyond
March 2, 2018
deBanked Magazine recently caught up with Peter Renton, founder of Lend Academy, a leading educational resource for the marketplace industry. Through his writing, podcasts and video courses, he’s been helping multitudes of people better understand the industry since 2010. Renton is also the co-founder of LendIt, one of the world’s largest fintech conventions, which recently branched out beyond its marketplace lending focus to include other types of fintech. The flagship U.S. conference will take place April 9 through April 11 in San Francisco. The following is an edited transcript of our discussions.
deBanked: Why did you decide to rebrand LendIt as LendItFintech?
Renton: The main reason is that we have moved beyond the online lending space. While it’s still the core of what we do, it’s not all of what we do anymore. Many of the large online lenders have also moved beyond online lending. Lending is part of financial services, but our attendees want to know what else is important. Our attendees also want to look at other opportunities for expansion. They want to know how other areas of fintech are going to affect their business—topics such as blockchain and digital banking. LendItFintech tells people that lending is what we focus on, but it also makes clear that we’re about more than lending.
deBanked: In addition to your marketplace lending investments, you entered into the cryptocurrency space back in early 2015. Tell us what you’re doing now with respect to cryptocurrency?
Renton: This was not something that I spent much time thinking about back then. At the time, I expected bitcoin to never amount to anything. But I’m interested in financial innovation and I decided to give it a go. I never thought in my wildest dreams that it would get to $10,000. (Editor’s note: In 2017, bitcoin climbed to nearly $20,000; in early February it fell below $8,000 for the first time since Nov. 2017)
I opened up a Coinbase account with $2,000, which got me 10 bitcoins. I have since sold a portion of it gradually as the price of bitcoin went up, and I diversified into a handful of other coins as well. I have recently moved a significant portion of my investment into a privately managed cryptocurrency fund, and I still maintain my Coinbase account too.
deBanked: How are things different now than when you first entered the digital currency market?
Renton: In January 2015, I created my bitcoin account and I don’t think I ever logged in over the next 18 months, or if I did, it was maybe just once or twice. No one was talking about bitcoin back then. It was still on the fringe of fintech. Sure, there were some people focused on it, but it wasn’t part of mainstream media coverage. Then, all of a sudden, it became hot because people love get-rich-quick schemes and hearing about people who hit the big time from nothing. These stories really fuel people’s imagination. Then suddenly bitcoin became one of the biggest phenomena of 2017; no one would have predicted a few years ago that would happen.
deBanked: What are the biggest risks you see with cryptocurrency today and how can investors best overcome these challenges?
Renton: Many people are buying purely on speculation with no thought that bitcoin could go down in price. You hear of people buying bitcoin on their credit card and paying 20 percent interest on that purchase. It’s insane. I feel that cryptocurrencies are here to stay, but I don’t like that they have these massive 20 percent to 30 percent swings in a day. The speculators have helped drive the price up, but they’ve also driven the volatility up and that’s been a bad thing.
deBanked: Do you think cryptocurrency will ever dethrone cash? If so, what will it take to get to that point?
Renton: I feel that some kind of digital currency is inevitable—but whether it’s a Federal Reserve-backed currency or something else remains to be seen. I have an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old and I am confident that at some point in their lifetime there will be no such thing as cash. In China, for example, there are some places where you can’t even use cash. You can go to a street vendor and buy a piece of fruit with your phone. Certainly in the U.S. we’re not there yet, but I think China shows where we are going to be.
Cryptocurrency is only one type of digital cash, and it’s hard to say how it will ultimately fit into the larger picture. To dethrone cash as we know it today, cryptocurrency needs to be a quick and efficient way of transacting, and right now it’s not quick and it’s not cheap.
That said, I believe there will be some kind of digital currency in the future. It will take a long time for the Federal Reserve to say cash is no longer legal tender, but I expect we’ll see some kind of digital currency in the next 10 years for sure.
deBanked: How do you think regulation will change the cryptocurrency landscape? Is it inevitable and, more importantly, do you think regulation of cryptocurrency is necessary to take it beyond the level it is today?
Renton: Right now bitcoin is not systemically important. At a market cap of around $156 billion in early February, if something happens and it completely crashes, it won’t make a dent on the U.S. or world economy. But if bitcoin continues to rise and reaches a market cap of say $16 trillion, and then it falls to zero, that would reverberate around the world. The largest economies that have the most bitcoin would be the most impacted.
At some point governments will step in with regulation. It’s already happening in places like China and South Korea and there are rumors of other governments taking action. I don’t think the largest governments will allow their economy to be at the whim of speculators.
deBanked:deBanked: How do you feel about the SEC stepping into regulate ICOs? Is this necessary to protect investors?
Renton: There are certainly some ICOs that are complete scams while others are obviously violating securities laws. But many ICOs have strong legal teams supporting them and are doing it right now. The SEC should absolutely clamp down on those doing the wrong thing, but my hope is that they don’t overreact and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
deBanked: What about online lending? The industry has gone through a lot of changes in its relatively short history. How do you expect to see the competitive landscape change in the next year or so? What about farther out?
Renton: The online lending space has gone through a lot of changes in its short history. I feel like the biggest trend we’re seeing right now is banks launching their own platforms. Take Goldman Sachs with the Marcus online lending platform, for example. More than anything else that has happened in the history of online lending that is among the most telling for the future, I think. Goldman has gone all in with this effort, and that move woke up all the large banks. Top banks like PNC and Barclays are also launching their own initiatives instead of partnering with others, which was surprising to me. I would have thought there would be more partnerships. There are still some, but several banks have decided to do it themselves rather than partnering. Smaller banks, however, that want to get into the space, will likely partner because they can’t afford to do it themselves. While we have seen a few partnerships develop, I expect we will see many more over the next couple of years.
deBanked: What do you see as the biggest risks for online lenders today? How can they best overcome these challenges?
Renton: As an industry, we have to focus on profitability. Profitability comes down primarily to two things. First, you have to get your cost of acquisition down. Some of the companies that failed recently were never able to get their costs of acquisition down to a manageable level. Underwriting is the second piece. Particularly if you’re a balance sheet lender and you’re not underwriting well, you can’t make money. The pullback in the industry in 2016 occurred because many of the major platforms got a little too aggressive in their underwriting. Investors are still paying for some of those mistakes.
Successful companies are ones that have figured out how to profitably acquire customers and how to underwrite effectively. Most of them have learned their lesson, but in business companies sometimes have short memories. We need to keep a close eye on it.
deBanked: What advice do you have for alternative lenders and funders?
Renton: In addition to paying careful attention to profitability and underwriting, another important piece is having diversified funding sources. You want to make sure that you don’t have one big bank or some other source providing 90 percent of your funding. You should really have different kinds of lending sources. Some loans you can fund through a marketplace, some loans you can fund through your balance sheet. It’s good when you’re not reliant on one particular way of funding your loans.
deBanked: How is regulation likely to impact the online lending industry?
Renton: Having support in Congress for the online lending space is important. Congress hasn’t devoted a lot of attention to it in the past few years, but it’s starting to. The Madden decision—which has the potential to lead to significant nationwide changes in consumer and commercial lending by non-bank entities—has created uncertainty in the industry. In states affected by the decision (Connecticut, New York and Vermont) already there has been less access to credit. I’m hopeful that Congress moves ahead with legislation to override the Madden decision that’s having such an impact in the Second Circuit states. People are worried that it could expand nationwide and Congress needs to act so there’s clarification. There’s too much uncertainty right now.
deBanked: Several platforms have closed their doors in the past year or so. Do you expect to see this trend continue?
Renton: There are companies out there still trying to raise money and struggling to do so. That’s a healthy thing for an industry. You want the strong players to survive and thrive and for the weaker ones to go away.
deBanked: How big do you think an online lender has to be to thrive?
Renton: There’s no doubt that scale is important. If you’re a small player, you have to have some kind of niche in order to acquire customers. If you have that, you have the ability to compete. Even with that sometimes, it’s going to be difficult. It’s a pretty complex business. You need to have a lot of staff for compliance and operations and that can be expensive. When you have high fixed costs, you have to have scale to be able to make a profit. That said, I think there’s room for more than just the ultra-large players in the online lending space. I think there will be plenty of opportunity for strong, well-positioned medium-sized players to compete.
deBanked: What about M&A in the industry?
Renton: Valuations at many of the large platforms are way down from where they were several years ago. As long as valuations stay depressed, I think we could see a big acquisition of a major platform this year. Some of these platforms have millions of customers. Having the ability to pick up such a large number of customers instantly through an acquisition could be compelling for the right buyer, such as a large bank.
deBanked: Is this a good time or a bad time to be an online lender in your opinion?
Renton: It is still a good time to be an online lender. We are expanding access to credit and making the world a better place. I have never been more excited about the industry than I am today.
Minority-Owned Businesses Present Opportunities for Online Lenders
February 27, 2018
Research consistently shows that minority-owned businesses have a harder time accessing capital than other businesses. Online financing has the potential to change this.
Most of the online funding process is based on objective factors such as your business type and revenue. When you apply for funds online, it’s harder to discern things like the color of your skin or your ethnicity—factors which research shows can sometimes play into the face-to-face lending process, even though it’s illegal and immoral. What’s more, applying for funds online eliminates the stigma that keeps many minority-owned businesses from walking into a bank to apply for a loan, according to industry participants.
“Many minorities are hesitant to go into a bank,” says Louis Green, interim president of The National Minority Supplier Development Council, which provides business development opportunities for certified minority-owned businesses. He says the growth of online lending platforms will potentially open more doors for minority-owned businesses to get much-needed capital to operate and expand.
“The beauty of things on the Internet is that it has the ability to take away discriminatory issues,” says Green, who is also the chief executive of Supplier Success LLC, a Detroit-based business that offers online business financing solutions.
Certainly, minority-owned small businesses are a large and growing market. There were 8 million minority-owned firms in the U.S. as of 2012, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Minority-owned firms represented 28.8% of all U.S. firms in 2012.
Historically, however, minority-owned businesses have had trouble getting access to credit for a host of reasons, and recent research suggests the problems persist.
A report published in November by the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and Atlanta examines the results of an annual survey of small business owners. The report found that while many minority small businesses were profitable, a significant majority faced financial challenges, experienced funding gaps and relied on personal finances.
Some of the trouble obtaining financing may have discriminatory underpinnings. For instance, a recent working paper by researchers at Utah State University, Brigham Young University and Rutgers University, among others, suggests that minorities were more highly scrutinized for loans than other applicants. For instance, African American “mystery shoppers” underwent a higher level of scrutiny and received a lower level of assistance than their less-creditworthy Caucasian counterparts, according to the study.
Also, African American testers were asked significantly more often about their marital status and their spouse’s employment. This “marks another and even illegal differential experience for these minority entrepreneurial consumers compared with the Caucasian shoppers,” the study finds.
To be sure, other factors are also likely to blame. For instance, the average credit score of a minority small-business owner is 707, which is 15 points lower than the overall average for small-business owners in the U.S., according to a 2016 study by credit bureau Experian.
Even so, the bias issue remains a stark possibility in at least some cases. A 2010 report by the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) offers data to show that minority-owned firms are less likely to receive bank loans than non-minority-owned firms. Among all minority firms, 7.2 percent received a business loan from a bank compared with 12.0 percent of non-minority firms, according to the report. High sales minority-owned firms were more likely to receive bank loans with 23.3 percent receiving this source of startup capital. By contrast, 29.2 percent of high sales non-minority firms received bank loans, the data shows.
To be sure, it’s very difficult to prove discrimination when a bank loan is denied. A few years ago, a mortgage banker who asked not to be named, says he suspected discrimination when an Asian couple he worked with was denied a small bank loan. While he didn’t have rock solid proof, he felt the bank’s stated reasoning for turning down the loan was unjustified and he tried going to bat for the couple. His efforts were rebuffed, however, and the loan was denied.
Based on the size of the loan and the couple’s finances, the banker says the loan would have easily been approved by an online provider that was looking only at objective factors. “They see the numbers they’ve been given and calculate risk and make decisions based purely on numbers,” he says.
Indeed, this is where online lending has already shown significant potential. Alicia Robb, a research fellow at the Atlanta Federal Reserve who co-authored the November report by the Cleveland and Atlanta Federal Reserves, says when controlling for credit score and other business-related factors, the data shows that minority businesses have a better shot at getting loans approved online than they do at a large or small bank.
Industry participants say the online funding process can be a boon for minority business owners because it strips subjective reasoning out of the decision-making process. Instead of presenting themselves, applicants are presenting what their business looks like financially, and funders are making highly automated decisions based on the information provided.
“Humans make terrible decisions. The more you can eliminate human bias in the process the better,” says Kathryn Petralia, co-founder and president of Kabbage. She says 95 percent of the online lender’s customers have an entirely automated experience, which includes validating their identity using digital processes. “We never see a picture of them or know anything about their ethnicity or demography,” she says.
Even funders who do ask for photo identification say that doesn’t happen until after applicants have been approved. And even then, it’s just to “make sure that the person you are funding is actually the person you are funding and no one is trying to defraud you,” says Isaac D. Stern, chief executive of Yellowstone Capital LLC, a MCA funder in Jersey City, N.J. “Online financing is colorblind. It doesn’t matter if [you’re] white or Hispanic or black,” he says.
Dean Sioukas, chief executive of Magilla Loans, an online search engine that matches prospective borrowers and lenders, has hope that the anonymity of the online funding process could eventually make the off-line process more equitable for all applicants. After accepting a number of solid proposals from viable lending opportunities—without knowing any personal information about the applicant—his hope is that whatever biases a loan officer may previously have had will dissipate, he says. Funding decisions should only be made on objective criteria, he says. “The rest has no place in the process.”
While in theory online lending should improve access to funds for minority-owned businesses, several industry observers say barriers remain.
One major challenge is getting the news out to minority business owners, many of whom don’t know about the online funding opportunities that exist, says Lyneir Richardson, executive director of The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, a research and practitioner-oriented center at Rutgers Business School in Newark, N.J.
He suggests online lenders and funders need to do a better job of connecting with minority-owned businesses and explaining what they have to offer. He works with about 300 entrepreneurs, 70 percent of whom are minority-owned businesses. He’s held this position for 10 years, but says he’s never been approached by an online lending company to market its services, speak at one of his events, provide funding advice to business owners or in any other capacity.
“There is an opportunity for online small business lenders to market and make known, particularly to minority business owners, that they have viable, market rate lending products that can help them grow,” he says.
One caveat is that rates online are often higher than traditional bank loans, so there is a trade-off for minority-owned businesses, says Brett Barkley, a senior research analyst in the community development department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, who co-authored the November report.
Other research from the Federal Reserve shows that satisfaction levels were lowest at nonbank online lenders for both minority- and nonminority-owned firms compared with borrower satisfaction levels at small banks and large banks, he says. The satisfaction levels seem to be related to higher interest rates and “lack of transparency,” he adds. While the study doesn’t define the latter term, the findings could “point to confusion regarding the actual terms of the loan,” Barkley says.
Some online firms have taken steps to make pricing more transparent by using the SMART Box disclosure agreement, a comparison tool developed by the online lending industry to help small businesses more fully understand their financing options. There are currently three different versions of the SMART Box disclosure –for term loans, lines of credit, and merchant cash advances.
This “is a really important metric,” says Petralia of Kabbage, which offers the tool to customers.
Green, the interim president of NMSDC, says that helping its 12,000 minority-owned business members gain access to capital is a major goal for the organization. While online financing is still a largely “untapped resource” for minority businesses, it makes borrowing money easier and more appealing. “It holds great promise for minority-owned businesses, but I think the reality hasn’t met that promise yet,” he says.
Lending Club Stock Price Hits Record Low
February 27, 2018Lending Club’s stock dropped to its lowest level on Monday, closing at $3.27, according to the online lending tracker. That puts the company down 78% from its IPO price of $15 and down 87% from its all-time high.
Since going public, the company has been mired in litigation, losses, and scandal. The company has also put funding from peers aside in favor of funding from Wall Street banks.
Worse yet though for the company is that competitors like Goldman Sachs have been able to undercut Lending Club’s rates (Goldman Sachs’ Marcus charges no late fees or origination fees), while simultaneously tapping into a cheaper cost of capital (deposits).
Fed Study Debunks “Lax Screening” Hypothesis Of Fintech Lenders
February 23, 2018
The New York Federal Reserve published the results of their study on the role of technology in mortgage lending. And they bear good news for fintech, that technological innovation has improved the efficiency of financial intermediation.
Fintech lenders, it turns out, are faster, experience lower default rates, and are more responsive to changes in demand. Faster processing times did not translate into issuing riskier loans, the report concludes.
Fintech lenders were defined as lenders that offer an application process that can be completed entirely online.
The Fed researchers also found little evidence that fintech lenders disproportionately target marginal borrowers with low access to finance. On the Contrary, the data actually shows that fintech borrowing is actually higher among those both older and more educated.
“We find that default rates on fintech mortgages are about 25% lower than those for traditional lenders, even when controlling for detailed loan characteristics,” the report says. “There is no significant difference in interest rates. These results speak against a lax screening hypothesis, and instead indicate that fintech lending technologies may help attract and screen for less risky borrowers.”
The two largest fintech mortgage originators in 2016 were Quicken Loans and loanDepot.
LendingPoint Co-founder Weighs in on Lending Club’s Earnings Report
February 21, 2018Lending Club announced its fourth quarter and full year 2017 earnings earlier this week. The report included a $92.1 million quarterly loss (which the company attributed primarily to a class action litigation settlement) and a fourth quarter net revenue increase of 20 percent year-over-year.
“This report had lights and shadows,” said Juan Tavares, Co-founder of LendingPoint. “On the regulatory front, [Lending Club] seems to be making a lot of headway,” Tavares told deBanked. “It speaks to the adoption of fintech by regulatory bodies, and really flattens the playing field for the rest of us.”
He also noted that, of course, it’s a positive thing for the alternative lending industry that Lending Club keeps growing. However, Tavares, whose company competes in the same space as Lending Club, sees fundamental flaws in his competitor’s business model.
“In my view, [Lending Club’s] underlying problem is that they don’t have alignment of interest between their stakeholders,” Tavares said. “At LendingPoint, we have a different approach. We look at it really as a balance sheet model, which means that we put everything on our books. We use our own equity. We leverage other investors’ capital, but we’re not an origination platform…Lending Club’s model primarily is that they have to continue feeding the beast, so to speak, in order to continue making their revenues. They don’t have inventory to continue generating assets or to monetize going forward. That’s a significant shortcoming in their model,” he said.
In Lending Club’s press release on Tuesday, CEO Scott Sanborn said, “2017 was a year of rebuilding and transforming our core business. We returned to growth and materially expanded and diversified our investor base. We’re continuing to invest in our people, technology and products to position us for the years ahead.”
Last year, Lending Club started taking on credit responsibility for some of its loans, which may signal a change in direction for the company.
But Tavares said that this still only accounts for less than ten percent of the company’s originations. He’s proud that LendingPoint, founded in 2014, has 100 percent of its loans on its balance sheet.
PeerIQ Announces Partnership with Cross River Bank
February 20, 2018
PeerIQ, the New York-based software company that provides analytics and risk management services to lenders, announced today a partnership with Cross River, a New Jersey State Chartered FDIC-insured bank.
“Cross River is one of the most innovative banks I’ve seen,” PeerIQ CEO and co-founder Ram Ahluwalia told deBanked. “They have technology that enables same-day settlement of payments transactions, which is really novel.”
Ram is also excited that Cross River’s customers are technology companies, like Coinbase, and fintech lenders. This new partnership means that Cross River will now start to use some of PeerIQ’s software products.
“[Cross River] is incorporating technology innovation to rethink the banking experience,” Ahluwalia said.
Ahluwalia explained that Cross River is the lender of record for about 15 platforms, including Marlette and loanDepot, so it is therefore “in a very unique position in the lending ecosystem.”
Founded in 2015, PeerIQ employs 36 people at its Manhattan office and completed a $12 million Series A at the end of August. Founded in 2008, Cross River is backed by investors including Battery Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Andreesen Horowitz.
SoFi Personal Loan Performance Suffers
February 11, 2018
A story in the Wall Street Journal last week reported that SoFi borrowers are missing their loan payments at an unexpectedly high rate. The emerging trend is part of the reason the company is said to have missed its internal fourth quarter earnings projections. According to a letter SoFi penned to investors that the WSJ obtained, the company had to mark down the “value of certain personal loan assets due to lower-than-expected credit performance.”
$202.3 million of SoFi’s $9 billion in consumer loans since inception had gone into default as of November 30th, 2017, deBanked learned through a report. Consumer loans had been made to a total of more than 266,000 individual borrowers.
A recent ratings agency chart shows the default rates of SoFi Managed Portfolio consumer loans have been increasing since 2015 and that defaults are starting to occur even earlier in the repayment cycle. The April 2015 vintage, for example, showed a default rate near 0.0% by the twelfth month. The April 2017 vintage, by contrast, had already exceeded a default rate of .5% in month eight.
Last March, Bloomberg reported that the company’s personal loan losses at that time were high enough to breach bond triggers that the loans were backed by.
The consumer loan space has become very crowded as of late, with SoFi not only competing against online upstarts like Lending Club and Prosper, but also against banking stalwarts like Goldman Sachs and Discover.
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.
