This past week featured a slate of fintech venture financings. Kabbage (Series F: $250M), Dianrong (Series D: $220M), Bread (Series B: $126M), and Juvo (Series B: $40M) all announced major financings.
And last, but not least, PeerIQ announced our $12M Series A round, led by TransUnion, Hearst Financial Venture Fund, and Macquarie Group. It was great to announce the investment—and the major strategic partnerships that come with it; the outreach we received across the fintech landscape was heartfelt and inspiring. And most wanted to know what this means—both for PeerIQ and the industry.
For PeerIQ, it means continuing to execute upon the vision we shared at our seed financing just over two years ago. This fall, we will be launching our first products uniting TransUnion’s dataset with the PeerIQ analytics platform. The initial offerings including credit performance trends, modeling archives, benchmarking analysis, and regulatory compliance tools. (These are offerings we are demoing already for clients; if interested in learning more, please let us know.)
Along with its investment, Hearst brings several major holding companies, including auto data provider, BlackBook, and Fitch Ratings, the global ratings provider, which opens up many new value propositions for our customers. Finally, we are working hand in hand with Macquarie, a major provider of capital to the fintech space, to improve tools for warehouse lenders and their borrowers alike.
For the industry, it’s notable that we’ve established a foundation of key partners that share and can accelerate our ultimate vision: the transparent, liquid, and efficient financing of consumer credit via the capital markets. Certainly this is just the beginning. The prevailing risk infrastructure linking lending to the capital markets has not changed in decades. There is much we can do to apply loan-level analytics, modern data science, and technology to strengthen markets and investor confidence.
We are grateful and appreciative for all of the tremendous support!
PeerIQ in the News:
- John Mack-Backed Data Startup Announces New Funding and Partners (Bloomberg, 8/2/17)
- PeerIQ Closes $12 Million Series A with Backing from TransUnion, Hearst(CrowdFundInsider, 8/2/17)
- PeerIQ Announces $12mn Series A Financing Deal (LendIt, 8/2/17)
- PeerIQ Raises $12M for Expansion into Traditional Lending (LendingTimes, 8/2/17)
- PeerIQ Gets Major Funding from Macquarie – and Others (Altfi, 8/2/17)
- Top P2PL Analytics Firm Gets Funding (P2PLendingExpert, 8/2/17)
- Macquarie Group, Others Supports $12MM Financing for FinTech PeerIQ (ABL Advisor, 8/2/17)
- Hearst Fund Invests in Lending Sector Data Firm PeerIQ (TheMediaStar, 8/2/17)
- PeerIQ Closes $12M Series A Funding (FINSMES, 8/2/17)
- The AlleyWatch NYC Startup Daily Funding Report: 8/2/17 (AlleyWatch, 8/2/17)
- Term Sheet — Wednesday, Aug. 2 (Fortune, 8/2/17)
Industry Update:
- Next Step for Lending Club Program (AB Alert, 8/4/17) LendingClub is reportedly preparing another personal-loan securitization.
- Card Performance Seen Weakening (AB Alert,8/4/17) Improvements among performance indicators for securitized credit-card pools may be short-lived.
- Online Lender Prosper in Talks on Deal That Would Slash Its Value (WSJ, 8/5/17) Under the proposed transaction, Chinese conglomerate Linca Industrial (Fujian) Group would invest $50 Mn.
- SoFi Hints at IPO, Reports Record Results (WSJ, 8/3/17) Firm is latest online lender to report activity is bouncing back from a difficult 2016.
- Goldman Sachs is Going Big on Lending (Lend Academy, 8/3/17) Goldman Sachs is partnering with financial advisors through a relationship with Fidelity to offer loans.
- Late Credit-Card Payments Stoke Fears for Banks (WSJ, 7/31/17) Average net charge-off rate for large U.S. card issuers increased to 3.29% in the second quarter, its highest level in four years.
- SoftBank Invests $250 Million in Online Lending Startup Kabbage (Bloomberg, 8/3/17) Kabbage will use funds to expand to Asia, build new products.
- Elevate Q22017 Shareholder Results (Elevate, 8/17)
- Square Q22017 Shareholder Letter (LendIt, 8/17)
Lighter Fare:
- Reinforcement Learning (MITTechnology Review, 8/5/17) By experimenting, computers are figuring out how to do things that no programmer could teach them.