The fintech revolution: who now assesses your personal loan application?
In an age of rapid technological disruption, Aussie banking practices are constantly changing and there is now a piece of technology that could be responsible for assessing your creditworthiness when you apply for a personal loan. In an age of rapid technological disruption, Aussie banking practices are constantly changing and there is now a piece of technology that could be responsible for assessing your creditworthiness when you apply for a personal loan. Personal loan provider, Harmoney, kicked off the new year by teaming up with DataRobot, an automated machine learning platform, in the hopes of improving both the speed and accuracy of its application process. “With our deployment of DataRobot, […]
Marketplace lender reveals big plans for broker channel
MoneyPlace CEO Stuart Stoyan is banking on Liberty’s broker relationships and funding capabilities to execute an ambitious strategy for the widespread distribution of personal loans through the third-party channel. Few marketplace lenders have been able to successfully crack into the Australian broker market. Yet peer-to-peer lenders, fintech players and alternative online funders offering personal or SME loans are now a well-established feature of the Australian lending landscape. According to KPMG, Australia has overtaken Japan as the second-largest alternative finance market in the Asia-Pacific region, growing by 53 per cent in one year to US$609 million ($774 million) in 2016. While home loans are the mainstay for mortgage brokers, Liberty CEO […]
Liberty buys MoneyPlace in personal loan push
Non-bank lender Liberty has purchased MoneyPlace, in a deal that will provide the marketplace lender with funding flexibility to target rivals SocietyOne and RateSetter along with the personal loan books of the big four banks. The acquisition suggests brokers, which currently facilitate half of all mortgages, will play a more influential role selling personal loans given Liberty’s deep broking relationships. It also suggests risk-based pricing of personal lending will become more common, given MoneyPlace and the other P2P lenders are willing to undercut bank interest rates for high quality borrowers. Liberty and MoneyPlace have not disclosed the price tag for the Melbourne-based platform, which has been operating for 18 months […]
The everyday Aussie is increasingly choosing a peer to peer personal loan
Peer to peer lending cuts out the middleman (the banks) allowing everyday Aussies to both invest and borrow from each other through a regulated platform.
Could cryptocurrencies be a serious alternative to the dollar?
With its wild fluctuations, which even created some “Bitcoin billionaires”, the cryptocurrency craze that has swept the financial world over summer is hard to ignore. Yet for all the hype about the Bitcoin roller-coaster, is there any chance we will one day be doing the shopping with Bitcoin, or some other crypto-dollar? This question has the potential to affect all of us, not to mention the core institutions at the heart of our financial system. And it’s not quite as far-fetched as it may sound. At the moment Bitcoin looks to have taken off as a highly speculative asset, rather than a realistic alternative to money. In the longer term […]
What is a peer-to-peer personal loan?
In 2018, peer-to-peer lenders are expected to significantly grow their share of the Australian personal loan market. Peer-to-peer lenders are now becoming an established part of the lending scene and new lenders are expected to enter in the next year. Alongside the big banks, the regional banks, credit unions and non-bank lenders, the peer-to-peer lenders are offering competitive loan deals and winning thousands of new customers. How does a peer-to-peer personal loan work? Traditional loans from a bank or credit union are made using funds often sourced from depositors. The bank offers the saver an interest rate on their savings and charges the borrower a much higher interest rate on […]
Can a fintech lending firm disrupt the big four?
If Australian banking needs a fundamental shake-up, it may come from insiders-turned-outsiders, and few fit that bill better than Jason Yetton at SocietyOne. As CVs for Australian bankers go, Jason Yetton’s background doesn’t quite scream ‘disruptor’. High-flyer perhaps, certainly ambitious and across trends. But helming a startup? Yetton started out in 1992 as a graduate trainee in Sydney at Bankers Trust under its then boss, the dynamic Rob Ferguson. There was the obligatory stretch in Asia – in Kuala Lumpur with CIMB – and the polishing stint at Harvard Business School too. By 2008, Yetton had joined Gail Kelly at Westpac in Sydney in a variety of senior posts, rising […]
Banking gap widens as tech-savvy consumers look to new products
They’re called peer-to-peer lenders or fintech companies and they’re shaking up the world of consumer loans and bank deposits. Here’s why. The gap between what people pay for consumer loans and what they get from bank deposits is widening, prompting them to look to new financial technologies for better interest rates. Peer-to-peer lender RateSetter has examined big bank profit margins and found that while they are paying record low rates on deposits their lending rates for personal loans and credit cards continue to climb. “You can drive a bus through the spread between bank deposits and consumer lending rates,” said RateSetter CEO Dan Foggo. “Publicity stunts such as dropping fees […]
