SoFi, Lending Club gear up for busy quarter
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SoFi, Lending Club gear up for busy quarter

Up to four transactions from marketplace lenders SoFi and Lending Club are slated to hit the market this quarter, including prime and non-prime consumer and student loan refinancing offerings.

SoFi is preparing to bring at least one consumer loan offering and possibly one more refinanced student loan offering over the next two months. The planned offerings could be in the range of previous transactions, said a source familiar with the company’s plans.

“The company intends to market large deal sizes — but the deal sizes now do not necessarily speak to future deal sizes over the course of the year,” the source said.

Other sources indicated that SoFi could potentially issue a $1bn transaction this year, depending on market conditions. An offering of that size would be the largest ever securitization of marketplace loans. 

“Their origination volumes keep increasing and naturally their securitizations are going to get bigger as well. SoFi does a deal almost every eight weeks, and they have definitely expressed interest in doing a billion dollar deal,” said a second source.

The largest outstanding transaction is SoFi’s $776.7m refinanced student loan deal, which was priced in October 2017. The deal was heavily subscribed, with orders totalling $2.3bn, and it attracted five new investors to the platform, according to a statement from SoFi in October.

SoFi priced a $720m student loan refinancing deal last week. Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan dialled up the size of the deal to $960m before pricing on January 18. (For full pricing information, see GlobalCapital’s US priced deals database).

SoFi has also tapped Twitter COO Anthony Noto as chief executive, the company announced on Tuesday. Noto’s new role is effective March 1, while interim CEO Tom Hutton will become non-executive chairman of the board of directors.

The company has been without a permanent CEO since former chief Mike Cagney departed last September in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. 

Prior to joining Twitter, Noto served as the co-head of global technology, media and telecommunications investment banking at Goldman Sachs, according to his LinkedIn profile. At Goldman, Noto worked on Twitter’s public offering and subsequently joined as its CFO in July 2014. He was made COO in 2016.

A spokesperson for SoFi declined to comment.

Lending Club to market ABS

Also in marketplace lending, GlobalCapital understands that Lending Club will be marketing a pair of deals in the next two months from its prime and non-prime consumer loan programmes. Citi and JP Morgan are said to be on both deals, which are in the $300m-$400m range.

Lending Club said last September in a company statement that it wanted to broaden its investor base by creating a “consistent, repeatable [securitization] programme at scale”.

According to data from PeerIQ, 10 marketplace lending securitizations were priced last quarter, totalling $4.4bn, while deal volume is “expected to grow by 30% to $18bn” in 2018.

Spokespeople for Lending Club, Citi and JP Morgan declined to comment on future transactions.

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