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The reputation of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as a feared watchdog took a hit last week when a US Court of Appeals ruled against the regulator in a suit brought against it by PHH Mortgage. But opponents of the agency should not be confident that it has been completely defanged.
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Goldman Sachs’s new online lending platform Marcus, which was launched last Thursday, has to prove itself in an industry where the ability to scale and the retention of a loyal customer base determines who gets to stay in the game. -
Insurance companies taking leveraged loan exposure through open ended funds, rather than CLOs, should cause alarm. Given the liquidity risk inherent in the structures, regulators ought to be watchful.
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European banks, especially the Italians, need to solve their non-performing loan problem, agrees everyone from the European Central Bank to the least informed finance hack out there. But the revelations coming out of Royal Bank of Scotland’s restructuring unit show it’s not always a pleasant process.
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With pioneers of peer-to-peer lending tapping more institutional investors and competing to claim how boring their products are, the hype in alternative lending may be fading. That's good news, but only for those that have already reached scale.
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The business model of marketplace lender SoFi can sometimes sound like the subject of a grim corporate dystopia. The fintech start-up is not only in the business of selling loans — it wants to bring millennials on board from early adulthood until death, through relationships and home-building.
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Efforts to paint the European ABS market as a simple, bank dominated funding tool to charm nervy rule makers underplay the importance of the market for complex, bespoke deals for private equity firms. Each sort has its merits.
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The highly dysfunctional and hostile political environment in Washington, DC is making it difficult to pass any real financial regulatory reform, limiting Congress’s ability to enact meaningful change.
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Private equity firms have jumped on the recent rally in ABS spreads to dust off loan portfolios for public syndication. The structures are bespoke, and the deals are one-offs — a far cry from the market being just another funding tool for banks. But that's OK.
