According to several reports, Renaud Laplanche, the godfather of P2P in the US, founder and former CEO of Lending Club, has announced his "comeback", this time with a new P2P platform called Upgrade.
The name Upgrade has a meaning
In May 2016, the founder and former CEO of Lending Club Renard Laplanzi resigned in the wake of the Lending Club breach. On May 6, Lending Club announced that it had confirmed and accepted the resignation. As a result, Lending Club's shares fell sharply, closing down 35% at one point, the biggest one-day drop in Lending Club's history as a public company. This move, many media have bluntly "Lending Club has fallen from the altar".
Just 11 months later, Leonard Laplanzi is back in the world of fintech, and his return has implications. This time, Laplanche brought the Upgrade meaning is to upgrade, as for whether it is Lending Club's upgrade, the opinions vary.
The San Francisco company is just a few blocks from Lending Club's headquarters, raising questions about Mr. Laplanzi's relationship with the Lending Club. But Laplanche's Upgrade, unlike other online lenders, offers free credit monitoring tools and financial education to its customers, even if their first loan application to a financial institution has been rejected. Also, unlike LendingClub, Upgrade does not transfer loans to small investors, but only to institutional investors. In addition, Upgrade offers free credit improvement counseling to borrowers.
$60 million in Series A funding
Upgrade has previously raised $60 million in Series A funding, which values the company at $120 million.
The companies involved in the Upgrade financing are very promising. Some have been involved in Lending Club before, while others are among the best in the P2P space. They are Apoletto(a fund management company owned by DSTGlobal), FirstMarkCapital in New York, RibbitCapital in Silicon Valley, Union Square Ventures, Sands Capital Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, etc., as well as Chinese wealth management agency Noah Holdings (NYSE: NOAH and CreditEase's New Financial Industry Investment Fund participated in the fundraising.
It is worth mentioning that the amount raised this time set A record for a fintech company. This is largely due to Laplanche's deep understanding of the P2P industry. Many venture capital firms think it is possible for Laplanche to create a better Lending Club. After all, Upgrade is the Lending Club's Upgrade.
The online lending industry is maturing
Globally, the online lending industry is becoming more and more mature, and the recognition of the investment market for the online lending industry is constantly improving. At the end of February 2017, Prospa, an Australian online lending platform, successfully completed the AUS $25 million (about $20 million) Series B financing; In March, Creditas, a Brazilian online lending platform, raised $19 million in equity and debt. From the new network loan platform to obtain tens of millions of financing, the capital market is still optimistic about the network loan industry.
At AltFi's European Internet Finance Summit last week, the ceos of Funding Circle and Zopa, two peer-to-peer lending platforms in the UK, disagreed on whether their companies will be involved in banking in the future. Funding Circle says it will never do any kind of banking in the future, while Zopa sees online lending platforms becoming "bankable" in the future. Although the platforms have different opinions on the future development direction of the industry, the two platforms still believe that the industry has not reached the degree of saturation and the development prospect is still optimistic.
In China, the online lending industry is going through a period of compliance rectification, and various platforms are actively carrying out compliance rectification. Although compliance rectification has become the "main line" of China's P2P platforms at the present stage, it has become an indisputable fact that the industry transaction volume reached a new high in March. Platforms with good brand image and high risk control level, such as Yidai.com and YunQianbagao, will continue to attract investors to invest and lend. In addition, compared with developed countries, the potential of the Chinese market is larger and can be tapped to a higher degree. After the completion of compliance rectification, it is not impossible for the remaining platform to recreate an industry spring.
