Lending Times is the main source of news and coverage for the b2b aspects of the peer-to-peer (p2p), marketplace and the alternative lending market. We provide a daily news digest and original analysis . Topics include business models, data, market trends, regulation, capital sources and securitization,service and products providers, etc. Our coverage is world wide.
Our privacy policy can be found here.
Authors
Got a point? Lending Times is your site, please tell us how we can make your site better. Do you have a perspective you’d like to share with our readers? Is your point timely and relevant to those passionate about p2p, marketplace or alternative lending? If so, we’d like to hear from you. Please email george@lending-times.com
Author guidelines
1. We expect a content around 1000 to 2000 words. We are flexible on the length.
2. We expect an article of outstanding quality, comparable to Wall Street Journal.
3. We expect an article that is not a commercial.
4. All articles should always review both sides of each thesis and contain supporting data and facts.
5. All articles should be relevant to our readership which is formed of the executives and investors in the alternative lending space.
6. We strongly encourage the usage of figures, charts, and schematics where ever possible for a higher quality article.
7. We strongly encourage reviewing the article subjects and/or plan prior to fully writing the articles/ submitting it to Lending Times.
8. We promise a quick turn around by our editorial and peer review process for publication.
9. For all questions please contact our editor in chief, george@lending-times.com
10. Please include in the credit section at the end: author name, author small picture ( 320px by 240px or so), and a short author bio. A hyperlink to the author’s company is also welcome.
Founder, Editor in Chief
George A. Popescu ( Linked-In Profile )
Hands-on entrepreneur, MIT graduate, with experience creating and building 9+ companies.
- George Popescu sold and exited his most successful company, Boston Technologies (BT) group, in 2014. BT was a technology, market maker, high frequency trading and inter-broker broker-dealer in the FX Spot, precious metals and CFDs space company. George was the Founder and CEO of BT which he boot-strapped from $0 to a $20+ million business without any equity investment. BT has been #1 fastest growing company in Boston in 2011 according to the Boston Business Journal and the only company being in top 10 fastest in 2012-13 as it was #5 in 2012. BT has been on the Inc. 500/5000 list of fastest growing companies in the US for 4 years in a row ( #143, #373, #897 and #1270). After the company sale in July 2014 George Popescu was employed until February 2015 as Head-of-Strategy for Currency Mountain ( www.currencymountain.com ), a USD 100 million+ holding company focused on retail and medium institutional currencies, precious metals, stocks, fixed income and commodities businesses.
- Over the last 10 years George has created multiple startups in online lending,craft beer brewery, exotic sport car rental space, water purification, hedge funds, outsourced-labor, web-technology for real estate market, peer-reviewed scientific journal ( Journal of Cellular and Molecular medicine…) and more. George is advising 4+ early stage start-ups in different fields. He was also a mentor at MIT’s Venture Mentoring Services and Techstart Fintech in NY.
- Previously George obtained 3 Master’s Degrees: a Master’s of Science from MIT working on 3D printing, a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Supelec, France and a Master’s in Nanosciences from Paris XI University. Previously he had worked as a visiting scientist at MIT in Bio-engineering for 2 years. Previously George had 3 majors : Maths, Physics and Chemistry. He has been trained as an engineer and scientist. His scientific career led to about 10 publications and patents.
- On the business side Boston Business Journal has named him in the top 40 under 40 in 2012 in recognition of his business achievements.
- He is originally from Romania and grew up in Paris, France.
Editor
Allen Taylor ( Linked In Profile)
Award-winning journalist, entrepreneur, former newspaper editor, U.S. Army war veteran, author, and fastest wordslinger in the East.
- Allen Taylor has been creating online content since 1997. He built his first website in 1998 and first commercial site in 2001 after teaching himself HTML. In 2003, he started the first website that would turn a profit, a poetry website, which he owned for more than 10 years. Since 2006, he has been a full-time content marketer, commercial blog manager, and Internet entrepreneur. He started a blog focused on Gettysburg as a travel destination and sold it within two years. From 2006 to 2013, he was chief operating officer of a content management company that specialized in the wholesale content market.
- As a newspaper editor (2000-2004), Allen Taylor was recognized by the Texas Press Association for general excellence, headline writing, editorial writing, and page design — all first place awards; and also received first place awards from the North and East Texas Press Association for editorial writing (three times), column writing, and special sections editing; additionally, the Dallas Bar Association recognized him three times for excellence in legal reporting.
- In 2005, Allen served as battle captain in Iraq with the 36th Infantry Division, 56th Brigade Combat Team, 2/112th Armor Regiment and was stationed at Al Taqaddum Air Base, Al Anbar Province.
- The author of “E-book Publishing: Create Your Own Brand of Digital Books,” Allen Taylor is currently a freelance writer and editor at Taylored Content.
- A native of Dallas, Texas, he now resides in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with his wife, two guinea pigs, a pot belly pig, a family of outdoor cats, two goldfish, and occasionally three rugrats he affectionately calls grandchildren.
Team Members
Nik Milanovic, Columnist, ( Linked-In Profile )
Andrea Mencarini, Business Intelligence Analyst
Heena Dhir, Writer
Nickolina Jacoby, Writer
Advisors:
Dara Albright ( Linked-In Profile )
Drew Froelich ( Linked-In Profile )
Mark Smith ( Linked-In Profile )
Esuga Abaya (Linked-In Profile)
Lending Times is looking to grow its advisory team. If you are interested in joining our team please contact us at your convenience.
Contributors
Frank Rotman
Frank Rotman is a founding partner of QED Investors. His investments are focused on financial services and financial technology companies that are credit oriented or have data analytics foundations at their core. His portfolio of 20+ investments includes many of the emerging next-generation companies in the financial services eco-system such as Credit Karma, Prosper, Avant Credit, SoFi, GreenSky, LendUp and CAN Capital.
Frank was one of the earliest analysts hired into Capital One and spent almost 13 years there helping build many of the company’s business units and operational areas. With two decades in consumer & small business finance, Frank is widely known in the industry as a Credit Risk and Portfolio Management Expert. His responsibilities have included turning around underperforming business units, building new businesses from concept to market leadership positions, overseeing the credit performance of Capital One as a whole, and creating a Student Lending company after leaving Capital One in December 2005.
Frank graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees that included Applied Mathematics (B.S.) and Systems Engineering (M.S.).
Kourosh Shafi
Kourosh is a visiting student at London Business School. He previously graduated with a PhD in Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Cum Laude from Politechnico di Milano, and holds a Master’s degree, Mechanical Engineering from Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. He speaks fluently English, Persian, French and Italian.
Ali Mohammadi
Ali is a researcher in Applied Economics, specializing in Entrepreneurship, finance and Economics of Innovation . My research focus on studying entrepreneurial innovation and management in domains such as venture capital investment, start-up innovation,intellectual property management, technology commercialization strategy.
Bart Burggraaf
Bart Burggraaf is a Partner at MediaGroup Worldwide, a full-service marketing agency specialized in financial services. Prior to this, he managed global marketing at Citibank’s Margin FX product CitiFX Pro and oversaw the growth of its retail business. Before his time at Citi, he worked at the Copenhagen-based online-trading broker, Saxo Bank, where he was focusing on online marketing in the Global Marketing Group.
Sergey Vasin
Sergey Vasin is an investment director and chief operations officer at Blackmoon FG, the platform that enables institutional investors to directly invest in newly-originated loans issued by balance-sheet lenders. Sergey is responsible for cooperation with loan originators and daily operations of the company.
Mike Lobanov
Mike Lobanov is running Target Global, a pan-European VC firm that invests in tech deals worldwide, but primarily in Fintech and B2C Internet space in Europe and USA. Mostly responsible for fintech investments and general management of the firm.
Tim Ranney
Tim Ranney is president and CEO of Clarity Services, Inc., a real-time credit bureau specializing in underwriting and fraud solutions for the subprime industry. Prior to founding Clarity in 2008, Ranney spent 20 years as a leader in Internet security and risk management, serving as COO of an industry leader and senior executive for both Network Solutions and VeriSign.
Steven Renwick
Steven started Satago after experiencing the problem of late-paying customers in his family business in the construction sector and deciding to build something to help tackle the problem.
Prior to starting Satago, Steven was Director of Global Projects at Rocket Internet, one of the world’s largest eCommerce investment companies, where he helped launch dozens of companies worldwide. Steven is a regular speaker on SME credit control and has written on the topic for a number of publications including the Institute of Directors’ “Growing Business Handbook”. He has an MBA from the University of Oxford and in a previous life was a research scientist, with a PhD in Genetics from University College London.
Kevin King
Director of Product Marketing, ID Analytics,Alternative Credit Solutions
Kevin King has nearly a decade of experience in managing fraud, identity, and credit risk through the combination of unique data and advanced analytics. Since joining ID Analytics in 2007, he has helped to lead online lenders, peer-to-peer marketplaces, traditional financial institutions and leading telecommunications companies grow safely – finding ways to grow a business, without growing risk. King is the author of several ID Analytics white papers on fraud trends, analytic innovations, and best practices; and holds a B.A from the University of Colorado
Spencer Li
Spencer Li is based in Beijing, China. He is the VP of Product of Fincera. He oversees and manages product development and marketing of a web-based small business lending platform (CeraVest), a closed-loop B2B payment app (CeraPay), and automotive e-commerce platforms. For more information, please visit the corporate website at www.fincera.net.
Paul Capon
Paul Capon, Managing Partner and Founder, LunaCap Ventures. LunaCap provides hybrid growth capital to early stage companies with existing cash flows. We provide a mix of debt and equity investment.
Nate Nead
Nate Nead is the Founder and Managing Director of InvestmentBank.com, a firm dedicated to small business finance and capitalization. Nate’s experience flows from the investment banking world where he consistently has helped business buyers and sellers maximize value in the transaction process in buying, growing and exiting companies.
Peter Manbeck
Peter Manbeck is a partner in Chapman and Cutler’s New York office. Peter joined the firm in 2011. Peter represents issuers, sponsors, collateral managers, broker-dealers, swap providers, and other participants in asset-backed commercial paper programs and other structured transactions. He has considerable experience with trade receivable and securities portfolio financings and has worked on numerous corporate debt and equity financings. He also represents sponsors and investors in internet-based lending programs and has extensive experience in matters involving state securities laws and FINRA corporate financing rules.
Marc Fransom
Marc Franson is a partner in the Banking and Financial Services Department and Practice Group Leader of the Bank Corporate Group. He represents financial institutions, finance companies, retailers, other creditors and brokers on an array of financial services matters including regulatory applications, consumer credit transactions, deposit products, bank mergers and acquisitions, licensing, regulatory issues and compliance, sale of non-deposit products, technology contracting, payment processing, portfolio acquisitions/divestitures, fair lending and privacy matters, Internet banking, stored value products and marketplace (P2P) lending. He also represents clients in conjunction with legislative and trade association activities.
Bill Nass
As co-founder and president of Teledata Communications, Inc., Bill Nass is responsible for the company’s sales, marketing, product development and strategic third-party relationships. Bill has over 25 years of experience in the lending sector, and is actively involved with several industry associations. In addition, Bill serves on the American Financial Services Association’s (AFSA) Associate Advisory and E-Commerce Committee. Bill holds a B.A. from the University of Maryland.
Konstantin Rabin
Konstantin is the head of marketing at Kontomatik. Kontomatik provides a banking API, every financial organizations can now obtain the transnational, account and KYC data. This information can be used to speed the loan application process, provide the customer with the offers that are exactly matching his profile or simple to access the credit rating of the applicant. With Kontomatik, you can not only satisfy the KYC requirements but also understand your client in a new way.
Egle Nemuraite
Egle Nemuraite is a research analyst at Sharestates, a robust online marketplace for real estate lending and investing. Prior to Sharestates, Egle worked as a property analyst, and brings to the team her expertise in real estate strategy and finance management.
Mike Mazier
Michael Mazier is Co-Founder and CEO of LendingCalc, a fintech provider of data and productivity tools for professional investors in online marketplace lending. LendingCalc offers practical software-as-service solutions that integrate with the daily workflow of portfolio managers who want to invest in this new asset class without the need to build out their own specialized infrastructure or outsource their fiduciary duties.
Previously, Michael was chief quantitative strategist and portfolio manager at Van Eck Global, managing more than $4 billion in assets. He has held senior fixed income analyst, and information technology roles at MSCI-Barra, Morgan Stanley, and Citicorp; and headed closed-end funds research for fixed income at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. He began his career at General Electric, designing hardware and software for military communication satellites. Michael received an MBA from Columbia, Masters in Electrical Engineering from Villanova, and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse.
Boris Batine
Boris Batine – Co-Founder and CEO at emerging markets fintech company ID Finance. Boris Batine graduated with honors The University of Cambridge in England. He has an extensive investment banking background. Then received MA degree. Boris has a Ph.D. in Economics. Prior to starting ID Finance with another co- founder Alexander Dunaev in 2012, he held several top-management positions from deputy director of capital market division to vice-president in Deutsche Bank Group in London, Renaissance Capital and Royal Bank of Scotland. Boris is fond of wakeboarding and snowboarding, participates in sport events on marathon race, swimming and triathlons.
Contact us
Editor-in-Chief: George Popescu
Skype : gapopescu
Email : george@lending-times.com
Phone : 617 418 3928
Address:
451 West 47th St, Suite 2
New York, NY, 10036
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