For the fourth year running, our fund will sponsor the Core Innovators Challenge in June at CFSI and the American Banker’s renamed Emerge Forum (formerly the Underbanked Financial Services Forum). Hurry, before April 14! Once again we are seeking nominations from companies small and large for who offers the best,…
Spent – Amex and Participant take on financial inclusion
Amex’ visionary Dan Schulman is marshaling that giant to embrace financial inclusion in very real ways, not just a philanthropic or PR side show. On the PR side, though, they have partnered with the guys behind Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman (Jeff Skoll’s Participant Media), to create a short…
The Savings and FinCap Map
And last but not least in our industry maps of companies serving the Emerging Middle Class, is the Savings and Financial Capability Map (preceded by the Payments Map and the Credit Map). This is the smallest in terms of generating revenues – only $8.9billion in fees – and contains the…
The Credit Map
Following the Payments Map of companies serving the Emerging Middle Class, here’s The Credit Map. A handy dandy guide for seeing how all the pieces fit together and a decent sample of who are the movers and shakers. These companies were key in generating $71 billion in consumer revenues in…
The Payment Map
Last week, CFSI and Core published the 2012 market sizing report for companies serving the Emerging Middle Class. $89B across five categories of products during 2012. In an effort to make the landscape more concrete, our venture associate, Victoria Cheng, helped create several industry maps. Here’s the first one: The…
Underbanked Hot? How’s a cool $89billion?
Four years ago I tried to size the underbanked market. We knew it was lots of people, but weren’t sure if they are “underbanked” because they’re unbankable. Do they make bank? (Answer: hell yes). We have since partnered with CFSI, and now with Morgan Stanley, to formalize and serialize this…
Summary of Arjan’s Subprime Auto Series
One of the biggest financial service disruptions in recent memory has been the transformation of the payday lending industry – originally published on Citizen Tekk. A new breed of technology companies has begun to displace traditional and expensive lenders by using data and technology to build scalable, profitable businesses that…
Five Subprime Auto Finance Predictions for 2018
This is the third installment on why I think subprime auto lending is about to transform radically. I just returned from an enlightening trip to the Auto Finance Summit in Las Vegas. Over the past five years, payday lending has evolved from a marketplace dominated by old-school lenders into one…
Auto Lending is the New Payday Lending – and That’s a Good Thing
In my last post, I made the case that the financial product no one talks about – auto finance – is actually the single largest spend category in financial services for the un- and underbanked. (Read it) Today’s subprime customers can pay as much as 10 times more to get…
Subprime Auto Finance: Hidden Giant
No one who reads my blog will be surprised to learn that 1 in 4 Americans are underbanked. But I do see quite a few raised digital eyebrows when I point out that these 80 million consumers spend almost $80 billion on fees and interest for the most basic of…