Yesterday marked another defining moment for crowdfinance. Lending Club, the world’s largest crowdlender, announced that it has acquired Springstone Financial, a offline consumer lender that focuses on elective medical and dental procedure lending as well as tuition financing for K-12 private school education. The acquisition, totaling $140 million, was financed in part by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Wellington Management Company, LLP, BlackRock and Sands Capital.
This is the first acquisition of a traditional financing company by a contemporary lending platform. As such, we believe it is a symbolic event signaling the rise of modern lending. You can read more about the acquisition at Lend Academy.
Lending Club’s CEO, Renaud Laplanche, will be delivering one of the keynote addresses at LendIt 2014, the world’s largest and most recognized P2P and online lending conference.
LendIt is known for providing attendees with an unrivaled opportunity to interact with industry leaders, and for delivering leading-edge programming that helps shape the direction of the industry. The 2nd annual LendIt conference will once again include the most influential names in online lending from across the globe. We are tracking to have more than 800 attendees comprised of institutional investors, private wealth managers, family offices, select members of the financial media, individual investors and other industry participants. LendIt will host over 100 panelists and speakers during the two-day event. In addition to an information-packed program, LendIt will feature the largest exhibit hall of P2P portals as well as hands-on workshops for attendees to learn about the latest P2P investor tools.
If you were planning on attending LendIt, you may want to reserve your tickets before the price increase goes into effect on April 20th. Click here to register.
