P2P lending: Why the Lending Club fiasco won’t send us all back to the dark ages May 19, 2016 You'd be forgiven for thinking, following last week’s news that Lending Club’s chief executive Renaud Laplanche was stepping down amid allegations around loan sales and misconduct, that this is the end of P2P lending as we know it. Commentators have been quick to discredit the P2P sector, with online lenders labelled “banks in disguise”, up [...]
Lending Club fiasco: This is the company helping P2P platforms grow up with integrity May 19, 2016 The resignation of US giant Lending Club’s chief executive last Monday sent a icy wave of unease through the P2P lending industry. Writing in City A.M. last week, AltFi’s Rupert Taylor commented: “the failures at Lending Club justified robust action because they related to a discipline that is central to what distinguishes P2P from conventional [...]
Google just launched a personal assistant that can control your home, book movies and search the internet May 18, 2016 How would you like to run your whole house by using just your voice? Google just made that possible by cashing in on the Internet of Things trend. The tech giant today launched Google Assistant, a digital Man Friday, at its annual developer conference in Mountain View, California The new device, similar to Apple's Siri, allows users [...]
Retailers lead number of cyber attack incident responses, new research has revealed May 18, 2016 The retail sector has overtaken the financial services industry in generating the most responses following a cyber security breach, fresh research has revealed. Retail now accounts for 22 per cent of all response engagements, up from 12 per cent the previous year, according to the annual Global Threat Intelligence Report. The rise has been put down to [...]
The Kindle Oasis is a masterful showcase in usability and design, but can Amazon’s e-reader justify the price tag? May 18, 2016 Like sensible shoes, boxes of staples, and that plastic bag in your kitchen that’s filled with other plastic bags, it’s really difficult to get excited about e-readers. They’re functional and mundane. Unsexy grey slates that can’t load Candy Crush. The worst ones stand in the way of your efforts to read, but the best ones [...]
199 problems and a glitch is one: NYSE is having technical problems May 18, 2016 The New York Stock Exchange suffered a technical glitch in early trading on Wednesday resulting in trades for nearly 200 ticker symbols being cancelled. The unspecified glitch first occurred at 9.27am in New York. Things were back up and running by 10.09am, however the latest update at 10.26am indicated the problem had returned. Nearly an hour [...]
Pay by Fitbit? It could soon be a reality after this acquisition of assets from fintech startup Coin May 18, 2016 Fitbit has indicated a move into payments with the acquisition of technology from a Silicon Valley firm specialising in wearable payments, meaning users might in future be able to pay for things simply by swiping their Fitbit. The tech company has snapped up the assets of Coin, a startup in the fintech and wearables space which created a [...]
Millions of hacked LinkedIn passwords put up for sale online May 18, 2016 Over 100 million LinkedIn passwords have been stolen and put on sale online. A hacker, called “Peace”, told tech website Motherboard that he is trying to sell LinkedIn user data online. He reportedly managed to obtain personal information of users in 2012 when a cyber breach revealed encrypted passwords of over 117m LinkedIn users. Read [...]
Entre-perp-neurs? Turning prisoners into entrepreneurs could save the UK economy a billion pounds May 18, 2016 Training prisoners to become entrepreneurs could save the nation more than a billion pounds and reduce the likelihood of reoffending, a new report claims. Introducing entrepreneur training for offenders and providing funding for schemes could save £1.4bn from the government's annual £4.5bn reoffending bill. Entrepreneurship could be the answer to the significant barriers former inmates face when [...]
I, for one, welcome our imminent driverless car overlords May 18, 2016 The only way we’d know that the government was any more on board with driverless cars was if the Queen had pulled up to the Houses of Parliament today in the back of one rather than in a horse drawn carriage. It's no wonder, considering the interest from the likes of Google, Apple and the majority of major car makers, that [...]