lending

More and more users of the payment system Perfect Money are discussing the changes introduced by the company which are for some reason not made public by the management of the payment processor itself. Customers of Perfect Money noticed, in particular, that they have some new options inside their accounts which are:

- Credit status
- Trust score

The Credit status option can be seen soon after you log into your account on your main page. At the moment, as many users report, they see “Normal, no overdue loans” note in the Credit status field.

In a move to resume lending to businesses across the nation the heads of six major banks in the UK have united to form a dedicated taskforce. In a letter to Chancellor George Osborne, BBA Chairman Stephen Green outlined a series of proposals aimed at stimulating private-sector recovery.

"We, like you, believe there is a real need to make sure that viable businesses are able to obtain the finance they need to support the recovery of the UK economy," Green wrote.

Mint.com has partnered with Lending Club, the leading U.S. peer lending network, to involve it into new Goals program that helps Mint users to get out of debt and save money more efficiently. Under the new program customers will get out of credit card debt faster, pay less interest and keep more of their money for what really matters, says the official statement.

Lending Club offers personal unsecured loans for paying off high-interest debt at rates starting at 7.93 percent APR. It is 53% less than the overall national credit card APR of 16.81 percent.

The Banker magazine's Top 1000 ranked Bank of America as the world's top bank in terms of capital strength shifting thus JPMorgan lower on the list. Meantime, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) tops the profit league.

Bank of America’s Tier 1 capital increased by 1/3 from last year to $160 billion, while JPMorgan’s Tier 1 capital declined 2% to $133 billion. The magazine uses Tier 1 capital as a measure of a bank's ability to lend on a large scale and endure shocks.

John Kanas, a CEO of BankUnited, reiterated his forecast for the banks in the United States. He predicts that a thousand banks will fail in the next year or two.

“There is an overcapacity in the banking industry and that will be taken care of,” he said. “We lost 140, 150 last year; we’re on track to lose a similar amount this year. We lost 25 or 30 the year before.”

Earlier in August Kanas made the same forecasts.

In a move to clear its balance sheet of the troubled assets Citigroup held negotiations with some private equity groups and hedge funds. Citi wants to sell its of $3 billion in car loans, according to the report by the Financial Times.

It is supposed that Citi offered to provide the buyers of the loans with financing for a few years after the sale.

However, in view of no boom at the market for securitized bonds, which are backed by cash flow from loans, these assets were less attractive, as noted by several private equity groups and hedge funds.
 

TriNovus announced the launch of BankRisk, a comprehensive stress test and risk management solution that proactively evaluates the effects of adverse economic conditions on a bank's comprehensive loan portfolio.
TriNovus developed BankRisk as a tool for banks to utilize partly in response to the federal banking regulators' concerns about community banks' increased participation in commercial real-estate lending, according to a release.

Chase announced today that it plans to increase its lending to small businesses by up to $4 billion in 2010, boosting expected new lending to about $10 billion to this vital segment of the U.S. economy. This will provide businesses with increased access to working capital, term loans for expansion, commercial mortgages, lines of credit, and business credit cards. While the $4 billion in additional credit will be available to qualified businesses with annual sales of less than $20 million, the majority of new loans will be targeted to companies with sales of less than $10 million.

 U.S. District Judge John Walter in Los Angeles declined a request submitted by Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp, as well as David Sambol and Eric Sieracki, respectively Countrywide's former chief operating officer and former chief financial officer, to dismiss a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit. The SEC charged Mozilo with securities fraud and insider trading.

 On Sunday CIT Group, the largest factoring company that finances small and medium size businesses, filed for bankruptcy protection which is viewed by most analysts as a threat to most of its clients putting them in at the end of 2008.

This filing is one of the largest in the history of the US and it will affect 2,000 of retailers and their vendors but not the company's other operating subsidiaries. CIT expects to reduce its total debt by about $10 billion.

 Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he sees positive signs that the economy is recovering, although the recession remains "alive and acute" for families dealing with unemployment and facing home foreclosure.

In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Geithner said that Americans were saving much more and borrowing less from the rest of the world.

The economy grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of this year, the strongest rate of growth seen in two years.