TS Lending Podcast: The race to 1 day mortgage closings, crypto lending needs to grow up, SoFi adds investing

Welcome to episode 2 of the Tearsheet Lending Podcast with your hosts Zack Miller and Dan Pelberg. This week on the show, we talk about crypto lending and what the industry needs to do to grow up. Dan wrote a thoughtful article about the crypto lending space this week. As Dan spoke with a lot of the players, it became clear that they primarily target speculators now and that there are a few things that will need to happen for this to become a serious industry. We talk about SoFi's expansion into investing. As growth levels off, a lot of lenders that began as monoline are expanding into other products. SoFi plans to introduce stock and ETF investing on its platform. Will people come for loans and stay to invest? Not sure. Dan and Zack turn to the race for speedy digital mortgage closings. LoanDepot introduced an eight day digital closing product this week. Chase publicly committed to a 21 day closing on its offline mortgage products with a “Closing Guarantee” that will pay customers $1000 if the bank misses the closing window. This guarantee is only available to customers that use other Chase products, so it's less about tech and more about cross-selling and tiered service delivery. Lastly, Dan and Zack discuss the Chinese P2P lending market which grew unfettered to over 6000 lending platforms. Fraud and mismanagement were rife and the government is now cracking down, closing down many of the platforms, seizing assets and prosecuting people. What does this say about the future of crowdlending in China and in general?