LenderHub

What Happened:

Despite worsening COVID news, stocks—particularly tech stocks—managed to explode higher for the week with the NASDAQ hitting another all-time high on Friday. Nationwide, daily COVID cases rose to 60,000 per day with Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California leading the way. If this looks familiar to last week’s market summary… it is! We just replaced “holiday-shortened week” and instead of 50,000 COVID cases a day, we are now at 60,000.

“So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one
They always told me when you hit it you'll know it
But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating.” –Drive By Truckers

It goes without saying that the first quarter of 2020 has been tumultuous across the board. While it can be difficult to keep up, having a solid pulse on the auto finance market can help increase your financial institution’s auto loan portfolio. Experian recently released their State of the Automotive Finance Market report from Q1 of 2020. I'd like to share some highlights of the report with you and offer insight for your financial institution on the state of the auto finance market going forward into the second quarter of this most unusual year.

What Happened:

Despite worsening COVID-19 news, stocks managed to explode higher for the holiday-shortened week with the NASDAQ hitting another all-time high on Thursday. Nationwide, daily COVID cases rose to 50,000 per day with Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California leading the way. In response, all four states rolled back a fair amount of their economic reopening plans. To some degree, we are seeing the worst-case scenario where we start reopening, virus transmission picks back up, and we have to shut it down again.

As the industry and consumers are adjusting to a new normal after the global spread of COVID-19, fraudsters are changing their schemes to prey on the heightened anxieties that people are experiencing during these uncertain times. In this blog post, we'll be revisiting four fraud trends that are impacting consumers and financial institutions.

What happened:

Last week was the first real “risk-off” week in quite a while. COVID-19 has pounced on some of our largest population centers that began relatively aggressive economic re-opening campaigns in mid to late May. Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California dominated the headlines, as it certainly appears that the so-called “First Wave” of the virus has not ended yet. The equity and corporate bond markets have banked heavily on the V-shaped recovery and what we are seeing is, the United States is not ready to materially reopen the economy without significant public health damage.

Self-serve payment technology was developed and continues to evolve as a way to bring convenience and efficiency to consumers, businesses, and financial institutions. From a business standpoint, giving consumers and account holders a way to seamlessly make their loan payments, transfer funds across accounts, pay bills, and send money from peer to peer provides value and can create operational efficiencies.

What happened:

Last week, stocks spent the days grinding back after the prior week’s late selloff. Treasury rates were mostly unchanged as were investment grade and high yield bonds. Risk assets just seemed to want to go up, more or less ignoring the rising COVID hospitalization numbers in Florida, Texas, and Arizona to focus more on talk of a new infrastructure package from the White House and more enactment from the Fed’s Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF).

From the great cult classic movie “Big Trouble in Little China,”

Jack Burton – “I don’t get this at all?”
Lo Pan – “Shut up Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!”

As U.S. equities continue their relentless march higher, the question reverberating from all corners of the investment world is, “How can the stock market completely decouple itself from economic reality in what is really just the first couple of innings of the COVID crisis?”

When it comes to technology, one thing's for sure: it's constantly changing and evolving. Financial technology, or FinTech, is no exception. And while it can be tiring to keep up—let alone stay ahead—in the industry, financial institutions must do so, since falling behind quickly allows competitors to gain ground.