Virtual Banking: A Guide to Innovation and Partnering

Foreword

By Renaud Laplanche

Co-Founder and CEO of Lending Club

When I founded Lending Club in 2006, I saw the potential for a new model to deliver credit, in a way that would transform the U.S. banking system into an online marketplace where investors directly fund borrowers, earning a return in the process and creating savings for borrowers. This transformation would allow the system to operate at a lower cost, be more transparent and more consumer friendly. As I started building Lending Club I came to learn from people like Dan that my vision was part of an unprecedented wave of technological innovations in financial services. The task Dan took on–to provide a guide to such innovations–is enormously challenging, but as a former investment banker, industry analyst, and PayPal innovation executive, he was uniquely qualified to do so, and the result is a resounding success.

Today’s financial services industry includes a plethora of technology companies, from new and innovative brokerage platforms like Stockpile, personal financial management platforms like Personal Capital and Wealthfront, new models for banking such as Simple, payments processors like Braintree, and business services such as Swipely. The common thread tying all of these innovations together is the customer-centric vision that brought them into being. Focusing on the consumer, rather than the product, as a starting point is one of the central themes of this book. Through its six chapters, Dan deftly outlines ...