Foreign news: BBVA snaps up another online bank, US consumer finance bureau calls for marketplace co
Spanish bank BBVA has acquired Holvi, a Finnish online banking start-up, VentureBeat reports. Over the past two years BBVA has acquired two other online banking businesses - Simple in the United States and Atom in the United Kingdom. It paid US$64 million for Atom, which was not opened to the public at the time. The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is to start accepting complaints about loans filed with marketplace lenders, ramping up the regulatory pressure on the nascent P2P industry, Finextra reports. The CFPB said it would forward complaints to the marketplace lender and work to get a response, generally within 15 days. One law firm quoted by Finextra, however, suggested that as these complaints could be dealt with by existing procedures, the move is more likely an exercise to warn the sector to expect heavier scrutiny, especially under anti-terrorist financing legislation, after it emerged that San Bernadino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook borrowed US $28,500 from P2P lender Prosper just weeks before he and his wife went on their murderous rampage.