Bulletins

Liberty Bank is latest bank to be acquired by a fintech

KMD Partners, the parent company of online lender CreditNinja, is buying Salt Lake City-based Liberty Bank.

CreditNinja offers personal loans with high interest rates ranging from 25% to 249%. Liberty Bank has one branch in Utah.

The deal still needs to be approved by regulators. If approved, CreditNinja and Liberty Bank would remain separate businesses owned by KMD. However, the companies could do things like cross-sell products.

A number of fintechs have bought or sought approval to run banks. LendingClub recently closed its deal to acquire Radius Bank, while SoFi is buying Golden Pacific bank. And Square's bank recently started operating for business loans.

Tomio Geron

Tomio Geron ( @tomiogeron) is a San Francisco-based reporter covering fintech. He was previously a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering venture capital and startups. He was also as a staff writer at Forbes covering social media and venture capital, and edited the Midas List of top tech investors. He can be reached at tgeron@protocol.com or tgeron@protonmail.com.

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