While blockchain is on my mind, there were a couple other news items I saw this year around a group called Spring Labs. Actually the two pieces are both dated June 12, 2019, one from Forbes and one from Chicago Crain’s. The Forbes piece is about GM Financial extending its membership with a consortium using Spring Labs blockchain technology for identity and fraud prevention. The Crain’s piece is about the consortium in general.
The Crain’s pieces discusses it in the context of suppressing loan stacking. Reading between the lines, its a way for consumer identities to be tokenized on a distributed ledger – which makes almost scary sense to me. Much like the Fraud Prevention Exchange, this framework needs to function at scale before it is effective. Right now, the Spring Labs use is based on 25 partners: Avant, GMF, SoFi, On Deck Capital and others.
The Forbes pieces is centered on GM and the use case for fraud in automotive financing which always seemed strange to me – can identities be effectively disguised when the consumer is right there in person?
People: Spring Labs cofound is John Sun who was a co-founder of Avant. (I think I met him). It’s based in Chicago and San Francisco. Connections: wife of Avant CEO is Anna Fridmen is chief counsel. There’s a connection to others in my world apparently.
SteveV Thoughts on Fraud and Financial Services 