Month: December 2007

Loanland launches peer to peer lending in Sweden

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Loanland.se is the first Swedish p2p lending service. Founder Daniel Kaplan, who in 2006 headed the successful sale of Swedish auction site Tradera to Ebay for 48 million US$, sees a great potential for peer to peer lending in Sweden.

At Loanland, borrowers with the best credit grade can borrow up to 300,000 SEK (approx 45,000 US$), while borrowers with the lowest admitted credit grade can borrow up to 3,000 SEK (approx 450 US$). But borrowers are able to achieve a better credit rating by paying back on time and then can later borrow a larger amount, says Kaplan.

As of today the site had 4 loan listings with interest rates between 4 and 14 percent. Minimum bis seems to be 250 SEK (38 US$). Loan term seems to be customizable as 3 of the current listings are for 3 years and one is for 1 month.

Loanland is backed by experienced entrepreneurs. Aside Kaplan there are Mary Groschopp, before at OMX, Peter Nordlander, founder of Avanza, Peter Settman, founder of Baluba.

If you use Loanland please share your experiences in the wiseclerk forum.

Sources (1,2,3,4 all in swedish language)

Canadian CommunityLend receives $2.5M VC funding

wiseclerk

CommunitylendCommunityLend.com, which strives to be the first peer to peer lending service launching in Canada, has secured 2.5 million dollar venture capital. Furthermore CommunityLend announced winning Barry Campbell, former MP and Secretary to the Minister of Finance and Jim Jones, CEO of GMAC Residential Capital as additional directors.

In an email Co-Founder and CTO Colin Henderson told P2P-Banking.com: "… We have relaunched our site, as we move towards launch in early 08.  The key aspects of this milestone for us, is securing our funding, appointment of our management team, and appointing our Board of Directors. From here we will move towards launch in early 08. "

Quoted from the CommunityLend website:

Share in the Rewards of Investing in People

The unsecured consumer loan marketplace in Canada exceeds $100 Billion in volume every year and generates interest payments on those loans exceeding $15 Billion annually. By definition, “unsecured” loans are often small loans used for purposes like funding a wedding or paying off high interest credit card debt and for which the lender has not taken security to support the loan.

Today in Canada, this very profitable industry is also a very closed industry, with only a handful of major companies involved. This means that a very small list of banks and credit cards companies are literally today the sole beneficiaries of one of this country’s most profitable industries.

CommunityLend intends to democratize lending in Canada by opening up this billion dollar industry to other Lenders interested in participating. Share the wealth, we like to say!