Recent interview video with Lending Club CEO on FoxBusiness:
US
Lending Club Default Rates Higher than Initially Expected?
Back in January I received an email from a Lendingclub employee in reaction to this article, where I wrote:
“… Several .. p2p lending services show clear signs that default levels will (or have) surpassed the initially published percentages of defaults to be expected based on external data. … The one exception from the rule is Zopa UK, which successfully manages to keep defaults low…”.
The email questioned why Lending Club was not mentioned along Zopa for keeping defaults low and invited me to discuss this. On Jan. 21st I replied with the following (based on numbers which I compiled from Lendingclubstats.com – these will have changed slightly since then by now):
As sample let’s look at the loans Lending Club issued in Dec. 2007. Total loan amount is 1,322,850 US$.
The status of these is:
a) Current 823,800 (62,3%)
b) Fully Paid 168,150 (12,7%)
c) Late 82,500 (6,2%)
d) Defaulted 248,400 (18,8%)These loans were approx. 2 years old (in January) and will run about 1 year more.
Is it a fair assumption that in Jan 2010 22% (or more) of the loans issued will have defaulted? I know I did not take the final step to split these numbers by credit grade, but if I would have done that, are you arguing that the default levels are low (or at least lower than the scoring predicted in Dec 2007)? If Dec. 2007 is for some reason a bad performing month, feel free to do the above with any other month from 2007 for the discussion and we continue with these numbers.
Though I was promised a detailed answer and I did follow-up several times, so far there has been no reply. I am not saying that Lending Club defaults are too high for lenders to make a profit. My points are:
- Default levels at Lending Club are likely higher than initially expected
- The published default rates on Lending Club and other p2p lending platforms are often averages in relation to all running loans (including recently funded ones). This figure is skewed, if the service is growing fast and lenders might misinterpret it. A better evaluation is based on taking a sample of older loans (e.g. based on one month of origination)
- ROIs for Lending Club lenders will be, once their investments mature, likely lower than the average shown at the moment at the Lending Club statistic page.
People Capital and Prosper Announce Referral Partnership
People Capital, a website for college students to obtain student loans via an online lending exchange, and Prosper.com have announced a referral partnership to help borrowers seeking both educational and non-educational loans on their respective Web sites. Borrowers who are unable to obtain educational loans that meet their financing needs on Prosper.com will be offered the opportunity to access the People Capital lending exchange. In return, People Capital will refer its Web borrowers, who are interested in taking out non-educational loans, to Prosper.
People Capital is currently in Beta.
Earlier examples of p2p lending services referring leads that could not be funded on their platform to another service were Zopa selling leads of low credit grade borrowers and Prosper refering loan applicants to other sites while Prosper was closed to new borrowers during SEC registration.
US P2P Lending Regulation Might Ease
The House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill that will move regulation of p2p lending services from the SEC to the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) in Spring 2010, provided the Senate and President Obama approve the new legislation.
Oversight by the SEC meant that Prosper, Lending Club and other p2p lending companies in the US had to go through an arduous registration process in the past, which forced them to close for new business for several months. Zopa even decided to exit the US market.
Prosper CEO Chris Larsen welcomed this development, saying: “In terms of how the Bill relates to peer-to-peer lending, we’ve always believed that the industry should be regulated as a bank-like sector by a strong, holistic regulator focused on providing robust protections for both lenders and borrowers…”.
Prosper Hires Nick Talwar as Chief Revenue Officer
P2P Lending Company Prosper Marketplace (Prosper.com) has hired Nick Talwar, former head of Citibank Sweden. Talwar’s task as Chief Revenue Officer will be to bring Prosper back on a growth track.
As reported earlier Prosper is currently experiencing high losses and struggling to reconnect with earlier growth rates.
P2P Lending Company Prosper.com has High Q3 Loss
Prosper Marketplace, Inc. the company running the p2p lending site Prosper.com had a net loss of 2,238,138 US$ in the third quarter of 2009. Furthermore Prosper’s cash reserve is low. As of September 30th, 2009 Prosper had 2,079,624 US$ cash and cash equivalents left from an initial VC funding of 40 million US$. Even accounting for the recent 1 million US$ investment of a banker, at the current burn rate Prosper will need new funding soon.
However the timing and circumstances make chances for a new VC round look less than ideal.
Prosper reopened the site for new loans after completing the SEC registration process in July 2009, but still struggles to reach growth rates the marketplace had in 2007 and 2008.