Virgin Money has been a facilitator of friends and family p2p loans in the US. The last official number on loan volume generated was 390 million US$. Virgin Money had aquired predecessor Circlelending in 2007. In the article Virgin Money Letting US Business Fade Away, P2PLending News.com now lists several signs that Virgin Money might exit the p2p lending market.
US
Banker Invests 1 Million US$ VC Money into Prosper
Nigel Morris, co-founder of Capital One, has invested 1 million US$ into Prosper.com via his venture capital company QED Investors.
The investment comes in form of a convertible promissory note for the amount of 1 million US$, which is due in one year and carries an interest rate of 15%. QED Investors may elect to convert the note into shares of Prosper’s preferred stock.
VC funding for Prosper now totals 41 million US$. Nigel Morris joins Prosper’s board of directors.
(via TechCrunch.com, sources press release & other)
Prosper’s Legal Collection Test Result Fail Expectations
Prosper has published a review of the results of a legal collection test. In November 2007, Prosper had selected 74 loans with an outstanding principal balance of approx. 704,000 US$ to conduct a test for a legal collection strategy instead of including them in a debt sale (which at that time was the usual Prosper procedure for bad debt).
The cases were handed over to the law firm Hunt & Henriques.
Since then there was none or little official communication about the progress. Relying on other sources, P2P-Banking.com reported last year that several of lawsuits in these cases were lost.
The new blog post by Prosper describes in detail which steps were undertaken and what results the measures yielded. The only step that can be counted as somewhat successful was the pre-legal phase of letters threatening lawsuits which recovered about 40,000 US$ payments. 66 accounts then went into the legal process.
Surprisingly 16 cases (24%) had to be closed because the debtor moved out of state (3) or Prosper was unable to obtain service.
On a sidenote: Interested parties have raised the questions why Prosper did not apply to the court to allow service by publication, which seem to legal and often used in California as P2P-Banking.com was told. In this case, after other measures failed the plaintiff runs an classified ad in a newspaper. It does not matter if the defendant actually sees this newspaper ad.
The remaining 50 cases further dwindled when Prosper deducted cases with bankruptcies and lowered credit scores which it deemed not worthwhile. Continue reading
Lending Club has New Graphic Statistics Page
Lending Club has a new graphic displays on it’s statistic page. Prominently featured are loan purpose, range of investor returns and total loans funded. Users can click on any graphic to enlage it. I found the ‘Loan details’ page more interesting then the ‘Highlights’ page, for it visualizes differences in trends depending on loan purpose.
Signup Bonus
New lenders signing up at Lending Club via this link get 25 US$ to lend.
Vittana Video – How P2P Loans Helped Students in Nicaragua
Vittana (sea earlier coverage ‘Education microfinance – Vittana funds students worldwide via p2p lending‘) has published the following video, where students that got loans through Vittana tell their story.
Currently Vittana lists 11 open loan listings.
Financial Startups Lobby for Congress to Ease Regulation on P2P Lending
Financial startups have formed the ‘Coalition for new Credit Models’. Among the founding enterprises are Prosper and Loanio. Two of the changes the coalition asks Congress and the Administration to make are:
Adopt legislation classifying person-to-person lending as a consumer banking service, not a securities offering.
Create a Start Up Liaison at Treasury Department or within banking regulators to guide and fast-track the development of new financial products by start-up companies and organizations seeking to innovate the way consumers and businesses raise and access capital.
(Source: press release; photo credit: Vince Alongi)