Lendingclub.com currently runs a promotion. The 25,000th investor to register wins 2,500 US$. To be eligible a registration is enough (no purchase/investment necessary). The winner will be announced after Oct. 31st.
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Pertuity Direct Seems To Discontinue Operations
P2P lending company Pertuity Direct, which launched in January this year, seems to go out of operation. A special meeting of the board of trustees of the National Retail Fund (the fund though which lenders invest in Pertuity Direct loans) took place “to approve the liquidation and distribution of all shares of the fund”.
Currently it is unclear what this means to investors and if past borrowers will be affected in any way. Currently it is not possible for new borrowers to apply for new loans and new investors can not sign up on the National Retail Fund website.
I’ll try to reach (former?) Pertuity Direct employees to comment on the situation and review the situation further.
(news broke via Prosper Lending Review)
Loanio sells License for P2P Lending Software
As P2PLendingNews reports, the latest amendment of Loanio’s SEC S-1 filing reveals that Loanio has licensed their source code for 375,000 US$ to an unnamed company.
100,000 US$ have been payed upon signing. For more details read the full article here.
Working Paper of the Federal Reserve Bank San Francisco on P2P Lending
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has just published a 19 page working paper by Ian J. Galloway on “Peer-to-Peer Lending and Community Development Finance“. It examines Kiva, Zopa, Prosper, MicroPlace and Lending Club.
Quote from the conclusion of the article:
While online platforms may never replace conventional lending institutions, such as banks, it is important that the community development finance industry be aware of this emerging technology. Moreover, P2P finance platforms will continue to evolve—allowing for third-party issued loan sales, for example—which may fundamentally alter the way credit is allocated in the future. In either case, the potential community development finance implications are too significant to ignore.
Benefits of Investing in P2P Lending via Lending Club
Lending Club lenders have invested more than 45 million US$ in loans to fellow borrowers. Not yet a Lending Club investor?
You might off by watching this presentation, which was recently webcasted by Lending Club to lenders. The 30 minute presentation lists benefits and explains the basics on how the website works.
Since it is marketing material it does show a very rosy picture on the numbers, but you can crunch all figures for yourself on Lending Club’s statistic page (e.g. change observation to loans issued from June 2007 to June 2008).
If you are ready to start investing at Lendingclub. com you can sign up here.
First Prosper.com Note up for Trade on Trading Platform
Prosper.com picked up speed again fast after the relaunch. As of today there are already more than 500 loan listings open for bidding. 5 loans already originated, despite the short timespan since re-opening.
Today I saw the first note for resale on the note trading platform. It is sold in auction mode where lenders can bid (sealed bids) during a seven days auction. Currently there are four bids. Would the auction end right now, then the buyer would purchase the note at a steep discount (40.4 Cents on the dollar). But I am sure bid prices will rise fast when more lenders discover that there is now activity on Prosper’s secondary market.