Loanio launch!

Updated: Just after I wrote this, access to the Loanio website has been restricted again.

Finally! After more than a year of anticipation and announcements Loanio has entered the p2p lending stage. When I looked there were no loan listings yet, so let’s have a look on the concept in the meantime.

Borrowers

US residents with a VantageScore (Experian) of 569 or with a Co-Borrower with a higher score can borrow at Loanio, provided Loanio is licensed in their state. Currently this is not the case everywhere (e.g. when I looked today, it was not available to California or Florida borrowers). The maximum loan amount is dependant on the state limits (e.g. 25.000 US$ in New York).
Terms are 36, 48 or 60 months. Borrowers can repay the loan early without penalties.
Borrowers pay a origination fee of 1 to 4% of the loan amount (dependant on credit grade). Borrowers can opt for platinum verification which costs 35-45 US$. If chosen, Loanio verifies photo identification, proof of income, bank account, employment, salary, postal address and homeownership.

Second loans are possible if the first loan has been paid at least 6 months on time.

The initial interest rate is set by the borrower. If the listing ends with less then 100% but more then 35% funding, the borrower can elect to accept a loan for the funded amount (partial funding).

Lenders

All US residents can lend. Lenders are charged a 1.25% annual servicing fee. Lenders bid at the interest rate they want, lowering the interest of fully funded loans in an auction based style.

Co-Borrowers

Co-Borrowers have so far not been used often in peer to peer lending.  To make loans to users with lower credit grades more secure for lenders Loanio introduced this feature, which might be used by close relatives or friends of the borrower.

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Does p2p lending lead to discrimination?

The study “What’s in a Picture? Evidence of Discrimination from Prosper.com” by the economic professors Devin Pope and Justin Sydnor finds:

We analyze discrimination in a new type of credit market known as peer-to-peer lending. Specifically, we examine how lenders in this online market respond to signals of characteristics such as race, age, and gender that are conveyed via pictures and text. We find evidence of significant racial disparities; loan listings with blacks in the attached picture are 25 to 35 percent less likely to receive funding than those of whites with similar credit profiles.  conditional on receiving a loan, the interest rate paid by blacks is 60 to 80 basis points higher than that paid by comparable whites. Though less significant than the effects for race, we find
that the market also discriminates somewhat against the elderly and the overweight, but in favor of women and those that signal military involvement.
Despite the higher average interest rates charged to blacks, lenders making such loans earn a lower net return compared to loans made to whites with similar credit profiles because blacks have higher relative default rates. This pattern of net returns is inconsistent with theories of accurate statistical discrimination (equal net returns) or costly taste-based preferences against
loaning money to black borrowers (higher net returns for blacks). It is instead consistent with partial tastebased preferences by lenders in favor of blacks over whites or with systematic underestimation by lenders of relative default rates between blacks and whites.

Their conclusion:

Yet the data tell a very different story that suggests that this peer-to-peer lending market actually treats the races more equally than would be expected in a market with accurate statistical discrimination.

I would interpret this conclusion as a negation of p2p lending leading to racial discrimination. However Ron Shevlin at MarketingROI comes to different conclusions.

Some Prosper news

Short news update on Prosper.com developments:

  • Changes at the Prosper management team: John Witchel (former CTO) and Tom Pigoski are no longer listed as part of the management team. A comment on this blog post indicates that John Witchel has left the company while Tom Pigoski is on family leave. Chris Denend is now CTO.
  • Prosper says it will enable faster listings for qualified borrowers. In a streamlined process some borrowers may post loan listings without adding a title, description or picture.
  • Reading statistics published by Prosper? Have a good look on the definitions! In the market survey results, published on Aug. 12th, it looks like on some parameters the year to date figures for 2008 are rising compared to 2007. However looking in the definitions, Prosper compares 7 months in 2008 to 6 months in 2007. (quote:
    2008 Year-to-Date: January 1, 2008 through July 31, 2008.
    2007 Year-to-Date: January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2007.
    )

Lending Club files S-1, step towards reopening for individual lenders

On June 20th, Lendingclub.com filed a registration statement with the SEC to issue up to 600 million US$ in Member Payment Dependent Notes. The notes will be backed by loans and sold to lenders. The process for lenders remains pretty much the same as before the quiet period, only the legal setup will change to comply with regulation.

Link to SEC filing of Lending Club

Press release by Lendingclub regarding the SEC filing

Netbanker extracted some interesting data from the 100+ page Lendingclub filing. 

Globefunder with new homepage

Globefunder's site got a new layout. It looks more structured and professional now.

Also it seems that Globefunder will open its d2c lending (d2c="direct to consumer") to individual lenders. Only in May an announcement of Globefunder sounded like under dtc lending the company would on the lender site be open only to institutional investors.

Now there are "Coming soon Lend Money to make money" signs on the new site. But it's not available yet. Clicking on them displays the message

We're sorry, that option isn't available yet at GlobeFunder.com. Please check back again soon, as we continue to make improvements to the site.