Kiva has just added the first video to one of the borrower’s profiles. A video conveys much more information about the business of the borrower. And by posting the videos on Youtube, Kiva achives viral marketing effects.
I do wonder why they did post such a short video (5 seconds) as example – bandwidth considerations?
(Source: Kiva announcement)
It has been said before – there might have been no better time to establish p2p lending. With the established system shaken and many consumers not getting loans as easily as before the market environment is good for peer-to-peer lending.
P2P lending gets good media attention. The Uncrunch.org initiative (in which Lending Club takes part) in the Change.org vote for new ideas finished in the Top 15.
On the demand site all p2p lending companies benefit from the crisis. On the supply site, in my opinion the effect is mostly positive too, but some lenders are hesitant to invest their money in a new, innovative model and rather seek a save haven for it.
P2P lending sites that have demonstrated low default rates over a longer time and therefore low risk fared best – especially at Zopa UK supply rose strongly lately.
Bonmot from Spanish Comunitae:
Pues no sabemos si la crisis es buena para Comunitae, pero de lo que no cabe duda es de que Comunitae es buena para la crisis.
Translates to: “Well, we do not know if the crisis is good for Comunitae, but what is certain is that Comunitae is good for the crisis.”
A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball.
The video was made by Kiva fellow (volunteer) Kieran Ball, who worked for Kiva in Cambodia. It explains the transfer of the money for a Kiva loan from a lender in London to a borrower in Cambodia.
This is a great example how many people can be reached over the internet with a well made video in a short time. Online since only 8 days the video has been watched over 32,000 times and was embedded in many websites (at least 50).
Kiva today has reached the milestone of 50 million US$, doubling the loan volume in the last 8 months. I have been lending on Kiva for nearly 2 years now and so far all of my borrowers have repaid me (unlike my MyC4 borrowers). Kiva is doing a very good job in keeping defaults low.
1 loan every 32 seconds
The current – impressive – statistics for Kiva are:
| Total value of all loans made through Kiva: | $50,023,035 |
| Number of Kiva Lenders: | 363,222 |
| Number of loans that have been funded through Kiva: | 70,357 |
| Percentage of Kiva loans which have been made to women entrepreneurs: | 77.96% |
| Number of Kiva Field Partners (microfinance institutions Kiva partners with): | 93 |
| Number of countries Kiva Field Partners are located in: | 42 |
| Current repayment rate (all partners): | 98.76% |
| Current default rate (all partners): | 1.24% |
| Average size of loan for funding: | $449.02 |
| Average total amount loaned per Kiva Lender (includes reloaned funds): | $137.81 |
| Average number of loans per Kiva Lender: | 3.70 |
The growth is stimulated by a large, active supporter base, that comes up with creative marketing ideas. Did you know that you can build a beard to support Kiva?
When Prosper.com went in the quiet period the company announced on its blog:
If you’re a borrower seeking a loan, you will still be able to create a new loan listing, which we will endeavor to fulfill through alternative sources.
The way this works is that Prosper refers loan applicants to other lending companies. After answering a few questions, borrowers seeking a loan a channeled to Firstagain, Lendingtree, Freedomfinancialnetwork or Creditkarma (and potentially others – the mentioned ones are the ones I was shown).
Should a borrower use the services of one of the linked companies then Prosper is paid a referral fee.
However apparently not all visitors of the site seem to be redirected. Potentially members or former users with cookies are not shown these options.
Options shown for potential borrowers
The German domain name kredit.de was sold today for 892,000 Euro (approx 1.14 million US$). ‘Kredit’ is the german word for ‘loan’, a very valuable keyword in targeting consumers seeking loans online.
The domain was bought by Unister GmbH from the Abacho AG. It is the highest price ever for a domain sale of the country top level domain .de. Previous examples of .de-domain sales for high prices were chat.de for 320,000 Euro or arbeitsmarkt.de for 200,000 Euro.
Abacho AG still owns the domain kredit.com and said it plans to sell that domain through Sedo, too.
(Source: p2p-kredite.com)