Services

Review of My P2P Lending Predictions For 2010

wiseclerk 3 Comments

In January 2010 I wrote down my predictions for p2p lending trends in 2010. Now let’s see how good my crystal ball was. The black text is my original prediction, with the review added in green and yellow.

More competition and entering more national markets (probability 100%)
This is a fairly easy bet. There are many, especially European markets, where no p2p lending service is operating yet. Even accounting for the fact that laws and regulation in some national markets make it hard or impossible to establish a service, there is still plenty of room. Looking at an individual country, it is much harder to tell. I still wonder that there are no competitors to Zopa in the British market (yet).
As expected this was an easy bet to win. Plenty of new p2p lending companies launched. Zopa got 4 new competitors in the UK (Ratesetter, Fundingcircle, Quakle and Yes-Secure). 3 companies launched in Finland. FairPlace started in Brazil.

More products (probability 100%)
Currently nearly all p2p lending platforms only offer one product: unsecured, fixed term loans. The differences are more in the details of loan funding (bidding, no bidding, markets, listings) but not in the offered product. In 2010 we will see additional products (e.g. secured loans).
Ratesetter introduced rolling monthly loans with variable interest rates. (Note: variable interest rates were one of my predictions for 2008 – I was a bit early on that one). Money360 tries p2p mortgages. CommunityLend might be up to something really interesting with FinanceIt. Some smaller enhancements to the existing product were developed too (e.g. cars as collateral).

A bank will acquire an existing p2p lending service (probability <25%)
While last year’s prediction was that there is the first bank experimenting with p2p lending (and there was), 2010 might see a bank (or other financial institution) buying a running p2p lending service.Buying will be much faster, cheaper and risk-less than if the bank tries to build a new service.
Did not happen. An interesting development was the decision of a Korean Savings Bank to act as a lender on MoneyAuction. Continue reading →

P2P Lending Year-End Review 2010

wiseclerk

As the end of 2010 approaches here is a selection of main peer-to-peer-lending news and developments covered by P2P-Banking.com:

(Photo by paul (dex))

CommunityLend Starts FinanceIt – Offers Sales Financing Solutions for Businesses

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Canadian P2P Lending company CommunityLend has launched new site: FinanceIt. FinanceIt allows Canadian businesses to provide their own in-house financing directly to their customers. Initially FinanceIt targets home improvement vendors, a line of business in which FinanceIt says Canadians finance 51 cents on every dollar spent.

Features of FinanceIt include:

  • A complete lending platform, including ID verification, credit review, EFT, and collections
  • Instant approvals that are valid for 90 days
  • Automated legal documentation
  • Works on iPad and other mobile devices
  • Funds are deposited into our partner’s bank account
  • No fees of any kind

This is a highly relevant development for p2p lending. If successful, CommunityLend will achieve four goals:

  1. Increase loan demand while at the same time cutting marketing expenses/efforts to reach potential borrowers
    The promotion of the loan offers will be in fact done for free by the business that offers the financing for its goods
  2. Build strong business relationships to vendors, which can be broadened should CommunityLend develop more p2p banking products aimed at businesses in the future
  3. Identify borrowers in person (at the store)
    While I cannot judge how crucial this is in the Canadian market, it would be very useful in some other markets for p2p lending services to have
  4. Validate the purpose the loan is taken out for
    Usually in p2p lending unsecured loans can be used for any purpose the borrower wants. While some sites ask the borrower to describe the loan purpose in the listing this is never tracked or validated for it would be time-consuming and costly – just not worth the effort.
    In a financing solution it is obvious what the loan will be used for. How is this information valuable? Communitylend will have very good data on how default rates differ depending on the loan purpose allowing them in mid-term to improve the pricing of the credit risk into the offered interest rate.

I believe this is a major step for p2p lending coming out of a single product niche (unsecured loans) into a broader p2p banking approach. And banks should watch out. Offering financing solutions to businesses is a core product for some banks.

P2P lending marketplaces in other countries should explore if offering loan financing to businesses is a viable route for them to grow too. In fact I know one p2p lending company that already has similar plans in the working and will start financing in 2011. Continue reading →

Prosper Moves To Pre-Set Rates; Abandons Auction Model

wiseclerk 4 Comments

P2P Lending site Prosper.com changed its business model today.

The company announced: ‘Our site has a new look, and we’ve eliminated the auction and simplified our loan process so that we can connect lenders and borrowers more efficiently. Borrowers will receive pre-set rates and lenders cannot be outbid. We hope you’ll appreciate this streamlined and even more prosperous experience.‘

Prosper is still lagging far behind competitor Lendingclub in monthly loan volume funded. While Prosper’s new loan funding process resembles the one of Lending Club more after Prosper did away with the auction it remains to be seen if it will help Prosper to regain market share.

The main problem of Prosper was not the auctions, but high default rates leading to lender churn.

Another change, according to a recent SEC filing, is that Prosper now allows partial funding of loans. Continue reading →

P2P Lending Site CommunityLend Adds Car Loan Cooperation

wiseclerk

Communitylend has partnered with Canada’s largest used car site AutoTrader.ca, now offering a car financing option through Communitylend for every listed car.

The option is limited to private listings in Ontario for cars with a sales price of up to 25,000 CAN$.

This is a good partnership for Communitylend as it will profit from increased exposure to potential borrowers.

(Source)

Related Article: P2P Lending With Cars as Collateral

How P2P Lending Services Collect User Feedback

wiseclerk

P2P lending services are young and developing in an innovative environment with little established best practise examples. Every company is constantly trying to learn how to improve the experience for its users. Whether it be user interface, information pages, business model and fees – there is lots of room for incremental improvements.

P2p lending services certainly test run some things before the general public gets to use them. Examples of methods to do this are closed betas, monitored usability tests, A/B tests, ….

One of the most valuable sources of information & ideas for improvements are the users themselves. The mass of users ensures that every little step of every process gets used possible times, bugs identified and misinterpretable information questioned.

Here is a set of methods that p2p lending companies can use to collect and profit from the wealth of user experiences.

  1. Run a forum (I talked in previous articles about the advantages of p2p lending forums)
  2. Consider using a simple to use ticket system instead of user support via pure email (advantage: allows statistical analysis of user problems, handling times and outcomes)
  3. Talk to your customers. Especially right after launch, it can be extremly helpful to call lenders and borrowers and asks them how easy they found the process and if they have any suggestions for improvement
  4. Analyse you webtracking stats. Where have users abandonned steps, where do they stay long times (possibly stuck) and where do they leave the site?
  5. Use online surveys to get structured feedback from customers.

Yesterday I attended the first ‘lender conference’ of Smava in Berlin. I put ‘lender conference’ in quotation marks because that term sounds a little magniloquent and misleading for the type of event it actually was. More fitting would be a discussion with a panel of selected experienced lenders. Smava handpicked 5 of those and invited them to Berlin reimbursing travel expenses. After a short tour of the premises, processes, lender wishes and market situation were discussed in depth (see longer report at P2P-Kredite.com). The small number of participants enabled an extremly useful discussion.

Continue reading →