Smava

List of P2P Lending Forums

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Peer to peer lending is innovative and new. New users usually have lots of questions when grasping the marketplace mechanisms. Beyond the FAQ of the p2p lending service, a great place to learn is usually a forum, where users (mostly lenders) exchange experiences and post and answer questions.

There are “official” forums provided by the lending services and independent ones. One of the first ones, the official Prosper forum, became one of the most notorious ones. After Prosper “moderated” negative and critical posts it later deleted the initial forum in total. When a copied version of the forum’s archive was made available on seperate internet site Prosper tried to  shut the site down, but failed.

But this is an extreme example. I found that on nearly all other forums a very helpful and supportive attitude rules.

List of p2p lending forums

General

Focus on one p2p lending service

If I have missed any great p2p lending forum, please comment with the URL and I will add it to the above list. Thank you.

(Photo credit: wili_hybrid)

2nd birthday of Smava

wiseclerk

German p2p lending service Smava.de launched two year ago. Since the launch of Smava 1350 loans were funded for a total loan volume of about 7.9 million Euro (approx. 10.7 million US$).

Lender’s viewpoint

So far lenders on Smava did well. There are approx. 2500 lenders active on Smava. Despite the credit crisis, 99% of the lenders earned a profit in 2008 (total 210,861 Euro), while the 1% who did incur a loss, lost only 60 Euro.

So far ROI in the range from 5-10% have been realistic. As of today 75 loans have defaulted, which is (in percent) more then was originally predicted. The Anleger-Pool mechanism spreads the losses of a default across all loans of a credit grade, which prevents total losses of investments. Therefore when 3 in 100 loans in credit grade X default, the lenders invested in the defaulted loans still receive 97% of the principal, while for lenders in the current loans returns are lowered by 3%.

Technically and on the process level Smava functions as promised.

Borrower’s viewpoint

Provided the borrower has a credit grade of at least ‘H’ (95% of the German population have credit grades between ‘A’ and ‘H’ so about 5% are excluded) and he has a sufficient income, chances for obtaining a loan through Smava are good. About 60 percent of the listings were funded. In February 2009 Smava raised the fees for borrowers from 1% to 2-2.5%.

Marketplace development

Smava shows continuous growth, with the volume of new loans per month approaching 1 million Euro (see chart)


(Source: smava loan stats, Wiseclerk.com, 03-26-09)

Despite extensive and positive press coverage Smava is still a niche market with less than 5000 active users. Looking at the distribution of lenders by amount invested, the top 50 Smava lenders funded about 1,690,000 Euro (or about 21% of total loan volume). Currently lenders are limited to a maximum of 100,000 Euro investment.


(Development of Smava average nominal interest rates for new loans; Source: smava loan statistic, Wiseclerk.com, 03-21-08)

I would estimate that the increased fees allow Smava to cover the variable costs. But to cover fixed operating expenses Smava needs to multiple its volume. First priority of Smava must be to accelerate growth.

A venture capitalist’s view on investing in peer to peer lending

wiseclerk

When a VC talks about peer to peer lending he is not talking about achieving a good ROI by lending to borrowers. He is talking about the chances he sees in investing in the p2p lending company.

Paul Jozefak, Managing Partner at Neuhaus Partners, did just that as a side note in an interview he gave ReadWriteWeb. Neuhaus Partner invested in the second VC funding round of German Smava.de six month ago.

In the interview Jozefak says, that:

  1. Smava is at the right time in the right place (current economic situation)
  2. he sees an upswing in lender and borrower interest; assesses that the model has proven itself
  3. Their competitors in the US are doing quite well and he expects that Prosper will resolve it’s issues with the SEC.

I agree with the first point, but in my view it is too early to judge whether the Smava model really has proven itself (even the oldest loans are only through two thirds of their loan term). And the last point, I find an optimistic assessment of the situation. One could say that Lending Club is doing well, but Prosper and Loanio are in a situation that could at least be described as challenging.

Smava.de raises fees

wiseclerk 1 Comment

In Germany p2p lending service Smava.de will increase its fees in February. Smava management said the fee increase is necessary to build a sustainable business and points out that now 20 months after the launch the value proposition of Smava has been verified. Median ROI is given as 9.4% with 90 percent of lenders (best and worst 5% cut off) earning between 4.7% and 12.9% ROI per year.

Old fee structure:

Lenders: no fees
Borrowers: 1% of the loan amount

New fee structure:

Lenders: 4 Euro (approx 5.30 US$) for each successful bid
Borrowers:

  • 2% of the loan amount, minimum 40 Euro, for 36 months loans
  • 2.5% of the loan amount, minimum 60 Euro, for 60 months loans

This increase will more than triple Smava’s revenues from 8,000 Euro per month to 27,700 Euro per month (estimate based on 800,000 Euro loan volume per month; 5,500 Euro average loan amount; average bid amount 330 Euro; 50% of loans for each loan duration).

While the fee height is tolerable for most lenders, I am somewhat sceptical whether Smava is attractive enough for borrowers under the new fee schedule and will be able to continue its required growth.

Which sites do offer p2p lending statistics?

wiseclerk

When analysing numbers on p2p lending activity, users can rely on independent third party sites gathering statistics for many p2p lending services. These services either obtain the raw data via an interface provided by the service or they do parse the web pages of the service to collect the data.

Most of the statistic sites offer reports and tools to analyse and graph the overall development of the marketplace as well as the status of an individual lender’s investments.

The majority of the users are lenders, as the borrower usually needs the information only once – before applying for a loan – to determine what interest rate is appropriate.

Tools for Prosper:

Tools for Lending Club:

Tools for MyC4:

Tools for Zopa UK:

Tools for Smava:

Tools for Auxmoney:

Tools for Boober NL:

Feel free to copy this list, but please do set a link citing this page as source. If you know another social lending / p2p lending stats site, please let me know.

Long term readers may remember that the Wiseclerk.com domain initially started as a report site on Prosper.com. It was in fact together with Savagenumber.com the first service of this kind.

(Photo credit: ArtemFinland)

More on Smava Poland launch

wiseclerk 1 Comment

Following up on the interview (see ‘Smava expands p2p lending to Poland‘) I just took a look at Smava.pl, which has now launched. I don’t speak Polish but the layout of the site is very similar to the Smava Germany site, so navigation was no problem.

As expected interest rate levels in the Polish market are considerately higher then on Smava.de. At the moment there are 4 active listings with (nominal) interest rates ranging from 15.9 to 23.5% (maximum interest that can be entered in the application form for a loan is 26%). Loan terms are short. Borrowers can select from 3 months (minimum) to 36 months (maximum) with 9 possible durations.

Smava did keep the groups feature, which puzzles me  as groups have not gained any use on the German version in the nearly 2 years since launch.

One of the partners of Smava in Poland is Money.pl, a finance website with 2.6 million users per month. This is a good marketing move to gain visibility for the concept and to close up on the 3 competitors that launched earlier.

The management team consists of PrzemysÅ‚aw MoÅ›cicki, dr Marcin Klinowski and Arkadiusz Hajduk. Hajduk is a ‘veteran’ in p2p lending. He co-funded Fairrates (in Denmark) and later was product manager on the IOU central team (Canada).