IOU Central, headquartered in Kennesaw, Georgia, Wednesday submitted an SEC S-1 Registration filing in order to launch in the US. IOU Central did launch a p2p lending service in Canada in Feb. 2008 for a brief period of time before it was closed due to regulation constraints.
Barry Coleman, VP Marketing at IOU Central, told P2P-Banking.com earlier this year:
… we are getting ready to release an online marketplace that will revolutionize peer-to-peer lending. Our platform will give borrowers the benefit of a true marketplace that allows for better interest rates. The platform will also give lenders freedom in lending with our real-time bidding system. We have taken a lot of the good from the original IOU Central platform and added features that make it much better for both borrowers and lenders.
The registration filing shows the minimum requirements IOU Central will apply to borrowers (Equifax Vantage score of at least 670 and others) and the validation process (most borrower income, employment and occupation information will be self-reported and not verified). The interest rate is set by the IOU Central loan marketplace based on several borrower related criteria. There will be auction bidding by lenders (like at Prosper) and an auto-fund option. Furthermore lenders can set auto-bidding parameters.
IOU Central will charge lenders a servicing fee of 1% of the remaining principal balance. Borrowers pay a 2% loan origination fee.
Terms of the loans will be 1, 2 or 3 years.
Excerpt from the “About” section:
We were incorporated in Delaware in August 2006 under the name IOU Central Inc. … Prior to December 2008, we were a wholly-owned subsidiary of IOU Canada and we had limited operations. During 2008, the management of IOU Canada determined to shift the focus of operations from Canada to the United States. Accordingly, on December 11, 2008, we entered into an asset purchase agreement with IOU Canada pursuant to which we acquired substantially all of the intellectual property of IOU Canada in exchange for 8,673,484 shares of our common stock. …As of March 31, 2009, IOU Canada owned approximately 93.8% of our outstanding common stock.
The filing explicitly states minimum financial sustainability standards only for lenders in Alaska, California, Idaho, Kansas and Pennsylvania but says requirements may be imposed to residents of other states too.
Borrowers can apply from any state except: Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine and Nevada. Borrowers may borrow up to 25,000 US$ in up to two loans.