P2P Lending Volumes in July 2013

wiseclerk

It has been some time since I last did an article at P2P-Banking.com on lending volumes. I do monitor development of p2p lending figures for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services. July was another month of rapid growth. As the table shows p2p volumes originated grew strongly for nearly all services when compared to the last month or last years month.


Table: P2P Lending Volumes in July 2013. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to US$ for the sake of comparision. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed:
If you want to be included in this chart in future, please email the following figures on the first working day of a month: total loan volume originated since inception, loan volume originated in previous month, number of loans originated in previous month, average nominal interest rate of loans originated in previous month.

P2P Lending Service Isepankur Opens To Borrowers In Finland

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Estonian p2p lending service Isepankur announced today that it now offers p2p loans to borrowers from Finland. Isepankur already opened to lenders from multiple markets last year. Now Isepankur adds Finland as the first foreign market executing the expansion strategy on the borrower side.

Here is an excerpt of the announcement made today:

Dear customer,

We have taken the next step towards building a pan-European credit platform so you could continue enjoying a great return on your money. We have now also started accepting loan applications from Finnish residents side-by-side with existing Estonian borrowers. We will offer one of the best rates in the market whilst trying to deliver a great return to our international and local investors all in one single platform.

Finnish market offers an opportunity to diversify your portfolio and better manager your returns. Here are some key facts about Finland which you might not have known:

Population: 5.4 million; 67% live in towns or urban areas, 33% in rural areas
Monthly wages: average 3,040 €; men 3,352 €, women 2,735 € (2010)
Internet users: 85,3% of the population internet (ITU, June,2010)
A number of payday loan providers has grown rapidly in recent years pushing up the interest rates up to 50% per annum. Lack of competition in the consumer lending and banking market means that even low risk customers typically pay above 20% per annum.
Situated: Northern Europe, neighbouring Sweden, Norway, Estonia and Russia

…

We believe that there is a big potential for isePankur on the Finnish market as most of the competition consists of unethical and unsustainable loan providers. We are sure that investors will find new attractive investments opportunities with solid returns. Please be aware that it might take a couple of weeks for the Finnish investment opportunities to appear on the market. We will soon also allow you to add market-specific configurations to your investment profiles.

…

Prosper Settles Class Action Lawsuit – Pays 10M US$

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In a Form 8-K SEC Filing of today, Prosper announced that it settled the class action lawsuit that has been going on since 2008 (see first coverage by P2P-Banking.com). The plaintiffs claimed that Prosper sold unregistered securities. The claimants originally filed for 47M US$. Under the settlement Prosper will pay 2 million US$ now and 8 million US$ spread out over the next 3 years.

The class members in the Lawsuit alleged that PMI offered and sold unqualified and unregistered securities in violation of the California and federal securities laws. The class members in the Lawsuit sought rescission damages against PMI and the other named defendants, as well as treble damages against PMI and the award of attorneys’ fees, litigation costs, and pre-judgment and post-judgment interest (collectively, the “Claims”). In exchange for a full release of the Claims as to all class members against all defendants, and subject to Court approval, PMI agreed to pay settlement consideration in the total amount of $10 million according to the following schedule: (i) $2 million within 10 days of entry of an order by the Court granting preliminary approval of the settlement (“Preliminary Approval”); (ii) $2 million on the one-year anniversary of Preliminary Approval; (iii) $3 million on the two-year anniversary of Preliminary Approval; and (iv) $3 million on the three-year anniversary of Preliminary Approval.

Lending Club’s Cost Advantage Over Banks

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If you are not totally new to p2p lending then you probably already heard the list of competitive advantages the p2p lending services have over banks: They don’t need branches, they don’t have old legacy infrastructure/software they need to maintain, they need less staff, their processes are faster, …

But how can this advantage be quantified?

On the Lendit 2013 conference Lending Club CEO Renauld Laplanche told the audience about a study conducted by McKinsey that calculated the cost advantage Lending Club has compared to a typical bank. He showed this chart:


(Source Lending Club /Lendit 2013; view larger image)

For 2015 the chart projects a cost advantage for Lending Club of over 400 basis points over banks. This is huge. Not surpisingly Lending Club has the biggest advantages by maintaining no branches and in collection and origination. or marketing Lending Club will have higher costs than banks.

Banks will eventually embrace p2p lending

Laplanche foresees that more and more banks will actually make use of p2p lending services as platforms to invest or to fund their borrowers to profit from the faster processes and the lower costs. At the conference Laplanche announced the first cooperations with banks and says he expects more to come.

His reasoning is that p2p lending like many other innovations will pass through 3 stages: rejection, adoption and then acceptance by the incumbents. Following this argument, p2p lending could right now be early in the stage of adoption by the industry.

He showed this chart to illustrate how the music industry reacted to disruption by Apple:


(Source Lending Club /Lendit 2013; view larger image)

Zopa Announce Business Loans

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Zopa has announced that they will start to offer business loans soon. Zopa will start with loans to sole traders.

Soon we will introduce business loans to Zopa, offering good value loans to sole traders.

We’ve chosen to start our business loans with sole traders for two reasons:
1. We saw that there were few opportunities for smart sole traders, with a good credit and trading history, to access good-value loans.
2. Sole traders are often looking for loans of a similar size and time period as our personal loan borrowers so offering these loans doesn’t require big changes for our savers to the way they choose to lend