Nooch won Duke’s University Fuqua School of Business Elevator Pitch netting 5,000 US$. Nooch aims to allow anyone to use a smartphone to pay back a friend, settle a bet, or just send a birthday gift in only a few seconds, the startup says.
Not there yet though – for the payout of the prize money a paper cheque was needed.
Communitylend has partnered with Canada’s largest used car site AutoTrader.ca, now offering a car financing option through Communitylend for every listed car.
The option is limited to private listings in Ontario for cars with a sales price of up to 25,000 CAN$.
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
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.
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.
Trustbuddy AB has acquired the operations of Swedish p2p lending site Loanland effective November 19th. This means that Loanland will not close as reported earlier. Trustbuddy AB is a Swedish company with Norwegian origins. Trustbuddy will continue operations and in mid-term plans to integrate the activities of the service into their own platform. Loanland users were informed that the transfer of the membership agreements does not change anything for them.
(Source: Company statements)
No financial details on the deal were available.
Money360 offers a first in p2p lending: To my knowledge they are the first live p2p lending service applying the concept to financing real estate loans.
Loan sizes are much bigger than seen before in p2p lending. Minimum loan amount is 200,000 US$, maximum is 5 million US$. The minimum a lender can invest in an individual loan is upscale too: 50,000 US$. This does fit the target audience though as only accredited investors residing in California can join as lenders.
Loans are secured: Each Lender is listed with an undivided fractional interest on the promissory note and deed of trust.
When the transaction is complete and the loan is closed, Money360 will receive a closing fee of 2% of the loan amount. This fee is paid by the Borrower, typically out of the loan proceeds. Money360 charges the Lenders an annual servicing fee of 1.5% of the loan amount for providing all loan servicing functions. Continue reading
Yes-secure, a British p2p lending marketplace launched in June 2010, will very soon add a secondary market called Secondary Loan Slice Market.
According to information the company provided P2P-Banking.com, the secondary market will have the following features:
Advantages for Loan slice buyers:
• Loans offered at premium and discount: Lenders are able to buy loan slices from other lenders at a premium or discount to the principal remaining amount. Lenders can invest in quality loan slices which they missed out on earlier.
• Ability to view repayment history: Potential buyers for the loan slices can view detailed information about the borrower repayment history, enabling them to make informed low-risk decisions based on track record of reliable repayments.
• Earn interest from day one: As the existing loans slices can be transferred within a few minutes, they can start earning interest with immediate effect.
• Build a balanced investment portfolio: Lenders can quickly build themselves an active and balanced portfolio by picking and choosing through different markets, rates and terms; this automatically leads to risk-diversification through loan portfolio management.
The advantages for Loan slice sellers:
• Encourages liquidity: Investors can easily generate cash as and when they require by selling their loans slices to other registered members of YES-secure.
• Flexibility: Investors can easily manage their investment portfolio, buying and selling chosen loan slices and fine-tuning their lending portfolio to suit their risk profile.
• Loans sold at premium or discount: Lenders can set a price for their loan slices at rates within +/-10% of the remaining principal amounts of their loans.
It is interesting to see that Yes Secure does not face the regulatory challenges Zopa cites (see: Zopa Rapid Return Secondary Market) or has overcome them.