People Capital and Prosper Announce Referral Partnership

People Capital, a website for college students to obtain student loans via an online lending exchange, and Prosper.com have announced a referral partnership to help borrowers seeking both educational and non-educational loans on their respective Web sites. Borrowers who are unable to obtain educational loans that meet their financing needs on Prosper.com will be offered the opportunity to access the People Capital lending exchange. In return, People Capital will refer its Web borrowers, who are interested in taking out non-educational loans, to Prosper.

People Capital is currently in Beta.

Earlier examples of p2p lending services referring leads that could not be funded on their platform to another service were Zopa selling leads of low credit grade borrowers and Prosper refering loan applicants to other sites while Prosper was closed to new borrowers during SEC registration.

Gartner: P2P lending will be 5 billion US$ in 2013

Gartner forecasts p2p lending volume to read 5 billion US$ outstanding loan volume in 2013.

Consumers who lose their jobs can’t get loans to cover periods of unemployment; businesses that encounter trouble due to low demand can’t get credit lines to see them through to recovery. Furthermore, banks are more interested in recapitalising than in lending. Growth in P2P lending will be driven by investors seeking higher returns and borrowers shunning (or being shunned by) banks. Gartner recommends that financial services providers investigate how to partner and collaborate in adding P2P to their existing offerings rather than building their own P2P lending networks.

An earlier forecast of Gartner from Feb. 2008 overestimated the impact that p2p lending will have on bank lending in 2010 – at least in my view – but 2010 is not over yet.

Auxmoney Adds More Loan Term Choices

Auxmoney.com has added more loan term choices for it’s p2p lending borrowers to choose from on the weekend. Previously available loan terms at Auxmoney were 12, 24 and 36 months. Now any term between 12 and 60 months (in 6 month increments) can be selected.

Auxmoney achieved substantial growth rates in the second half of 2009 (see Wiseclerk statistics tracking Auxmoney loan originations per month). And this is despite the fact that Auxmoney was criticized by a renowned consumer advocacy institution for misleading marketing and unfavourable fee structures.

In international comparison of p2p lending fee structures, Auxmoney is a rare exception, as it charges many fees regardless of whether a loan request is successfully funded or not. With it’s listing fees Auxmoney generates revenues even from those customers with bad credit history that have little or no chance of getting funded by lenders.

(Source: Uses information from yesterday’s article at P2P-Kredite.com)

Project Contest to launch the p2p lending service in France

Beginning 2010, Friendsclear will launch Friendsclear Pro – the first real P2P lending service in France.

For this occasion, Friendsclear organizes a project contest:

– everybody can submit a professional project

– the public can vote for the best project

– the project which gets the most support will win 10k€

The author lives in France and reports as a guest blogger on french p2p lending trends for P2P-Banking.com.

Aqush.jp launches full p2p lending service

Aqush.jp which in May launched a friends and family only version now launched the “full fledged” version of it’s p2p lending service.

Exchange Corporation K.K. (www.exchange.co.jp) “ExCo” announced the launch of its social lending service. The Aqush platform empowers both individuals with extra money and credit-worthy borrowers. By connecting these two groups, credit-worthy people can borrow money more easily and at a better rate than they would get from a lending company, and retail investors can invest in loans that provide a higher return on investment than available from time deposits or money market accounts. Continue reading