The site Prosper.com shows only a maintenance note today saying “… We expect the site to be down both Saturday (4/25/2009) and Sunday (4/26/2009).”.
Speculation: Maybe Prosper will end its quiet period and resume its full p2p lending service on Monday?
I am blogging this live while listening to the Kiva conference call. Kiva plans a loan matching program, where lenders and institutions can opt to automatically match loans made by other lenders.
Some statements/explanations from the conference call:
Kiva says the new feature allows to automate the lending process and hopes that it inspires others to lend more.
The matching program will probably be launched in summer 2009.
On terms of automation there are similarities to the autobid feature MYC4 has.
See the following presentation for more details on the plans.
On other issues, there was the message that chances are good, that the Ebony Foundation (a MFI) repays outstanding loans (approx. 40,000 US$).
Prosper.com, which is still in quiet period and not allowing new loans, made a new SEC filing yesterday. In this third amendment to the S-1 filing makes several amendments, most notably introducing securitization for initial offerings of loans.
Prosper plans “Open market loans”, which apparently are loans issued by traditional lenders which being securitized and resold to Prosper lenders. I am somewhat sceptical how many Prosper lenders will like the “open market loans” offer. To me this seems a far excursion from the peer to peer lending idea.
In the filing Prosper states that FolioFn will be the operator of the Prosper secondary market (named “Folio Investing Note Trader Platform”). FolioFn already operates the Note Trading Platform of Lending Club.
More changes in the new filing are in a review in this blog post at P2PLendingNews.
Maneo introduces guaranteed p2p lending in Japan. On the new “G-Loan” the lender does not need to worry any more about defaults. Minimum investment is only 10,000 JPY (approx. 100 US$). The loans are guaranteed by Orix Credit Corporation which entered into a partnership with Maneo.
The downside is that on “G-Loans” the lender only receives 1.5% interest.
The borrower pays a fixed interest rate, which is set depending on his credit grade:
Borrowers now have the option of selecting a standard loan or a G-Loan. Selecting maneo’s standard loan gives borrowers the opportunity to lower their interest expense if sufficient lenders bid on their loans. In contrast, interest rates on G-Loans are fixed at 7.0%, 8.0%, 9.5%, 11.0% and 12.0% depending on the borrower’s credit rating. According to Tadatoshi Senoo, CEO of maneo, “We believe borrowers who select G-Loans will have an easier time attracting funds from lenders thanks to the guaranty by Orix Credit, and that the liquidity of maneo’s online social lending marketplace will increase significantly as a result, making borrowing at maneo even more attractive.”
In my view the choice whether it is a guaranteed loan or not should not be the borrower’s, but only for the lender to choose when bidding.
With an interest rate of only 1.5% the only merit of this model for lenders is that he can not lose money when bidding on a guaranteed loan.
Lending Club reintroduces the possibility for everyone to download the data of the loans as .csv or .xml file. This feature was temporarily removed in March due to privacy concerns. Lending Club says a few data points that compromised borrowers identity have been removed.
Aqush.jp has launched Aqush Tomo, a p2p lending service to facilitate loans between friends and family members. Aqush is a service of Exchange Corporation K.K., which states it’s mission as “… to leverage innovation and international best practices to pioneer ‘Social’ financial services in Asia. Our goal is to bring transparency and choice to markets and assets that previously were illiquid, opaque and tightly controlled, by empowering people to legally and securely deal directly with each other.”
Aqush offers a framework that helps borrower and lender in creating loan documentation and repayment plans.
Features of the “Basic Service” are
The fee for the “Basic Service” is 8,800 Yen (approx. 88 US$)
The “Plus Service” adds additional features:
The “Plus Service” is priced at about double the “Basic service” plus a small fee for handling each repayment.
Russell Cummer, Executive Director told P2P-Banking.com:
AQUSH TOMO, is a Family and Friends loan documentation and management service …. We are the first service of this kind in Japan ….
We will also be launching a full-service P2P lending exchange, “AQUSH Market”, this summer to cover both the friends and family and true P2P aspects of social finance in Japan.
Aqush is an alternative spelling of the Japanese word for handshake, “Akushu”.
(Sources: forum post, press release, company management)