MTN Uganda pledges 250,000 US$ to fund small businesses through MyC4

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MTN Uganda, a telecommunication company with 3.5 million customers, will invest 250,000 US$ to fund loans to small and medium scale enterprises via MyC4.

“This is a great opportunity for us to champion the notion of an African Company helping fellow Africans instead of the common perception that Aid should always come from “Abroad”” said Mr. Van Veen during the announcement and launch of the partnership at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel. The capital investment guidelines require that MTN’s loan contribution must constitute a minimum of 33 percent of the total loan required.
Under the agreement, $50,000 would be invested immediately in a six months pilot phase which is expected to shed light on how best to administer the funding. “The learning after the pilot phase will guide us on how to manage the capital repayments and their re-investment over the three year period”.

Smava.de raises fees

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In Germany p2p lending service Smava.de will increase its fees in February. Smava management said the fee increase is necessary to build a sustainable business and points out that now 20 months after the launch the value proposition of Smava has been verified. Median ROI is given as 9.4% with 90 percent of lenders (best and worst 5% cut off) earning between 4.7% and 12.9% ROI per year.

Old fee structure:

Lenders: no fees
Borrowers: 1% of the loan amount

New fee structure:

Lenders: 4 Euro (approx 5.30 US$) for each successful bid
Borrowers:

  • 2% of the loan amount, minimum 40 Euro, for 36 months loans
  • 2.5% of the loan amount, minimum 60 Euro, for 60 months loans

This increase will more than triple Smava’s revenues from 8,000 Euro per month to 27,700 Euro per month (estimate based on 800,000 Euro loan volume per month; 5,500 Euro average loan amount; average bid amount 330 Euro; 50% of loans for each loan duration).

While the fee height is tolerable for most lenders, I am somewhat sceptical whether Smava is attractive enough for borrowers under the new fee schedule and will be able to continue its required growth.

Call for EU legislation to encourage microcredit schemes

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There is a new initiative “Call for EU legislation to encourage microcredit schemes“. One aim of the initiative is:

EU-wide framework on supervision and regulation

There also needs to be an EU-wide regulatory framework for non-bank providers of microcredit (banks are already covered by existing rules), defining them as non-deposit takers, with the ability to conduct credit only activities and to on-lend. There should be harmonised, risk-based rules on authorisation and supervision.

This would help p2p lending services.

Thank you to Peter Petrovics of Noba.hu for supplying the link.

Which sites do offer p2p lending statistics?

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When analysing numbers on p2p lending activity, users can rely on independent third party sites gathering statistics for many p2p lending services. These services either obtain the raw data via an interface provided by the service or they do parse the web pages of the service to collect the data.

Most of the statistic sites offer reports and tools to analyse and graph the overall development of the marketplace as well as the status of an individual lender’s investments.

The majority of the users are lenders, as the borrower usually needs the information only once – before applying for a loan – to determine what interest rate is appropriate.

Tools for Prosper:

Tools for Lending Club:

Tools for MyC4:

Tools for Zopa UK:

Tools for Smava:

Tools for Auxmoney:

Tools for Boober NL:

Feel free to copy this list, but please do set a link citing this page as source. If you know another social lending / p2p lending stats site, please let me know.

Long term readers may remember that the Wiseclerk.com domain initially started as a report site on Prosper.com. It was in fact together with Savagenumber.com the first service of this kind.

(Photo credit: ArtemFinland)

P2P lending and the financial crisis

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It has been said before – there might have been no better time to establish p2p lending. With the established system shaken and many consumers not getting loans as easily as before the market environment is good for peer-to-peer lending.

P2P lending gets good media attention. The Uncrunch.org initiative (in which Lending Club takes part) in the Change.org vote for new ideas finished in the Top 15.

On the demand site all p2p lending companies benefit from the crisis. On the supply site, in my opinion the effect is mostly positive too, but  some lenders are hesitant to invest their money in a new, innovative model and rather seek a save haven for it.

P2P lending sites that have demonstrated low default rates over a longer time and therefore low risk fared best – especially at Zopa UK supply rose strongly lately.

Bonmot from Spanish Comunitae:

Pues no sabemos si la crisis es buena para Comunitae, pero de lo que no cabe duda es de que Comunitae es buena para la crisis.

Translates to: “Well, we do not know if the crisis is good for Comunitae, but what is certain is that Comunitae is good for the crisis.”

Viral Kiva video

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A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball.

The video was made by Kiva fellow (volunteer) Kieran Ball, who worked for Kiva in Cambodia. It explains the transfer of the money for a Kiva loan from a lender in London to a borrower in Cambodia.

This is a great example how many people can be reached over the internet with a well made video in a short time. Online since only 8 days the video has been watched over 32,000 times and was embedded in many websites (at least 50).