Prosper Lending Review examined how Fynanz, a p2p lending site for student loans, quietly halted operations recently. In the article Tom points out that Fynanz attempts to market itself as a whitelabel service to credit unions and other financial institutions.
Fynanz CEO Chirag Chaman is cited that the reason for no longer accepting new lenders and borrowers are market conditions with sinking interest rates. Chaman outlines the plans to cooperate with financial intstitutions/banks to finance student loans.
Smava: For several reasons. Poland is a fast growing economy with approx. 40 million residents. In Poland the span between deposit rate and base rate is very high – approx. 15 percent. Therefore the smava marketplace will be very attractive for polish customers right from the beginning. And regulation in Poland does not require a bank for the p2p lending model. This keeps transaction costs very low.
P2P-Banking.com: There are already 3 p2p lending services established in Poland. How does Smava plan to win market share as newcomer?
Smava: Compared to the active services smava is much more secure. Like in Germany it is a central product feature, that the risk for the lenders is transparently evaluated and can be factored into the calculation . To achieve this we cooperate with the polish credit rating agency (BIK).
P2P-Banking.com: How did you organize the operations? Does Smava have a branch or a subsidiary in Poland? Or do you operate from Berlin?
Smava: We have a subsidiary in Wroclaw, Poland, with a polish management team.
P2P-Banking.com: Where are the biggest challenges in international expansion: technical, legal/regulatory, marketing or recruiting team members?
Smava: On all fields, in the following order: legal/regulatory, recruiting and then marketing.
P2P-Banking.com: Which differences does the polish version of Smava have compared to the german Smava version?
Smava: Firstly we will start in Poland without the ‘Anleger-Pools’ (P2P-Banking: an insurance feature), because p2p loans are mostly short term there. Secondly all loan contracts will be directly between lenders and borrowers – not like in Germany with the biw bank as intermediary.
P2P-Banking.com: What will be the maximum loan amount that can be borrowed at Smava Poland?
Smava: A polish borrower can use smava.pl for loans up to 100,000 Zloty. Each lender can invest up to a maximum of 200,000 Zloty. (P2P-Banking.com: 100,000 Zloty equal approx. 34,000 US$)
P2P-Banking.com: Which credit rating information will Smava.pl supply for the lenders?
Smava: Like in Germany smava will supply a credit score (BIK) as well as a debt/income ratio.
P2P-Banking.com: Which fee structure does Smava.pl have?
Smava: Lenders can invest fee-free, borrowers pay 1%Â of the loan amount. Continue reading →
That’s the title of an email I’ve just received from PertuityDirect.com, a Virginia based p2p lending service in pre-launch stage. Pertuity Direct announces:
… If you have been keeping tabs on the space, you know that the social lending industry has been pretty interesting over the last two to three months. The guidance that regulators have given with regard to the segment, combined with the fact that consumer loans are still hard to come by, fits perfectly with what we are bringing to market. There is a real need for alternative sources of capital for consumers, as well as new and better investing options. Social lending is a great answer to the problem – and Pertuity Direct is poised to bring it to the mass market.
We are in final preparations to launch immediately after the New Year. All of the pieces are finally in place and we are revving up for Day 1.
We’re excited about 2009 and are looking forward to reaching out to you very shortly as we open for business. …
Since the Loanio delays I am a bit wary of launch dates, but ‘immediately after’ sounds confident – looking forward to the launch in January 2009 then.
More competition and entering more national markets (probability 100%) In many markets multiple p2p lending services will compete for the attention of lenders and borrowers, especially in the largest market: In the United States Globefunder.com and Loanio.com will launch. In other markets, where there is no national p2p lending service established yet (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, Spain), p2p lending will be introduced by the launch of a service.
Loanio did launch, but went into quiet period shortly afterwards. As did Prosper. Zopa US closed. Fynanz launched. Competition in the US is in fact lower than at the End of last year.Internationally several p2p lending services launched.
Insurance against defaults (probability 75%) Not totally new, since Boober.nl and Smava.de already offer some protection of the loan principal. Insurance can be implemented as a classical insurance product (supplied by an insurance company) or as a market mechanism, spreading the risk over multiple loans.
Secondary market (probability 25%) One of the disadvantages for lenders currently is that on all p2p lending platforms, the invested money i locked in for the duration of the loan term. Prosper.com has already announced that it plans a secondary market, enabling lenders to sell and buy loans any time. Depending on the market there are huge regulatory hurdles to allow trading of loans. For example German executives told P2P-Banking.com that on the German market a secondary market is unlikely for years to come.
Zopa Italy and Lending Club introduced secondary markets.
Cross-market lending (probability <25%) Aside form the social lending approaches (Kiva, MyC4, Microplace) so far all service are open only for lenders and borrowers that live in the same market. If lenders could lend to borrowers in markets with higher key interest rate than the market the lender lives in, the advantages could outweight the risks. In the European Union due to the Euro zone there would be no currency exchange risk. Again there are steep regulatory hurdles to be taken.
Has not happened.
Variable interest loans (probability ?) So far all loans are for fixed terms (prepayment allowed) with fixed interest rates. Variable interest loans could add flexibility. The interest rate could rise or decline following an indicator (e.g. market prime rate). Another possibility would be a mechanism where the variable interest rate would rise or fall as a result of the level of defaults of the credit grade. This could protect lenders, if the actual default ratio is higher then the forecasted default ratio.
Fynanz loans have variable rates. But this is the only example so far.
Third party bidding management (probability?) Just a thought. Lenders could allow a third party to manage their portfolio. Like an investment funds the lender would invest an amount of money, while the funds manager does the actual selection of loans. This could possibly be done by a sophisticated software (would you trust this?) selecting loans by statistical analysis of performance of loans with similiar parameters or by a fonds manager. The later is unlikely because the amount of time needed for each loan is too high to be covered by fees.
