Comunitae gets 2 million Euro funding from Entrinnova to establish itself as a p2p lending service in Spain.
Comunitae will allow loans between 3,000 and 15,000 Euro for loan terms of 1 to 3 years. The amount that lenders can lend will be up to 50,000 Euro (minimum 50 Euro). Only residents of Spain will be able to use the platform.
Kiva today has reached the milestone of 50 million US$, doubling the loan volume in the last 8 months. I have been lending on Kiva for nearly 2 years now and so far all of my borrowers have repaid me (unlike my MyC4 borrowers). Kiva is doing a very good job in keeping defaults low.
1 loan every 32 seconds
The current – impressive – statistics for Kiva are:
Total value of all loans made through Kiva:
$50,023,035
Number of Kiva Lenders:
363,222
Number of loans that have been funded through Kiva:
70,357
Percentage of Kiva loans which have been made to women entrepreneurs:
77.96%
Number of Kiva Field Partners (microfinance institutions Kiva partners with):
93
Number of countries Kiva Field Partners are located in:
42
Current repayment rate (all partners):
98.76%
Current default rate (all partners):
1.24%
Average size of loan for funding:
$449.02
Average total amount loaned per Kiva Lender (includes reloaned funds):
$137.81
Average number of loans per Kiva Lender:
3.70
The growth is stimulated by a large, active supporter base, that comes up with creative marketing ideas. Did you know that you can build a beard to support Kiva?
Here is what founders Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan wrote about launching:
Dear Friends,
We are delighted to report that Wokai.org is now live! Just two years ago, we were students in Beijing, dreaming about starting a microfinance organization.
Now, thanks to our advisors, chapters, designers, donors, families, field partners, friends, interns, investment committee, lawyers, pilot participants, programmers, volunteers and so many more, this idea has transformed into a dynamic international organization with an amazing website, to empower people in China to lift themselves from poverty.
We needed you and you were there, and for this we can’t thank you enough. Over the next two years, 44OO families from all across rural China will receive loans through Wokai. These loans will enable people to start and grow businesses in their communities. With the proceeds, they will send their children to school, and invest in their housing and health and brighter futures.
In the words of an entrepreneur we met in Ningxia province, “Microfinance allowed us to go from existing to living … existing is merely finding enough food to eat, but living is truly feeling the substance of life, our hearts, and minds.â€
MyC4.com has a great concept with an ambitious goal: ‘Let’s end poverty by 2015’. Lenders can invest in African businesses of small entrepreneurs. MyC4 gained a lot of positive media coverage and received awards.
The realization of this concept is an enormous task, facing many hurdles. Since MyC4 is transparent and lenders earn interest problems do impact the user experience. Current user discussions deal with issues like defaults, currency risks, transaction costs, pending time, information accuracy and communication.
While I am sure that Kiva has to overcome similar problems, the difference is that on Kiva these issues are more dealt with in the background and the average user is not or less aware of them.
Like Kiva, MyC4 partners with local microfinance institutions (called ‘providers’ on MyC4 – see overview of provider results) that screen loan applicants. These partners are trying hard to validate the business of the applicant as good as possible, but conditions and environment complicate the task.
Furthermore the partners are on a learning curve – a process that MyC4 supports. Data accuracy of the loan details listed by the provider sometimes is questionable – this was one of the causes MyC4 cancelled some Ivory Coast loans earlier.
Example: an active listing that raises questions
Alima Thiam, retail shopkeeper in Senegal, seeks a 13,873 Euro loan.
: About : Married and a mother of 2 children, Alima has been trading items for 8 years. Her business grew so fast that in April 2007, she was able to open her first store. Her business is still growing at a fast pace and she needs additional working capital to increase her inventory of goods and add new items.
Objective of the opportunity: With a loan of €13873, Alima seeks to increase her stock provided that it would guarantee more interesting sales. She wants to buy her goods early to avoid paying higher prices, hence keeping her costs down. She will use the increased margin to introduce new items.
The information provided in the listing raises the following plausibility questions:
The relation of the loan amount to the yearly income seems very high
The listed collateral – an Audi 80 – is given with a value of 9,711 Euro. This seems a very high value for a very old car model. (independent of issues whether the collateral could really be secured in case of default)
The location pictured does not look like it is in proportion to the amount of goods that could be bought for the loan value.
What reasons could have caused possible inaccuracy of information in this loan listing?
Githa Kurdahl, doing an internship with Ivoire Credit has described her findings regarding inaccurate descriptions in an excellent post on Oct. 21st. In summary she pointed out the following causes:
mistakes due to manual calculations
mistakes in translation
lack of business records
exaggerated projections
optimistic borrowers
mismatch between European and African business context.
If you’re a borrower seeking a loan, you will still be able to create a new loan listing, which we will endeavor to fulfill through alternative sources.
The way this works is that Prosper refers loan applicants to other lending companies. After answering a few questions, borrowers seeking a loan a channeled to Firstagain, Lendingtree, Freedomfinancialnetwork or Creditkarma (and potentially others – the mentioned ones are the ones I was shown).
Should a borrower use the services of one of the linked companies then Prosper is paid a referral fee.
However apparently not all visitors of the site seem to be redirected. Potentially members or former users with cookies are not shown these options.
The German domain name kredit.de was sold today for 892,000 Euro (approx 1.14 million US$). ‘Kredit’ is the german word for ‘loan’, a very valuable keyword in targeting consumers seeking loans online.
The domain was bought by Unister GmbH from the Abacho AG. It is the highest price ever for a domain sale of the country top level domain .de. Previous examples of .de-domain sales for high prices were chat.de for 320,000 Euro or arbeitsmarkt.de for 200,000 Euro.
Abacho AG still owns the domain kredit.com and said it plans to sell that domain through Sedo, too.
