Lenders at Zopa do not (yet) select an individual borrower but rather select a market and a rate at which they want to lend their money. This is matched to borrower demand and if a match is found, money is lend out.
There is a 3rd party site tracking the development of the Zopa demand volume and charting it (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly). Recently the amount requested has gone down in most markets.
(Source)
Dutch Boober this week resumed full operations overcoming an imposed stop on lending. Lenders however now are facing even more restrictions. After a maximum amount of 39000 Euro was introduced for lenders earlier, a new rule now allows lenders to close no more than 100 loans. Since the minimum bid is only 5 Euro in the worst case that could mean, that a lender has to stop after lending out 500 Euro (100×5). Apparently this development means that the top lenders, responsible for 30% of Boober's total loan volume, are banned from lending more money. While lenders critizise this new development as overregulated forced by dutch regulator AFM, there is not much they can do about it. Theoretically each individual lender could apply for a license, but in practise license fees over 1000 Euro prohibit this move.
After a failed launch in May p2p lending service Frooble.nl now wants to lauch with a new concept. Borrowers can seek short term loans of 1 to 3 month duration for amounts between 50 and 500 Euro. Apparently these parameters have been selected to avoid falling under the regulation of the AFM. It remains to be seen if Frooble can thrive with this business model.
In a recent presentation Kiva.org states it expects to reach $130 million in loans through microlending with over 550,000 lenders contributing.
Lendingclub has a new homepage. At least I think it is new, but maybe I have overlooked it for quite some time since Lendingclub used to point the homepage to the Lendingclub blog and I usually went directly to the blog URL.
The homepage is mainly an information showcase for new borrowers or lenders. Unlike Prosper it has few real functions. While most data remains restricted to logged in users, it does show a few rankings and statistics.
Today Lendingclub announced that it passed the US$ 1 million loan mark. With 683 verified lenders Lendingclub is still small compared to Prosper numbers, but growing steadily.
Prosper.com published a "People to People Lending Market Survey" for August. The Survey covers Prosper data and gives a commentary by Chris Larsen, CEO of Prosper.
Excerpt:
Membership and Loan Volume Statistics
In the commentary the main point is the focus of lenders on higher credit categories: "…At the same time, lenders on Prosper are exhibiting rational behavior by steering their bids toward borrowers in the higher credit categories and being far more cautious about chasing higher rates offered by subprime borrowers. Evidence of this flight to safety is seen in Prosper's mix of funded borrowers. For example, the subprime category accounted for only 9 percent of loans funded in August 2007, a marked decrease from August 2006 and the 2007 year-to-date average of 25 percent and 14 percent, respectively. What remains to be seen is whether lenders on Prosper will start placing less weight on homeownership as a factor in their bidding strategies…"
When studying the figures careful attention should be given to the definitions. HR loans are completely excluded from the Estimated Annual Return on Prosper Select Index and the Average Borrower Rates on Prosper Select Loans table. Furthermore loans that did not fit criteria on delinquincies, credit inquiries and DTI are also not included in these tables.
As Mike has calculated, the revenue Prosper.com earned in August was $118,000. No figures on the cost structure of Prosper's operations are available.