At German Smava.de the volume of newly originated p2p loans continues to fall and reached a record low of approx. 700K Euro in January. That’s only about one-third of the volume Smava funded on its peak-time in mid-2010. Smava changed its business model in spring 2012, since then focusing on brokering bank loans and the aim to rely on the commissions paid by the banks as main source of revenue rather than the p2p lending transaction fees. There are no public figures available on the volume of bank loans brokered by Smava. I do wonder if they will reach break even by pursuing that model as competition in that market is fierce.
growth
Zopa Turns 7 – Arranged over 180M Pounds in Loans
British P2P Lending marketplace Zopa celebrated its 7th birthday today. Zopa was the first to initiate a p2p lending marketplace over the internet, an innovation that meanwhile has grown to an industry with dozens of p2p lending services launched operating in most G20 economies.
Giles Andrews, cofounder and CEO of Zopa said, ‘After 7 years, Zopa members continue to enjoy better rates on personal loans and savings than the banks offer. Meanwhile, despite their size and virtual monopoly, banks have struggled to even stay solvent, requiring huge taxpayer bailouts.’
Since launch, Zopa has arranged more than 185 million GBP (approx. 291M US$) in loans. As older loans have been repaid, an estimated 90M is currently still loaned out. According to company statements Zopa loans now account for between 1% and 2% of all new personal loans issued in the UK each month. In January Zopa arranged more than 8.2 million GBP of loans.
Crowdcube Celebrates First Birthday – Crowdcube Infographic
British P2P Equity marketplace startup Crowdcube celebrates its first anniversary (Happy Birthday from P2p-Banking, too :-)). Lately Crowdcube picked up speed substantially in attracting more and more startups pitching for funding. While investors are currently very selective in what to fund, the volume funded has shown nice growth too. The following infographic by Crowdcube illustrates that (see ‘Amount invested’).
(Source: Crowdcube) Continue reading
Stunning Visualization of Kiva Loan Growth
In this video animation each moving point is a Kiva loan share. A share leaves the lender on the fundraising date and returns from the borrower on the loan’s ended/repaid date. Absolutely stunning to watch the dimension.
Growth and other Recent News in P2P Lending
Zopa has announced that it reached the milestone of 150 million GBP in loans facilitated. Zopa says the new loan volume per month accounts for between 1% and 2% of new personal loan volume made in the UK.
P2P lending service Lending Club announced yesterday that it has been selected as a World Economic Forum 2012 Technology Pioneer. Lending Club was selected from amongst hundreds of applicants from around the world that hold the promise of significantly impacting the way business and society operate.
Both Lending Club and Prosper did continue their growth of monthly loan volume origination in August (Sociallending.net has charts and company comments).
State of Selected P2P Lending Companies
More than 2 years have passed, since P2P-Banking.com published the first overview table of p2p lending companies. At that time the focus was to create a comprehensive list and to get a perspective on the loan volumes.
Today I want to look at a smaller selection of p2p lending companies and do a rating on more factors than just loan volume. While I describe below what factors led to my rating, please note that the rating represents my personal opinion.
The table lists the companies in alphabetical order and gives:
New loan volume per month
This amount is in most cases retrieved from the last month(s) figures from the company websites (if they have statistic sections), and then converted into US$ at today’s currency exchange rates. In other cases it is a rough estimate by me based on volume figures published in media in the recent past. For CommunityLend I failed to find a per month figure (the total figure from launch to mid-February is here).
Brand/Press
Extend and tone of press coverage in the past months. Since a large share of new users is introduced to p2p lending services via media, positive media coverage is extremely important. Continued positive media coverage has helped some companies to associate positive values to their brand.
Growth/Marketing
This column especially rates if the new loan volume is growing continuously month after month. Furthermore it puts the absolute volume into perspective to the size of the market. It is obvious that absolute numbers in a country with a small population (e.g. Canada) will be much lower than those in a country with a large population (e.g. US). Furthermore it takes into account if the (online) marketing measures of the the company succeed in winning new borrowers and lenders (though in most markets lenders do not need to be actively acquired).
Sustainability
Sustainability rates a mix of several factors:
- ROIs for lenders / default rates
Most p2p lending companies that failed in the past, did so as a result of high default rates which led to negative lender ROIs and caused massive lender churn - Ability of company to raise new funding
Most p2p lending companies still have to bridge a considerable time-span at their current growth rate before they become cash flow positive. The ability to raise more funding to finance continued operation is essential for their success - Business model
User satisfaction
This rates the publicly voiced user opinion. Major factor are the comments in forums. To a lesser degree I took the user experience published in blog articles into account. The problem with lender experiences published in blogs often is that the writer is casting a positive image, since he earns commissions for newly referred customers through the affiliate program of the p2p lending site. Also these review are often written at the start of the lending activity at which point the lender’s ROI is naturally unharmed by the experience of defaults.
Empty fields: I had not enough information to rate these. E.g. with some of the new UK p2p lending companies I felt I had too few indicators to reach an opinion on the sustainability.
Availability of information also influenced the selection of companies. Due to language barriers including more services (e.g. the Japanese p2p lending companies) was not feasible for me.