growth

CommunityLend Raises 1.5 Million CAN$

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CommunityLend has closed a 1.5 million CAN$ private placement from several individual angel investors and an institutional investment fund. The proceeds of this private placement will go to scaling up loan origination, loan adjudication, and loan servicing operations, the company says, continuing:

This investment comes on the heels of a successful year since our launch as Canada’s 1st (and only) online consumer loan marketplace by CommunityLend Inc. Monthly loan volume has more than doubled each of the last 3 months and we are projecting this pace of growth to continue throughout 2011.

(Source: Communitylend blog)

Gartner: P2P lending will be 5 billion US$ in 2013

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Gartner forecasts p2p lending volume to read 5 billion US$ outstanding loan volume in 2013.

Consumers who lose their jobs can’t get loans to cover periods of unemployment; businesses that encounter trouble due to low demand can’t get credit lines to see them through to recovery. Furthermore, banks are more interested in recapitalising than in lending. Growth in P2P lending will be driven by investors seeking higher returns and borrowers shunning (or being shunned by) banks. Gartner recommends that financial services providers investigate how to partner and collaborate in adding P2P to their existing offerings rather than building their own P2P lending networks.

An earlier forecast of Gartner from Feb. 2008 overestimated the impact that p2p lending will have on bank lending in 2010 – at least in my view – but 2010 is not over yet.

Auxmoney Adds More Loan Term Choices

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Auxmoney.com has added more loan term choices for it’s p2p lending borrowers to choose from on the weekend. Previously available loan terms at Auxmoney were 12, 24 and 36 months. Now any term between 12 and 60 months (in 6 month increments) can be selected.

Auxmoney achieved substantial growth rates in the second half of 2009 (see Wiseclerk statistics tracking Auxmoney loan originations per month). And this is despite the fact that Auxmoney was criticized by a renowned consumer advocacy institution for misleading marketing and unfavourable fee structures.

In international comparison of p2p lending fee structures, Auxmoney is a rare exception, as it charges many fees regardless of whether a loan request is successfully funded or not. With it’s listing fees Auxmoney generates revenues even from those customers with bad credit history that have little or no chance of getting funded by lenders.

(Source: Uses information from yesterday’s article at P2P-Kredite.com)

P2P Lending Company Prosper.com has High Q3 Loss

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Prosper Marketplace, Inc. the company running the p2p lending site Prosper.com had a net loss of 2,238,138 US$ in the third quarter of 2009. Furthermore Prosper’s cash reserve is low. As of September 30th, 2009 Prosper had 2,079,624 US$ cash and cash equivalents left from an initial VC funding of 40 million US$. Even accounting for the recent 1 million US$ investment of a banker, at the current burn rate Prosper will need new funding soon.

However the timing and circumstances make chances for a new VC round look less than ideal.
Prosper reopened the site for new loans after completing the SEC registration process in July 2009, but still struggles to reach growth rates the marketplace had in 2007 and 2008.

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