lending club

P2P lending companies by loan volume

wiseclerk 12 Comments

P2P lending is spreading internationally. While the biggest loan volumes are generated in the US market, many p2p lending websites have been established in other international markets.

The services can be divided in three categories:

  1. p2p lending marketplaces (e.g. Prosper, Zopa, Lending Club, Smava) – participants driven mainly by economic motives
  2. social lending services enabling micro financing (e.g. Kiva, MyC4) – participants driven mainly by social motives
  3. other concepts (e.g. Virginmoney which is special in the way that it does not do the matchmaking between borrowers and lenders, but supports the process between persons that already had offline relations- slogan “We manage loans between family and friends“)

Sites funding student loans can fall into any of these three categories or combine motivations.

P2P-Banking.com has created the following overview table listing services that are in operation and ranked them by loan volume. The loan volumes are not directly comparable for they are cumulative since launch of each service and represent different time spans.

Asked for a figure, a Microplace spokesman pointed out “…it is important to note that MicroPlace is not a P2P site.  We are a platform that offers investments to the retail public.“. No loan volume was quoted, but he stated “investments purchased on our site have enabled over 26,000 microfinance loans.”

In total approx. 685 million US$ have been funded through peer to peer lending/social lending services so far worldwide.

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Source: P2P-banking.com

If you are a representative of a p2p lending service and want your service to be included in the next update of this table, please send me an email with information about your company.

Lending Club files S-1, step towards reopening for individual lenders

wiseclerk

On June 20th, Lendingclub.com filed a registration statement with the SEC to issue up to 600 million US$ in Member Payment Dependent Notes. The notes will be backed by loans and sold to lenders. The process for lenders remains pretty much the same as before the quiet period, only the legal setup will change to comply with regulation.

Link to SEC filing of Lending Club

Press release by Lendingclub regarding the SEC filing

Netbanker extracted some interesting data from the 100+ page Lendingclub filing. 

Lendingclub quiet period – lenders can not sign up or bid on new loans

wiseclerk

Surprisingly Lendingclub.com stopped signup for new lenders and existing lenders can not make bids on new loans (old loans are continued to be serviced). Borrowers can still obtain new loans – they are funded directly by Lendingclub. The announcement email sent out to members is quoted in this blog post.

The Lendingclub website states this message:

Lending Club has started a process to register, with the appropriate securities authorities, promissory notes that may be offered and sold to lenders through our site in the future. Until we complete the registration process, we will not accept new lender registrations or allow new commitments from existing lenders. We will continue to service all previously funded loans during this period, and lenders will be able to access their accounts, monitor their portfolios, and withdraw available funds without changes.

The borrowing side of our site will remain generally unaffected by this registration process; borrowers can continue to apply for loans and new loans posted after April 7, 2008, will be funded and held only by Lending Club.

Until the registration process is completed, the company will undergo a quiet period and will not be able to respond to press and other inquiries about Lending Club or the registration process during that time.

On Techcrunch there is speculation that "Lending Club is looking to obtain a broker dealer license from the SEC that would legitimize its operations".

If this is the case I could not find a recent SEC filing connected to this. The last one I found dates February 13th.

Netbanker has a short statement from Prosper, essentially saying that Prosper believes itself to be in compliance with all state and federal laws.

Lending Club hits 10 million US$ loan volume

wiseclerk 1 Comment

P2P Lending service Lendingclub.com, which launched last May, today surpasses 10 million US$ in loans. While the total amount is still much lower then the loan volume of competitor Prosper.com (currently over 120 million US$ loan volume) the growth acceleration of Lendingclub is really impressive.

Rob Garcia, Director Web production at Lending Club, told P2P-Banking.com:

This milestone confirms the validity of our approach to person-to-person lending, but more importantly, our value proposition to our borrowers and lenders.  Borrowers are realizing 20-30% better rates than going through the banks, while our lenders enjoy 12% average returns.  We are working to take this concept to a larger audience, so $10M is just a mile marker in our marathon.

The growth can be seen in this chart. For Prosper loan volume compare chart on this page. So basically in February Lending Club has originiated close to the amount Prosper did, when taking into account only those loans that would fit the minimum criteria of Lending Club's 640 FICO score and <30% DTI.

The statistic information at Lendingclub.com shows that over 1200 loans have been issued. So far few loans are late, but since most of the loans are very young, it is to early to tell which level of defaults will have to be expected. The statistic page also shows that Lendingclub declined over 80 million US$ in loan applications.

If you sign up via this link, you get a 25 US$ bonus by Lending Club (and I am paid a referral fee).