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International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes November 2014

wiseclerk 1 Comment

November was a month of mixed results for the listed p2p lending services. Some grew, some had a small decline in newly originated loan volume this month. Ratesetter crossed a total volume of 400 million GBP originated since inception. Ablrate profited from the deal with the first institutional investor, which boosted volume. I added one more service.  I do monitor development of p2p lending figures for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.


Table: P2P Lending Volumes in November 2014. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the sake of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed:
If you want to be included in this chart in future, please email the following figures on the first working day of a month: total loan volume originated since inception, loan volume originated in previous month, number of loans originated in previous month, average nominal interest rate of loans originated in previous month.

Need a loan at 2334 percent APR?

wiseclerk 6 Comments

No, that is not a typo in the headline. British Wonga.com offers small, short term loans online (short term= from 5 to 30 days).  The main advantage they advertise is, that the loan amount is transferred to the bank account of the borrower within minutes of the application, if approved. For that quick service Wonga charges 1% interest per day (!) plus 5.50 GBP transfer fee. According to the website that translates to an typical APR of 2334 percent.

British laws must be very liberal to allow this. In many other European countries interest rates like this would be illegal under consumer protection laws against usury. But Wonga does have a consumer credit licence from the Office of Fair Trading.

And naturally Wonga does not see itself as a loan shark. Read here, why they think their rates are appropriate. I do pity the borrowers that borrow at that interest rate.

EDIT: Interview in the Guardian with Wonga founder Errol Damelin states that Wonga had 50.000 customers during the testing phase.

EDIT Feb. 11th: See the comments for a discussion with John from Wonga.

(Photo credit: Demi-Brooke)

Domain kredit.de sold for record price: 892,000 Euro

wiseclerk

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.

(Source: p2p-kredite.com)

Advanta doubles funds to Kiva loans

wiseclerk 1 Comment

Credit card issuer Advanta entered into a partnership with Kiva. The initiative is called KivaB4BProject and Advanta will match the loans made by business card holders with up to 200 US$ per card. Card holders simply select a business owner to sponsor through Kiva and make a grant using their Advanta Business Card. Advanta matches that grant, dollar for dollar, and Kiva distributes the total resulting funds.

The loans funded by this project can be seen on this Kiva lender page. Already contributed to more than 500 loans.

When the project was announced at Advanta's headquarters, Advanta flew in Kiva borrower Senerita Lilli a dressmaker from Samoa to share her story. 

Cashare launches first p2p lending service in Switzerland

wiseclerk 1 Comment

Swiss Cashare.ch recently launched as the first p2p lending platform in Switzerland. The company, owned by Michael Borter (link to German language interview) and Roger Mueller has partnered with the collection agency C&S Credit Management AG, which handles all monetary transactions.
Interest rates and loan durations are set by borrowers and lenders bid in a 14 day auction (minimum bid amount is 500 CHF which is approx 500 US$). If the loan is fully funded further bids in the remaining auction period will cause the interest rate to drop in 0.1 percentage steps, while old bids are outbid.

The fee schredule includes:

  • For lenders and borrowers: 5 CHF fee for identification process
  • For borrowers: 19 CHF listing fee
  • For borrowers: 0.75% of the loan amount per year servicing fee
  • For lenders: 0.75% of the loaned amount per year servicing fee

This results in borrowers having to pay even if their loan does not fund.

An unusual point in the process is that lenders have to sign a written contract for each successful bid and send it via postal mail to Cashare. That seems a bit uncomfortable to handle. 

As Cashare launched only recently there currently are only 4 active loan listings. 

If you have used Cashare as a borrower or lender, please share you experiences in the forum. Thank you.

Kiva to reach 25 million US$ loan volume

wiseclerk 1 Comment

Kiva.org, which allows everybody to help funding microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, will achieve the milestone of 25 million US$ loan volumn within the next two days.

Launched 2005 the amazing growth curve can be seen on this Kiva stats page. The growth accelerated in 2007 driven by major media coverage. Up to now more then 260,000 individual lenders have funded more than 37,000 loans in 42 countries.
The current default rate is only 0.11%. While Kiva lenders do not receive interest, borrowers pay interest to the local Kiva Field partners (microfinance institutions).

Kiva, founded by Matt and Jessica Flannery (picture), is  a non-profit which currently has 16 employees paid by optional 10% lenders can donate on top of loans. Apart from them many volunteers aid the Kiva cause.

A February 2006 survey showed that Kiva donors were evenly distributed between 25 and 60. Slightly over half were males, and 65% made more than $50,000 a year. But a $25 cap on individual donations is causing the demographics to spread; more older, younger, and less-well-off people are signing up. Kiva has about 15,000 to 20,000 visitors a day coming to the site now.

While lenders may withdraw funds via Paypal upon repayment, 90% decide to reinvest the money into new loans.

(Picture courtesy Kiva.org)