Guus Drijver, head of Dutch p2p lending site Boober.nl, announced that boober plans to set up a site that will allow lenders to finance mortgages via p2p lending. This would require much higher loan amounts then those that are currently possible at Boober, where the maximum is 10.000 Euro. The aim is to have the first mortgage funded still in 2007.
Source (Hypotheek actuell, Emerce.nl, Overgeld.nl, Sprout.nl)
I started lending on Kiva.org 6 month ago. At Kiva everone can lend to small entrepreneurs in developing countries. At first I funded only 4 loans each with the minimum amount of 25 US$. Lenders do not earn interest on Kiva loans. Usually loans are for terms between 6 and 18 months. When I started I did not really expect all my loans to be repaid. But I wanted to support it, since I thought it was an innovative approach to a good cause. Meanwhile I changed my mind. One of my loans was already repaid in full recently and the others are paid on time. This led me to the decision to fund more loans on Kiva microfinance.
Though not p2p lending, I found the concept of British Wonga (not yet launched) remarkable. With no debt and a decent credit record, british consumers can apply for a loan of up to 200 pounds (at about 14 percent interest) and receive the deposit less than 20 minutes after application. Subsequent loan applications can be for higher sums.
Wonga does not draw the money from a bank, an undisclosed partner underwrites the risk.
P2P lending service Lendingclub, which launched last month has passed 100000 US$ in closed loans. The growth rate, compared to other peer to peer startups launched this year in other markets (see previous articles) is very high. More than $210000 in loans will close in the next 12 days. (Source: Techcrunch)
It's been roughly 3 month since the launch of German p2p lending service Smava.de and I want to do a short résumé on the results so far. One huge achievement is that all borrowers made their first payment on time – no lates so far. While it certainly is to early for conclusions, since only one payment cycle (first repayment in the beginning of June) has taken place, the outlook for Smava concerning low default rates is very good. Looks like Smava will be much nearer to Zopa then to Prosper in this point.
Smava has a very restrictive approach for admitting borrowers and loan applications. Not only does Smava verify identity, credit score and income documentation – it goes one step further and calculates if the borrower's financial situation is well enough to allow repayment of the desired loan sum. Only after completions of all these checks is the borrower allowed to publish is loan listing.
As a result the majority of borrowers (about 70 to 80 percent of all applicants) are declined from using Smava. While this strict validation is good for quality it does slow the growth of Smava.
Since the launch Smava enjoyed large and positive press coverage (newspapers, magazines, TV, internet). Despite the good PR, Smava funded only about 50 loans with a loan volume of about 150000 Euro in the first 3 month. There are enough lenders – Smava lacks borrowers. The low volume contrasts sharply from the figures Boober.nl achieved in the Dutch market (see previous post)
The majority of loan listings that were published did get funded. Smava has two interesting functions that are unique and not used on other p2p lending services:
Smava has yet to find a good concept for groups. While there are groups their purpose is yet to be defined. Consequently the majority of borrowers did not bother to join a group.
I will continue post updates on the development of Smava here on P2P-Banking.com.
Prosper loans have meanwhile surpassed 66 million dollars loan volume. A look at wiseclerk's prosper loan aging table shows that Prosper.com succeeds in increasing originating loan volume nearly every month. Currently new loans for about 8 million US$ originate each month.
However the figures also show an alarmingly high volume for late and defaulted loans. Especially when looking at older loans (the new ones do not have aged enough to be technically able to default). For example of 2.1 million dollar loan value that originated in June last year, $177,000 loan value has defaulted and another $105,000 are 3 or more months late. The default rate for loans from June 2006 will therefore be well above 10 percent at the end of the 36 month term. And this is no execption. For March and April 2006 defaults are already higher than 10 percent of originating loan value.
