market

Exclusive Interview: Smava expands p2p lending to Poland

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Starting Jan. 7th, the German p2p lending service Smava will launch it’s p2p lending platform in Poland. I interviewed Smava CEO Alexander Artopé.

The following interview was originally conducted in German language. Possible translation errors are mine.

P2P-Blanking.com: Mr. Artopé, why has Smava chosen Poland as target market for the international expansion?

Smava: For several reasons. Poland is a fast growing economy with approx. 40 million residents. In Poland the span between deposit rate and base rate is very high – approx. 15 percent. Therefore the smava marketplace will be very attractive for polish customers right from the beginning. And regulation in Poland does not require a bank for the p2p lending model. This keeps transaction costs very low.

P2P-Banking.com: There are already 3 p2p lending services established in Poland. How does  Smava plan to win market share as newcomer?

Smava: Compared to the active services smava is much more secure. Like in Germany it is a central product feature, that the risk for the lenders is transparently evaluated and can be factored into the calculation . To achieve this we cooperate with the polish credit rating agency (BIK).

P2P-Banking.com: How did you organize the operations? Does Smava have a branch or a subsidiary in Poland? Or do you operate from Berlin?

Smava: We have a subsidiary in Wroclaw, Poland, with a polish management team.

P2P-Banking.com: Where are the biggest challenges in international expansion: technical, legal/regulatory, marketing or recruiting team members?

Smava: On all fields, in the following order: legal/regulatory, recruiting and then marketing.

P2P-Banking.com: Which differences does the polish version of Smava have compared to the german Smava version?

Smava: Firstly we will start in Poland without the ‘Anleger-Pools’ (P2P-Banking: an insurance feature), because p2p loans are mostly short term there. Secondly all loan contracts will be directly between lenders and borrowers  – not like in Germany with the biw bank as intermediary.

P2P-Banking.com: What will be the maximum loan amount that can be borrowed at Smava Poland?

Smava: A polish borrower can use smava.pl for loans up to 100,000 Zloty. Each lender can invest up to a maximum of 200,000 Zloty. (P2P-Banking.com: 100,000 Zloty equal approx.  34,000 US$)

P2P-Banking.com: Which credit rating information will Smava.pl supply for the lenders?

Smava: Like in Germany smava will supply a credit score (BIK) as well as a debt/income ratio.

P2P-Banking.com: Which fee structure does Smava.pl have?

Smava: Lenders can invest fee-free, borrowers pay 1%  of the loan amount. Continue reading →

Noba to offer p2p lending in Hungary

Peter Petrovics 3 Comments

Guest article by Peter Petrovics, co-founder of Noba

First of all, let me thank Wiseclerk for the opportunity to post this guest piece on his blog.
I am excited to announce the January launch of the first Hungarian p2p lending service:

www.noba.hu

Also, as a regular reader of Wiseclerk’s posts, I am hoping to be able to draw on the wisdom of his readership in a particular legal problem we have run into while setting up our initiative.

My name is Peter Petrovics, and I have some modest experience working with online communities, while Charlie Szabo, my partner in Noba, is an accomplished former banker. We both have been deeply interested in the entire concept of p2p lending since we first heard of it. We  started our project in our native Hungary last summer .

We opted on a dual system: one is dedicated to the P2P lending model, where we hope to see micro projects raising money through friends, family, social network and eventually anyone interested enough in the given venture.

The other section is dedicated to channel loans to the high number of people living in deep and prolonged poverty around the country. We call these “charity” loans, and this part of noba.hu is similar to Kiva.org with the difference that it is limited to Hungary. Applicants for these loans are assisted by a mentor, who is typically an NGO or social worker, in managing their loan applications and projects.

We hope, that noba.hu will not only allow a flow of funds, but will eventually create synergies between lenders and borrowers in terms of know-how, contacts, partnerships.

Both types of loans are intended to allow lenders to make real profit, hoping on the long run to attract a larger community of private and institutional lenders.

This is however the part where we run into a very tenacious obstacle: under Hungarian law, lending (on interest) is a privilege strictly reserved to banks – private individuals are allowed to give a single loan per year, the second loan would be considered as providing commercial banking services without legal authorization. This means that the people who are willing to participate in a P2P loan project as lenders are only allowed to lend the money with a 0% interest, unless these natural persons are founding registered financial institutions.

I would be grateful for any input regarding this problem. We have made some research, and found that similar regulatory restrictions have been overcome by other initiatives in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, but I would be interested to hear any new ideas from you.

Does anybody have any idea if the whole issue could not be approached from an EU regulatory side? Could prove to be an easier path, than pursuing separate battles against the local legal systems.

Thank you for your attention, and looking forward to your comments.

Peter

Loanland update – p2p lending in Sweden

wiseclerk

Loanland launched last December as the first p2p lending company in the swedish market (see ‘Loanland launches peer to peer lending in Sweden‘). Since then about 5.7 million SEK (approx. 0.75 million US$) loan volume has been funded .

Ville Vesterinen has published more information about Loanland in the ArcticStartup blog:

The company is currently providing unsecured loans to the Swedish market. The Swedish market for unsecured loans to households amount to around 160 billion SEK (around 16 billion EUR or 20 billion USD) at present and with unsecured loans to SMEs the figure is about 500 billion SEK (around 50 billion EUR or 63 billion USD). The market has grown 15% annually during the last few years.
…
Loanland is using an open source platform that it has developed, automating most of the processes. The technology is based on Java, J2EE, MySQL, Tomcat, Spring and Hibernate. The platform and auction engine allows individual and automatic bidding, electronic signatures, integrated credit scoring and efficient payments.

The company … has already over 10 000 members and 5 000 registered borrowers and lenders. They have 6 million SEK (600K EUR or 750K USD) deposited out of which 95 percent is lend out as loans. Quite significant number considering that the startup operates currently only in Sweden.

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.

This image may be reprinted on other internet sites, provided it is not altered or resized and the following text (including the direct link to this article) is given as source directly below the image:
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.

Demand at Boober NL slows

wiseclerk

Demand at Boober.nl is slowing. When I checked today only two loan listings were open. The following curve showing unique loan requests definitly shapes in the wrong direction. Boober lenders discus this development in this forum thread.


(Source Booberwatch.nl)

Since the launch 15 months ago, about 2.4 million Euro (about 3.8M US$) loan volume has been funded through Boober.

German Smava.de has funded about the same volume (2.3 million Euro) but after a slower start 14 months ago, lately the volume growth accelerated moderately.

Smava loan volume
(Smava loan volume, Source: Smava loan stats at Wiseclerk.com).

On Smava as well as on Boober average borrower interest rates have risen considerably since the start. This reduces the attractiveness for borrowers.