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Exciting Week for German P2P Lending Services

wiseclerk 1 Comment

Positive TV coverage (see video here) on nationwide German TV on Monday during primetime caused traffic spikes at the German p2p lending services Smava and Auxmoney. The websites were partially down during Monday and Tuesday or so slow they were practicably not useable. Auxmoney reacted by temporary deactivating non-vital functions like sorting. Meanwhile stability of the web applications has been restored.

The surge in user demand led to a 20% increase in active lenders at Auxmoney and most ever parallel open loan listings (currently 332). At Smava nearly all reasonable loan listings are funded within a few days or even hours at the moment.

To encourage more loan listings Smava has upped the bonus for inviting new borrowers to 150-200 EUR (approx 200 to 275 US$) for each referral of a borrower that is success fully funded (up from 100 Euro before).

Bankrate.com: Peer-to-peer online lending grows in tight economy

wiseclerk

A recent Bankrate.com article gives an update on the development of p2p lending in the US.

Chris Larsen of Prosper.com sees the current financial situation as a chance for p2p lenders:

Home equity used to be the cash management tool for the credit-worthy borrower, and that has really, really dried up. In many ways, Prosper's three-year, 25,000 US$ loan is a pretty good proxy for what people were using home equity for — improving their home, starting a sole proprietorship, college costs and certainly for replacing credit card debt.

Javelin Strategy & Research is quoted that credit card debt is the main reason people want to use p2p lending:

We're forecasting that P2P lending specifically for credit card balances will grow from 38 billion US$ in 2007 to 159 billion US$ by 2012

The final advice of the article is:

Prospective borrowers and lenders would do well to thoroughly research P2P companies before jumping at the chance for a lower rate on a loan or a higher return on an investment. …

MyC4 lender headcount doubles after national TV coverage

wiseclerk

After MyC4.com was featured on Danish national TV in a 15 minute feature many new lenders signed up. Within 3 days lender count rose from about 500 to currently 964. At MyC4 lenders (called investors) loan money to African entrepreneurs. The bidding frency of new lenders did lower closing interest rate dramatically. Loans now closed at 2 to 3 percent lender interest rate (previously usually 10 to 12 percent). MyC4 will now have to increase the number of listings, otherwise they might be temporably be sold out like happened to Kiva.
Yesterday the first loan listings from Ivory Coast went online.