p2p lending

Do Your Friends Determine If You Are Creditworthy?

wiseclerk 4 Comments

A new US patent filed claims that may be a good idea! The patent application “System and method for assessing credit risk in an on-line lending environment” describes a risk assessment method, where the first level links on a social network would be checked for a borrower. It aims to derive insights from looking at the age and “activity” of these first level contacts.

Does What Your Friends Say About You Determine If You Are Creditworthy?

In a step further the method suggests to “invite linked users to provide a personal endorsement of the borrowing party; sending an endorsement invitation to identified users; and receiving endorsements from the identified users, the endorsement providing a rating of the user trustworthiness based on a numerical scale; determining and aggregate endorsement score from received endorsement which is included in the assessment score”

Assessment score to be used as one of several criteria

The patent filed by Canadian company Neobanx Technologies, Inc was previously already filed in Canada. Inventors Ronald N. Ingram, Dylan Littlewood and Aston Lau describe the whole process with assessment score and endorsement score being only 2 of multiple elements that are used to assess the risk.

The potential problems with using data from social networks for the purpose of risk assessment in p2p lending were already described in detail in the article: “For Debate: Can Data from Social Networks be Used to Reduce Risks in P2P Lending“.  I still think that social network data could be used to some degree as additional data for lenders – but not to the degree this patent seems to imply.

It would be most interesting to see this implemented and monitor how it works out.

What is your opinion, dear reader?

P2P Lending Expectations for 2011

wiseclerk

I always enjoy speculating what p2p lending developments might happen in the year to come and then look back in in the end to see how I did. I don’t dare call it forecast, because these are just my personal opinions, though in some cases it’s an educated guess based on what I know individual p2p lending services are working on at the moment.
Last year most of my predictions came true to some degree. Maybe they were not speculative enough – this year I’ll insert 1 or 2 developments with higher degree of speculation.

Advent of whitelabel providers (probability 100%)
Okay let’s start this with a safe bet. In 2011 there will be 1-2 companies offering a solution that can be branded and used by p2p lending services and / or p2p microfinance sites. The interesting question here is how the acceptance by potential customers will be. My guess is that it will be slow selling until the companies have set the first pilot customer live.

Introduction of a p2p financed ‘credit card’ (probability very low)
I envision a p2p lending service where the borrower does not get a loan in one full amount initially but can access liquidity on demand (within a predefined credit line). From the funding side this would work somewhat like lenders investing in Ratesetter’s rolling monthly loans. On the borrower side the customer could either request an additional payout via a web-interface or more sophisticated the service could issue a branded credit card / debit card for that purpose, enabling the customer to access cash instantly on an ATM.
This concept has very interesting advantages as it allows the p2p lending service to build a durable relationship to the borrowers. And for the borrowers it offers the potential of lower rates on short term debt than the high rates credit cards typically carry.
Like the idea and want to discuss/develop it further? Self-promotion plug: You can hire me as a consultant. Continue reading →

Review of My P2P Lending Predictions For 2010

wiseclerk 3 Comments

In January 2010 I wrote down my predictions for p2p lending trends in 2010. Now let’s see how good my crystal ball was. The black text is my original prediction, with the review added in green and yellow.

More competition and entering more national markets (probability 100%)
This is a fairly easy bet. There are many, especially European markets, where no p2p lending service is operating yet. Even accounting for the fact that laws and regulation in some national markets make it hard or impossible to establish a service, there is still plenty of room. Looking at an individual country, it is much harder to tell. I still wonder that there are no competitors to Zopa in the British market (yet).
As expected this was an easy bet to win. Plenty of new p2p lending companies launched. Zopa got 4 new competitors in the UK (Ratesetter, Fundingcircle, Quakle and Yes-Secure). 3 companies launched in Finland. FairPlace started in Brazil.

More products (probability 100%)
Currently nearly all p2p lending platforms only offer one product: unsecured, fixed term loans. The differences are more in the details of loan funding (bidding, no bidding, markets, listings) but not in the offered product. In 2010 we will see additional products (e.g. secured loans).
Ratesetter introduced rolling monthly loans with variable interest rates. (Note: variable interest rates were one of my predictions for 2008 – I was a bit early on that one). Money360 tries p2p mortgages. CommunityLend might be up to something really interesting with FinanceIt. Some smaller enhancements to the existing product were developed too (e.g. cars as collateral).

A bank will acquire an existing p2p lending service (probability <25%)
While last year’s prediction was that there is the first bank experimenting with p2p lending (and there was), 2010 might see a bank (or other financial institution) buying a running p2p lending service.Buying will be much faster, cheaper and risk-less than if the bank tries to build a new service.
Did not happen. An interesting development was the decision of a Korean Savings Bank to act as a lender on MoneyAuction. Continue reading →

P2P Lending Year-End Review 2010

wiseclerk

As the end of 2010 approaches here is a selection of main peer-to-peer-lending news and developments covered by P2P-Banking.com:

(Photo by paul (dex))

P2P Lending Sites in North America

wiseclerk

Below is a map of the p2p lending landscape in the US and Canada. It shows active and discontinued p2p lending services (including p2p microfinance).

The fastest growing services are Lending Club, which funded 12 million US$ new loans in August, and Kiva. Prosper’s growth is stagnating. Other US based services are Vittana, United Prosperity, Zidisha (all microfinance) and People Capital (student loans). CommunityLend is the only p2p lending site active in Canada.

All of these marketplaces have been featured earlier in the P2P-Banking.com blog. If you want more information about any of them just enter the company name in the search box on the top right of this blog.

Notice to other websites: You are free to copy and use this map, provided you agree not to alter or resize the image and you will set a link to this article.

Related resource: P2P Lending Sites in Europe (Map)

P2P Lending Topic in German Parliament

wiseclerk

In German the “green” party has initiated a parliament inquiry asking the government to ask 25 questions regarding it’s position towards p2p lending. While the party in the preamble describes p2p lending as a chance for consumers potentially offering them more choices, the wording of most of the questions exhibits that the green party is mostly concerned about the risks and implies that p2p lending is not enough regulated.

(Source: P2P-Kredite.com)