profit

Profits and Losses of P2P Lending Marketplaces 2017 and 2018

wiseclerk 1 Comment

I added a new information page to P2P-Banking compiling data on which p2p lending marketplaces made a profit or a loss in the last business years. You can read more on why this data is useful to investors on the platforms here.

Snapshot of the table at the start of the data collection:

p2p lending companies profitable
Table: Profits/losses of p2p lending companies (in million currency units) Source: own research.

The table will be updated and added to on this infomation page in future. P.S.: Thx to the crowd for emailing me additional data. Only a few hours after first publication I was already able to add more companies and data so the table on the information page is already more comprehensive than the outdate first version of the publication shown above.

new menue point

Ratesetter Reports Rising Revenue & Pre-Tax Loss

wiseclerk

Peer-to-peer lending platform RateSetter has published its 2015-16 accounts, showing that it increased revenues from 12.6M to 18.5M GBP over the year. The company made a pre-tax loss of 4.9M GBP, compared to a pre-tax profit of 476K GBP for the preceding year. The company’s results are in line with expectations set out at the start of the year and reflect the decision to charge more fees over the lifetime of loans rather than upfront and a planned increase in investment back into the business.

Loans under management increased by 70 per cent, from 341M GBP on 31 March 2015, to 581M a year later, while the number of active investors grew from 18,608 to 31,036 over the same period. Today these figures stand at 640M GBP and 36,310 respectively – with a 70 per cent increase in new active investors in the period since the EU referendum compared to the same three months last year.

RateSetter made a profit for the years ending 31 March 2014 and 2015.

One of the main investment considerations for the money raised in 2015 from a consortium of investors including Woodford and Artemis was to alter the timing of receiving income: in 2015 RateSetter started to charge a greater proportion of its fees over the lifetime of loans rather than purely up front when loans are written. This creates a more sustainable recurring income stream as more money comes in over the term of loans, reducing pressure to lend in order to generate revenue when credit conditions are poor. Importantly, it also aligns RateSetter’s interests with those of its investors as it provides a financial incentive to only approve loans which perform. If all fees had been taken upfront when loans were written, rather than charged over the lifetime of loans, RateSetter would have recorded a pre-tax profit in 2015-16. Continue reading →

Smava.de – the business case

wiseclerk

Following the previous post on Smava.de here is a look on the business case of the smava startup and the chances for profit.

Currently Smava earns only when a loan funds. Smava charges the borrower a 1% fee of the loan amount.  Only other fee are 10 Euros per dunning letter (which is covers the costs of the dunning letters but is otherwise neglectable).

Possible reason for the low fee (in comparison to Prosper and Zopa) are the low interest rates in Germany which might not allow for higher fees. Loans range from 500 to 10.000 Euro. Assuming an average loan amount of 3000 Euro Smava would earn 30 Euro.

Looking at transaction costs, we have:

  • Identity check of borrowers and lenders via PostIdent (approx 5 Euros each)
  • Creditgrade check (estimate 1 Euro)
  • Validation of documentation for borrowers (estimate 5 Euro, based on typical call center cost, actual inhouse costs could be higher or lower)
  • Validation of documentation for lenders (estimate 3 Euro, based on typical call center cost, actual inhouse costs could be higher or lower)

Even looking at this transaction costs without taking into regard marketing, overhead, legal and setup costs it seems that Smava faces quite a challenge and will have to focus on automation of processes.

A critical factor in my view is the fact, that costs for lender and borrower identification are incurred before anything happens and regardless if borrowers and lenders become active. Learnings form Prosper.com are that 103.000 listings created only 9000 loans, which means 90% of listings gounfunded. Of the 230000 Prosper.com members about 23000 have the role lender. Only 12000 of these were active in the last 30 days.

Prosper does some verification only when a listing will fund. 

An interesting factor of Smava is the high minimum fee of 500 Euro (which Colin Henderson was quick to point out). 

In a call founder Eckart Vierkant reasoned that a lower minimum was not necessary due to the automatic risk spreading through the Anleger-Pool (see previous post).

The 500 Euro minimum has 2 interesting effects:

  • since the lowest unit is 500 Euro, deposits from 0 to 499 Euro will accumulate on the lender accounts. Lenders collect non interest on these unloaned amount. Assuming an average 'parked' amount is 200 Euro and that the bank partner of Smava invests this money earning a return of 5 % that would mean 10 Euro profit per year and active lender
  • the 500 Euro minimum keeps small lenders out (at least in theory since anybody can register for free)

It will be interesting to see how Smava deals with that challenge in future.