New p2p lending report

A new research report on peer to peer lending was published at VRL KnowledgeBank. The 200 pages PDF-report (table of contents), written by Ray Cain, can be purchased online. It covers the following issues:

  • What is P2P lending? Who are the main players?
  • What is their operating model and crucially their profitability projections?
  • What are the practical issues involved in building a large virtual community of lenders and borrowers, such as compliance, identity verification, credit screening, IT infrastructure, customer service and marketing? Can borrowers and lenders really be peers?
  • What short term lessons can financial services providers draw from P2P?
  • The future for P2P lending… is it an opportunity or a threat for the lending industry? How to blend P2P with other financial services? Can it be rolled out across the full range of mass market retail financial services?

 

Dzogchen view on good groups

Dzogchen analyses in this thread which Prosper groups have grown fast and larger. He uses own categories like 'distressed borrowers' to analyse group performance and found out that groups directed at some causes have experienced much higher defaults then others. E.g. in 'distressed borrowers' 12.1% are delinquent, while in 'entrepreneurs' it's 6.2% compared to 0.5 in 'computer users. techies'.

Following discussion included whether this allows predictions and if listings without groups are better risks. An asked for report was if borrowers that posted in the 'Review My Listing' did have a higher rate of defaults.

New report on open listings where borrower answered questions

Inspired by this thread in the discussion forum, I added a report that shows all open listings where questions have been answered. Already there are 150 listings where questions have been publicly answered. The majority of those is one question, but there are several listings where 4 questions have been answered. Good to see that we won't need the RML section of the forums any more.

Keep in mind that the borrower can choose if Q&A is public or not