Smava

First anniversary of Boober

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A year ago Boober.nl launched as first peer to peer lending service in the Netherlands. While Boober faced some hardship (especially on regulation issues) the first year of Boober can be called a success for the company. So far Boober has funded over 2 million Euro in loans in the Netherlands. Compare this to the 1 million Euro Smava.de has loaned in the much larger German market in the last 10 months.

But not all lenders are satisfied with the results. The PIVN an association of lenders, on Jan. 14th called for an investment stop. The main cause are fee changes. Richard van den Toorn, Secretary of PIVN, told P2P-Banking.com:

It's not going very well with Boober, although they claim otherwise. The
PIVN (association of investors) has indeed given an advice not to invest
in new loans until some of her demands have been met. Reason for giving
such an advice is that Boober changed their payment-policy for the
investors radically, without consulting the PIVN first. It's so much the
height of their fee …, but that they are making sure the
benefits are going to Boober first, leaving the investors [lenders] with the risk of
remaining payments from the borrower. Continue reading →

First loans default at Smava

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As P2P-Kredite.com reports the first 2 loans at German p2p lending service Smava.de have defaulted. Since the Start in March 2007 a loan volume of 1 million Euro (approx. 1.4 million US$) has been funded at Smava. The amounts of the two defaulted loans are 4,000 and 6,000 Euro resulting in a default rate of about 1%. At Smava loans default 40 days after they are late and are sold in a debt sale for a fixed rate of 25% (22% on lowest credit grades) to a collection agency.
2007 has been a very good year for Smava lenders as defaults (and late payments) have been significantly below expected rates.

Is identity theft a possible threat to the p2p lending concept

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On most peer to peer lending services (Prosper, Lendingclub, Smava, Boober) the identity of the borrower is hidden to the lender. Only the service itself knows the identity of the borrower. Therefore the lender has no means to check if information given is accurate and has to trust the platform.

The service has to

  • ensure that it takes adequate measures to verify the identity the borrower has stated at registration is correct
  • instill trust to the lender that the fraud risk of borrowers impersonating under a false identity is minimal, non-existant or while existant not covered by the lender.

Prosper gives a "100% Identity Theft Guarantee" and in case of identity theft repurchases the fraudulent loan:

Prosper reserves the right to buy back loans at any time. If Prosper buys back a loan, the outstanding principal balance will be returned to lenders and the loan will be marked as "repurchased".

Prosper typically repurchases loans in accordance with Prosper's 100% Identity Theft Guarantee, under which Prosper has agreed to repurchase loans from lenders if the loan is found to involve identity theft of the named borrower's identity.

Prosper is committed to providing a safe and secure marketplace, and works with law enforcement authorities to prosecute to the fullest extent perpetrators of identity theft.

Rateladder had one of his loans repurchased today. But how often does this occur?

Looking at the Wiseclerk Prosper loan stats by status, the column Repurchased shows a value of 400000 US$. Out of the total loan value of 96 million US$ that is about 0.4%. Not all of the repurchased loans are due to identity fraud.

Prosper checks identity by several measures like checking documentaion supplied by the borrower, calling him, verifying bank adresses, sending postcards to his adress… There have been several discussions on this topic with details on the Prosper forum.

Other services use other measures. German Smava.de uses the PostIdent-process a service that requires the registering service to produce a government id (passport) in person. The Postident process is used by nearly all German online banks and is considered quite safe.

P2p lending services can tolerate only a low level of identity theft cases. The innovative approach of p2p lending requires that lenders trust the concept and the service. Fraud cases endanger that trust.

German Smava opens to lower credit grades

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The German site for social lending Smava.de today allowed borrowers of the lower credit grades G and H to participate. Previously only borrowers of credit grades A through F could participate. According to information published by Smava, 80% of the German population have credit grades in the range A-F, while credit grade G accounts for 10% and credit grade H accounts for 5% of the population.

This move is contrary to the development at Prosper.com which started with a very broad range of credit grades and only later restricted borrower access tighter.

However Smava, so far has experienced not one late payment. Three payment cycles have been completed with 100% of borrowers paying on time.

Other changes at the Smava site today included a lower minimum bid of 250 Euro (down from 500 Euro) and a higher interest rate ceiling (maximum interest rate 18%; up from 15%).

Smava affiliate program launch

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Last week at the end of my post on the Prosper referral program I suggested:

The next step for even more growth

Currently all referral programs mentioned above have one thing in common. They are open only to existing members of the p2p lending services. Assuming they are successful and the p2p lending serves are seeking opportunities to enable even faster growth then the next step could be to start an affiliate program through networks like Zanox, CJ or Affilinet.

And today German Smava.de has launched an affiliate program through Affilinet. Though probably not a result of my blog post (or is it?), it is nice to see the development headed in the direction I anticipated.

The Smava affiliate program pays 15 Euro for each referred borrower that creates a listing and 10 Euro for each referred lender (who completes process of opening an account).

(Source: p2p-kredite.com)