Smava raises 4 million Euro in second VC round

Smava logoSmava.de, offering p2p lending in Germany, today successfully closed it’s second VC round. Earlybird and Neuhaus Partners invested 4 million Euro (approx 5.5 million US$). Earlybird did already invest 4 million Euro in Smava in the first round. Smava CEO Alexander Artopé announced that Smava will use the money for product development, marketing and internationalization.

Smava funded a loan volume of 535,000 Euro in September generating revenues (1percent origination fee) of 5,350 Euro plus an undisclosed amount (my estimate:<1,000 Euro) in commissions for insurance products.

The growth of the funded volumes per month can be seen in this chart.

Canadian CommunityLend receives $2.5M VC funding

CommunitylendCommunityLend.com, which strives to be the first peer to peer lending service launching in Canada, has secured 2.5 million dollar venture capital. Furthermore CommunityLend announced winning Barry Campbell, former MP and Secretary to the Minister of Finance and Jim Jones, CEO of GMAC Residential Capital as additional directors.

In an email Co-Founder and CTO Colin Henderson told P2P-Banking.com: "… We have relaunched our site, as we move towards launch in early 08.  The key aspects of this milestone for us, is securing our funding, appointment of our management team, and appointing our Board of Directors. From here we will move towards launch in early 08. "

Quoted from the CommunityLend website:

Share in the Rewards of Investing in People

The unsecured consumer loan marketplace in Canada exceeds $100 Billion in volume every year and generates interest payments on those loans exceeding $15 Billion annually. By definition, “unsecured” loans are often small loans used for purposes like funding a wedding or paying off high interest credit card debt and for which the lender has not taken security to support the loan.

Today in Canada, this very profitable industry is also a very closed industry, with only a handful of major companies involved. This means that a very small list of banks and credit cards companies are literally today the sole beneficiaries of one of this country’s most profitable industries.

CommunityLend intends to democratize lending in Canada by opening up this billion dollar industry to other Lenders interested in participating. Share the wealth, we like to say!

 

Lendingclub receives 10 million VC funding

Lendingclub has received a 10.26 million US$ venture capital investment from Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners. The CEO Renaud Laplanche announced that the money will be used to expand Lendingclub beyond the Facebook platform.

In an interview, Daniel Ciporin of Canaan Partners says:

P2P services and functionality in general has been at the heart of web market disruption, from Ebay to MySpace to Facebook, using only a few of the most prominent examples. I think the opportunity is ripe now to apply P2P functionality in the consumer lending space, especially with the particular focus on pre-existing affiliations that Lending Club has.