I just became aware of Boober.nl a new service that brings the concept of peer-to-peer lending to the Netherlands. As far as I am aware of this is the third market (after Zopa in UK and Prosper in US) where p2p credits over the internet are possible.
Since you probably do not read Dutch (the boober website does not have an english translation) – here is a short summary of the service:
- Boober takes a fee of 1% (0.5% from lender, 0.5% from borrower) plus 19.95 Euro fee from borrower for creditrating plus annual fee of 9.95 Euro from lender
- Loans are possible for amounts from 1500 to 10000 Euros (approx 13000 US$)
- Lenders can invest from as little as 5 Euro to a maximum of 250 Euro in an individual listing
- Available terms are 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48 and 60 months
- Interest rates go up to 15%
- As of today, there are 2 dozen open listings
Boober has more similiarities with Prosper than with Zopa since lenders can pick individual loans.The information available on borrowers listings is very limited but it has to be taken into account that boober launched only 2 weeks ago.
It will be interesting to see how Boober develops.
In case you are wondering what ‘Boober’ means. The website says that ‘Boober’ is the name of the dog of the founders, which they say is stubborn, creative and loyal.
Update: It is only possible to invest for lenders that are located in the Netherlands