During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter as it happens. Then every Saturday I take the most interesting news items and blog posts from the past week and share them here.
The biggest news of the week was clearly the Lending Club deal with Alibaba – this announcement was covered by pretty much every major publication and caused a nice spike in the Lending Club stock price.
Alibaba and Lending Club to Form Financing Partnership from The New York Times – Michael de la Merced has been following this industry for a long time and he provided insightful coverage of the story.
Alibaba And Lending Club Launch Financing Program For U.S. Businesses from Techcrunch – More details of this multi-year exclusive deal between the two companies.
LendInvest set to debut on London Stock Exchange from The Financial Times – In the UK there are no public companies in the P2P lending space yet but property lender LendInvest is looking to change that.
Prosper Loans Historical Listings: Prosper Ratings, Charge Offs and Performance from PeerCube – A detailed analysis of charge-offs by loan grade at Prosper.
Young, Broke And Creditworthy from Forbes – Profile of a new online lender called Earnest targeting millennial borrowers.
Peer-to-peer lender SoFi raises $200m from The Financial Times – SoFi has raised a large Series D round that values the company at $1.3 billion.
International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes January 2015 from Wiseclerk – Breakdown of the January loan volumes at the European P2P lenders.
Peer pressure: How peer-to-peer lending platforms are transforming the consumer lending industry from PwC – Interesting report by the PwC folks on marketplace lending and the options for banks to get involved.
CommonBond Obtains $150 Million in Boom for Online Lenders from Bloomberg – Student lender CommonBond gets a $150 million commitment from Nelnet.
Wall Street storms UK peer-to-peer lending groups from The Independent (UK) – Commentary on the evolution of P2P lending in the UK with the arrival of institutional investors.
Online Lending: A Boon for Young and Small Companies? from Forbes – By the Kauffman Foundation about the rise of online lending options for small businesses.
Dave Tomlinson Joins Marketplace Lending Platform BorrowersFirst as CEO (press release) – BorrowerFirst have hired the former CEO of Hispanic lender Progreso Financiero.
From the Lend Academy Forum
The Lend Academy forum is where investors go to discuss p2p lending. Below are some topics that were being discussed this week.
LC lowers rates again – The forum members have plenty to say about Lending Club’s interest rate adjustments this week.
Lending Club Cost Basis – The tax questions begin.
Prosper Tax Forms – And discussion of the Prosper tax forms.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.