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.
LendingClub to Cut 12% of Its Workforce, as Loan Volumes Fall from The Wall Street Journal – Ahead of the Lending Club shareholder meeting the company announces layoffs and that Scott Sanborn will be the new CEO.
Small businesses face funding gap after Brexit vote from The Telegraph – More fallout from Brexit. The European Investment Bank deal with Funding Circle is now in doubt.
Rescue Deal for Peer-to-Peer Lending Platform from Insider Media Limited – In the UK p2p lending platform FundingKnight has been acquired by GLI Finance for just £750k in a rescue deal.
German Investors Look Beyond Borders when Using P2P Lending from P2P-Banking – Interesting survey from Claus at Wiseclerk showing the favorite p2p lending platforms for German investors.
LendingClub Rises on Signs of Rebound Even as Scandal Widens from Bloomberg – According to Bloomberg Stone Ridge will buy $1B in loans from Lending Club this year.
Weekly Industry Update: June 26, 2016 from PeerIQ – The always interesting PeerIQ newsletter with commentary of the recent SoFi deal.
P2P has a bright future, insists Dianrong founder, as he plans IPO within two years from South China Morning Post – The CEO of one of China’s leading p2p lending platforms gives a great summary of the market there.
Knecht quits Funding Circle from AltFi – The co-founder of Funding Circle’s German operation has quit in an apparent dispute with the UK head office.
MoneyLion brings traditional banking ever closer to obsolescence from TechCrunch – A new company to keep an eye on is MoneyLion. Here is a good profile of them in TechCrunch.
I think I found the Loan Files from NSR Invest – Zach from NSR Invest did some digging and likely discovered some of the questionable Lending Club loans from 2009.
Digging into Contingency Fund Coverage from AltFi – Fascinating article by Sam Griffiths on the UK provision funds of RateSetter and Zopa.
Avant Said to Slash Target for Online Lending, Reduce Staff from Bloomberg – More tough times for Avant as they cut more jobs and reduce their loan volume expectations.
LendingClub Fund Has Its Version of June Swoon from The Wall Street Journal – And if this week wasn’t bad enough Lending Club says that LC Advisors will have its first negative month in June.
Crazy Peer Lending Marketplaces That Work from LendingRobot – I wouldn’t call these ideas crazy but there is plenty of entrepreneurial activity in our sector.
Europe’s Top 11 Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms from Fintech Switzerland – According to Fintech Switzerland here are the top European p2p lending platforms.
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.
NSR Invest blog post – the improperly issued loans – The forum discusses loans that may be the ones taken out by Renaud Laplanche and his family in 2009.
The Importance of Being Earnest (or better still NeverLate) – One investor goes into great detail about liquidating his portfolio.
06/28/2016 press release – Sanborn now CEO, cut 179 jobs, etc etc – The forum digests the news coming out of Lending Club this week.
New Loans of the E F and G Grades – Investors discuss recent loan availability and purchasing notes on the secondary market.
I live in the US, but have also a European citizenship (Italian).
I invest in Lending club and Prosper.
QUESTION: in order to diversify, is it possible for me to invest in an European P2P lender.
Which ones (2) are the “best”, safest…that you would recommend?
I assume one would have to wire the money, or do they have an electronic system connected to
US banks?
Thanks for the info.
Hi Michael,
If you have European citizenship then you should be able to invest in a wide variety of platforms. I just write a roundup last week about the French platforms:
https://www.lendacademy.com/french-marketplace-lending-industry/
Of the French platforms Younited is the most established and they just opened in Italy as well.
The most established German platforms are Auxmoney and Lendico. There are many good Spanish platforms although they are all relatively new. I have invested in Bondora, based in Estonia, they also happen to be open to US investors – they are higher yield and higher risk than the other European platforms I mentioned.