Marketplace Lending News Roundup – March 19, 2016

News

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.

‘Ripe for disruption’: Online mortgage platform LendInvest just raised £17 million to get into buy-to-let from Business Insider – Congrats to the LendInvest team on their Series B, a £17M raise to focus on UK buy-to-let market by Oscar Williams-Grut.

Has the Rise of Marketplace Lending Reached a Peak? from Orchard – My guest post on Orchard is out discussing the rise as well the challenges of marketplace lending.

More Trouble in Bonds Backed by Peer-to-Peer Loans from Bloomberg – Are the recent troubles with p2p lending securitizations overblown or do they portend problems ahead?

Prosper, HomeAdvisor Announce Deal on Home Improvement Loans from American Banker – A new partnership announced by Prosper today, with home improvement site HomeAdvisor.

Marketplace Lending: Regulation Ahead? from Cato Institute – The Cato Institute weighs in on whether new marketplace lending regulations will be a good thing.

Reality Check for Marketplace Lenders from American Banker – The case against the continued rapid growth of marketplace lending platforms by Todd Baker.

Dumb money, meet dumb lender from Financial Times – The first securitization of CircleBack loans is performing worse than expected.

How rising rates could impact P2P lending from Yahoo Finance – We may not have to worry about this for a while but here are some thoughts on rising interest rates.

Mobile Marches Forwards from AltFi – Mobile is becoming more important to p2p lending. Some interesting stats from Zopa and RateSetter.

#MyProsperStory Q&A with Prosper Investor: Thomas Cloud from Prosper – On their blog Prosper interviews a Certified Financial Planner who is also an investor.

Western Independent Bankers Forms Alternative Finance Provider Partnership With Bizfi from Crowdfund Insider – Another day another bank partnership. This time with BizFi and Western Independent Bankers.

Unanswered questions in online lending from Financial Times – Interesting origination trend from Marlette Funding. They had been on a growth tear until recently.

Afluenta raises $8 million for P2P lending from VatorNews – Congrats to Alejandro and the Afluenta team on their $8M Series B.

HMRC bows to pressure to put P2P Isa on platforms from FT Adviser – The UK government has done the smart thing and allowed investors to diversify new ISA money to multiple p2p lending platforms.

On the Mark with Markowitz, Diversification Part 1 from LendingRobot – Here is one for the math geeks. LendingRobot explains mathematically why diversification in p2p lending is good.

Prêt d’Union is about to launch in Italy as Younited Credit from TechCrunch – Leading French p2p lending platform Prêt d’Union is expanding to Italy.

Prosper Loan Review for Borrowers: Is this Legit? from LendingMemo – After a several month hiatus Simon from LendingMemo is back with a new post on applying for loan at Prosper. Welcome back Simon!

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.

Where are the 36’s? – It seems as though loan availability is back to normal for Lending Club investors.

Bloomberg: “More Trouble in Bonds Backed by P2P Loans” – Investors discuss recent news about loan quality in issued bonds.

What TERM loan do you invest in? – The forum talks 36 versus 60 month notes and investing strategy in this thread.

  • Peter Renton

    Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of Fintech Nexus, the world’s largest digital media 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.