During the week I share the latest p2p 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.
Peer To Peer Lending Is Not Going To Replace Banks from Forbes – This writer’s definition of a bank is an organization that borrows short term money and lends out long term money and he claims that p2p lending will never do that. I am not so sure, never is a very long time…
Numbers placing their cash with lend-to-save firm Zopa leap as savers hunt rivals to lousy bank returns from This is Money – Zopa in the UK now have 39,000 investors who have lent over £290 million.
NY Federal Reserve Report on Household Debt from Direct Lending Advisors – Total US consumer debt is now at $11.3 trillion, non-housing debt is at $2.75 trillion.
On the money: A peerless way to get your money working from London Evening Standard – A short primer on the UK p2p lending market.
The Online Lending Revolution: LendIt 2013 from LendingMemo – Comparing p2p lending with the force of gravity and why everyone should attend LendIt (thanks Simon).
The Current State of Student Loans from ReadyForZero – With a great graphic showing the surge in student loan debt in the last eight years.
Crowdfunding Everything From Solar Panels to Veronica Mars from NationalJournal – Featuring Solar Mosaic, Pave and Lending Club.
Filtering Loans – Part 1: Risk from LendingMemo – The first part in a four part series on filtering loans at Lending Club and Prosper.
The Next Big Thing in Funding Innovation from Huffington Post Canada – Good rundown of the various new companies making an impact today in online lending.
A Note on Our Recent Loan Volume from Lending Club’s blog – The number of available loans at Lending Club is at its lowest level in years and here they explain why.
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.
Convenience Checks Arbitrage – Arbitrage and leverage are popular discussions on the forum, this topic is about the free 0% APR checks that many credit card companies send.
Finally had my first default – Interesting discussion about why one particular loan defaulted for this investor.
Where have all the good (folio) notes gone..? – The scarcity of notes at Lending Club seems to have spread to the Folio platform with several Folio-only investors reporting slim pickings.
Bummer. At first I was really excited about joining Lending Club as an investor (thank you Peter for great informative posts – I’ve taken some of your tips on loan filtering!). Then I noticed that as soon as notes became available that they were 100% funded before I could get to them. Now I am wondering if I’m going to get crowded out by the big lenders. Does anyone else feel the same?
This is a concern that has been voiced here and on the forum dozens of times. Right now, regular investors have to be very quick to get all the loans they want. My experience has been, though, that if you login three minutes after the loans come onto the platform you have plenty of choices. Only occasionally do I miss out on loans I want to invest in.
This has only been a major issue for the last month or so and with the new auto invest feature coming soon that will hopefully level the playing field a little more.
Thanks for the response. I also noticed that almost 1/3 of my notes are “in funding” for the past several days. Is a several days delay normal for approvals? Of course I want LC to take the time needed for approvals, but I’m also concerned about missing out on other notes while this money is tied up. Just wondering.
Yes. Several days for note funding is normal and this delay has gotten even more pronounced lately as Lending Club loan volume has increased dramatically.
Peter,
What is going on with Prosper loan availability this week. There are only “A” rated loans out there and very few loans to choose from/
Do you have any feedback from Prosper?
I am in Australia visiting family this week so I have had very little contact with Prosper or LC. I also haven’t been paying attention to the platform as closely as I normally do. But checking now I can see the majority of the loans are AA and A grade. I ignore those loans myself so I am also seeing fewer loans being picked up by my Automated Quick Invest.
Peter,
Do you know if they will record and make available or stream live from LendIt? I can’t go to NYC for the June 20th event, but I sure would love to be able to learn from all those presentations. Please pass this request along to the event organizers. Thanks!
Julie, I am one of the organizers of LendIt and our plan is to stream the event live. Details will follow before the event that I will share on the blog. There will also be a “best of” DVD available for purchase after the event.