Peer to Peer Lending News Roundup – August 23, 2014

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.

My crazy travel month continues – after being in London last week, this week I am in Beijing to speak at a conference here. The Chinese p2p lending market is flourishing and leading the world in many ways. But being inside China means no Twitter, no Facebook, even no Google. I haven’t seen any Google alerts since Wednesday so below are the main news items for the first half of the week. I will catch up on anything I missed next week.

On Deck Capital IPO, An Insider’s Perspective from Merchant Processing Resource – An in-depth and thoughtful article about OnDeck, the small business lender, who announced they intend to do an IPO soon.

Who Will Be The next Lending Club? from Forbes – Ryan Caldbeck, the CEO and founder of crowdfunding platform CircleUp, gives five key attributes that the next Lending Club must have.

Upstart’s P2P Lending Platform Aims at Young Borrowers from Techonomy – Q&A with Dave Girouard, the CEO of Upstart, on how their platforms works.

The Fitch P2P Lending Report: 5 Things They Got Right and 3 Things They Got Wrong from Peer Lending Advice – A critique of the recent report on p2p lending by Fitch Ratings.

Discussing the Small Business Lending Evolution from Orchard – Really interesting look at small business loans (with charts) over the past two decades and why we need online lenders to fill the gap.

China P2P lending market booms in 1st half from Shanghai Daily – The 1,184 Chinese p2p lending platforms did $13.3 billion in loans in the first six months of this year.

Betting Big on P2P Lending – Another Reader’s Returns from Peer & Social Lending – This large investor in both Lending Club and Prosper shares his thoughts and strategies.

Victory Park Capital to Invest $100M in Loans on Upstart from Upstart – New consumer p2p platform, Upstart, received a very big investment commitment from Victory Park.

Startup raises $400k for providing hard-to-get loans to software bootcampers from VentureBeat – New bootcamp student loan platform LendLayer announces a $400,000 seed funding round.

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.

What is the true value of my LC portfolio? – We have NAR and Adjusted NAR but which is closest to the true value of a portfolio?

Recent and Upcoming Changes on the Lending Club Platform – Lending Club recently announced some changes happening this month.

Auto sell? – Some the technologically advanced investors have figured out a way to automate the selling process on Folio.

  • 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.