Peer to Peer Lending News Roundup – December 15, 2012

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.

The big news this week was the Lending Club announcement of Larry Summers joining their board. There were at least a dozen articles covering this story, you will find the top five included in this news roundup.

Lending Club Borrower’s Credit Age and Loan Defaults from Random Thoughts – A follow up on last week’s post taking a look at defaults by a borrower’s credit age.

P2P Lender Zopa Raises “Multi-Million Pound” Round Led By Augmentum Capital from Techcrunch – Zopa has raised a new “multi million pound” round of funding, led by Augmentum Capital.

P2P Investor Returns By Borrower Rating And By Credit Score from Financial Samurai – A look at the different credit grades on Prosper combined with credit scores and the impact on returns.

Inflation-Proofing Your Savings from Nickel Steamroller – A comparison of TIPS, real estate and p2p lending as a way to protect yourself from the ravages of inflation.

The Un’der’banked don’t need banks anymore from Finextra –  Fascinating article by banking futurist Brett King about how people are able to completely bypass banks today.

British Government Boards The P2P Lending Train: Plans To Loan £30M Through Funding Circle, Zopa from Techcrunch – Zopa are getting into small business loans prompted by this UK government commitment.

Peer-to-Peer Lender Spreads Its Wings: $1 Billion In Loans At Lending Club from Business Insider – A short article about the fast growth at Lending Club.

With An IPO On Its Radar, Lending Club Adds Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers To Its Heavyweight Board from Techcrunch – Techcrunch have been on the p2p lending bandwagon this week and were one of the first to break the big story about Larry Summers.

Will lending to a friend take off? from Fortune – More coverage of the Larry Summers story. Also revealed the tidbit from Renaud Laplanche that LC expects institutional investors to reach 70% of total investment soon.

Lending Club CEO eyes IPO in 18 to 24 months from San Francisco Business Times – Mark Calvey has been covering p2p lending for quite some time and he revealed several nuggets not available elsewhere, such as Larry Summers has been investing with Lending Club for a couple of years.

LendingClub Adds Larry Summers to Its Board of Big Names from Bloomberg – The interesting piece in this story is that Lending Club is projecting $80 million in revenue next year more than double this year’s number.

Why Is Larry Summers Signing Up With Lending Club? from The Daily Beast – This journalist wonders if having an industry icon on the board of Lending Club is a good thing.

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.

Public Records on File.. do you ever invest in the note? – A Lending Club investor wonders if it is ever a good idea to invest in a borrower who has a public record (such as a lien or a judgment).

Still having trouble with Foliofn – This thread has been going on for a couple of weeks now and there have been some interesting comments including one user who has written a script to help make Folio more usable.

Account Total for IRR tracking – I have always maintained that it is important to know your real rate of return, this thread explains how a couple of different investors do it.

  • 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.