Peer to Peer Lending News Roundup – December 6, 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.

What a week. My Google alerts picked up 267 stories covering our industry this past week which is by far the most I have ever seen in the 4 1/2 years I have been following along closely. Obviously, the Lending Club IPO was responsible for a majority of these and I have selected a handful of the more interesting articles below.

Lending Club Prices Its Share Offering at $10 to $12 from The New York Times – Long time Lending Club commentator Michael De La Merced gives his perspective on the IPO.

Stop shopping! And check out LendingClub’s IPO filing from CNBC – Ari Levy had a message for all the Cyber Monday shoppers.

Loans Made in Blink as Investors Vie for LendingClub Clients from Businessweek –  A look at how technology is playing a role in helping investors.

Early investors to make big gains on Lending Club IPO from the Financial Times – Lending Club board members Larry Summers, John Mack and Mary Meeker will all see their net worth rise considerably (on paper) after the IPO.

Lending Club’s Historic IPO is Probably Just Days Away from LendingMemo – Simon gives his always unique perspective on what the IPO means for the industry.

The Lending Club Online Roadshow from RetailRoadshow – A video presentation from CEO Renaud Laplanche also with commentary from their CFO Carrie Nolan.

Even without the Lending Club IPO this past week would have gone down as a big news week. Here are some of the highlights of the non-Lending Club news.

Tiger Global Co-Leads $225M Series D for Lending Co. AvantCredit from the Wall Street Journal – AvantCredit is less than two years old but this online consumer lender has just closed a huge funding round and is growing very fast.

Rupert Murdoch, James Packer invest in SocietyOne peer-to-peer start-up from the Australian Financial Review – Three Australian billionaires have invested in the leading P2P lending platform down under.

Funding Circle strikes deal in US from the Financial Times – A US investment group strikes a deal with Funding Circle to lend £132 million in the UK.

Peer-to-peer lending boost: investors allowed to offset loan losses from Citywire (UK) – Unlike in the US (where losses up to $3,000 can be deducted annually), UK investors cannot deduct losses from defaults on their tax returns; this will likely change next year.

Borrowell set to become second member of Canadian marketplace lender’s club from Financial Post – Borrowell is a new Canadian marketplace lender and has just closed a $5.4 million seed funding round.

International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes November 2014 from Wiseclerk – The November loan volume numbers for the major European p2p lenders.

Orchard Platform Introduces New Marketplace Lending Database from Orchard – The Orchard Originator Database gives institutional investors a way to evaluate originators.

Announcing the Winners of the $2 Billion Strong Contests! from Prosper – The video and photo winners from Prosper’s recent “$2 Billion” contest.

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.

The Lending Club IPO is still being discussed at length on the forum here and here.

Filter Strategies and OPEC – Should we adjust our filtering strategies based on economic news that might affect a particular region.

How do you decide what markup/discount to use? – Pricing notes for sale on Folio is a regular topic of discussion on the forum.

  • 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.