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.
There were two big news stories this week – one here and one in the UK. Here, I am talking about the Lending Club expansion into small business loans and in the UK there was even bigger news with the announcements that p2p lending would be eligible for ISA accounts.There are several articles below covering these news items.
Lending Club Launches Business Loans from Lending Club – The official announcement from Lending Club on their blog.
Lending Club expands into small business loans from San Francisco Business Times – Mark Calvey has been covering this industry longer than I have and he always has an intelligent take on the news.
Q & A with Lending Club CEO Renaud Laplanche from Fortune – Jessi Hempel has a one-on-one interview with Laplanche covering the small business loans announcement as well as other topics.
Who Needs Banks? PayPal and Lending Club Want to Make Small Business Loans from Businessweek – It wasn’t only Lending Club that made an announcement this week about small business lending.
P2P Lending to Become ISA Eligible Later This Year from Wiseclerk – The announcement to allow p2p lending to be included in ISAs (the UK equivalent of an IRA) will almost certainly lead to more rapid growth there.
Lend-to-save investors to benefit from tax free returns after Budget 2014 Isa overhaul from This is Money UK – They call them “savers” in the UK and many say they will invest more in p2p lending because of this decision.
Peer-to-peer lending eyes mainstream after UK rule change from Reuters – While not mainstream yet in the UK as James Meekings says in this article – this news could well be the tipping point.
China Rapid Finance Explores U.S. IPO from The Wall Street Journal – There has been so much interest in the Lending Club IPO but it is always possible they will not be the first p2p lending IPO in this country.
Hong Kong’s first P2P online lender to expand in Asia from South China Morning Post – There is a lot of movement in China these days in p2p lending and WeLab is in the thick of it.
Exploring isePankur – European P2P Lender from Orchard – Profile of IsePankur, the first cross border p2p lender in Europe.
Peer-to-Peer Lending: Lending Club vs. Prosper from DepositAccounts.com – This site, which normally focuses on CDs and savings accounts, takes a look at p2p lending.
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.
Lending Club Launches Business Loans – More discussion of the big news this week.
Lending Club to stop screen scraping? – Interesting discussion on screen scraping and automated investing.
Let’s talk a little strategy – A look at how Bluevestment is running their auto investing strategy.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events 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. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.