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.
This was one of the busiest weeks of p2p lending news for quite some time. We had the Lending Club, Orchard and CommonBond news that I covered earlier this week. In addition to that we had the announcement that the former CEO of Pimco, Mohamed El-Erian, has invested n a new p2p lending startup called Payoff (yet to launch); one of the UK’s largest banks is starting a p2p lending platform and a new partnership was announced between Funding Circle and PwC.
Mohamed El-Erian backs peer-to-peer lender Payoff from the Financial Times – Tracy Alloway gives us another important scoop for the industry.
Royal Bank of Scotland to enter P2P lending market from the Financial Times – RBS is the first major bank to take on the p2p lending platforms directly.
PWC & Funding Circle form UK Partnership from Crowdfund Insider – PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers), one of the Big Four accounting firms, has signed an agreement with Funding Circle that will funnel small business clients to them.
Consumer Credit Trends Q3 2014 – LendingClub Edition from Orchard – Digging in to the Lending Club loan book Orchard discovers that the new loan vintages, from 2013 and Q1 2014, are performing better than all previous years.
Prosper president sees marketplace lenders one day offering insurance from San Francisco Business Times – While it does not seem to be on Prosper’s near term agenda, president Ron Suber sees insurance as a potential future product for p2p lending platforms.
GUESS WHO’S INVESTING IN P2P LENDING from PYMNTS.com – More on the Mohamed El-Erian story.
LendingClub IPO Warning Issued By Dick Bove from ValueWalk – Not everyone is bullish on the Lending Club IPO.
Industry Profile – Peter Renton from Orchard – My profile on the Orchard blog.
Blue Elephant Capital Management to lend US$50 mln through P2P lender Harmoney over 2 years from Interest.co.nz – New Zealand platform Harmoney gets a large investment from a US fund company.
The AltFi Frontline: Questions That Need Answering from AltFi – Digging into some of the important industry questions right now.
My Personal Lending Club & Prosper Filters from LendingMemo – Simon shares the filters he uses to invest and why this concept is still important.
What Investors Should Know About Lending Club’s New REST API from Peer & Social Lending – A look at the new Lending Club API and why it is good for investors.
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.
LC – city being removed from loan listings – A discussion of the change at Lending Club this week that removes borrower city and replaces with the first three digits of the zip code.
Lending Club IPO for retail investors – Will you consider buying shares in the upcoming Lending Club IPO?
Prosper Loan Volume by State – How to find out loan volume by state on Prosper.
Thanks to Peter we all know that p2p lending has been extensively covered in printed news stories & even on some TV business programs & documentaries these past several years.
So here’s a trivia question.
Has the expression p2p lending or peer to peer lending ever been used in a movie? Peter?
No doubt it has been used otherwise you wouldn’t be posing the question. But I am not aware of it.
*fingers crossed* 2015 baby!
You mean he’s missed 2? You must be mistaken Prescott. The producers or writers surely would have consulted Peter, Don’t they know that he is the man who is ” teaching the world about peer to peer lending” ? 🙂
Setting that slight aside, let me ask this. Other than making themselves even more rich, what do the industry leaders want from all this? Mainstream exposure & acceptance for their baby thereby leading to some general acknowledgement by the public of their greatness as visionaries, must rank pretty high. God knows you’re only going to reach the bland through CNBC & WSJ. What better way to get some mainstream visibility than by being mentioned in the movies & TV etc?
They could work this into a feel good movie. Someone getting their life on track after a horrible situation, and Lending Club was there for them. Throw in some motivational LC support reps “you can do it”. Gold.
Nobody questions getting a loan from Wells Fargo or BofA – if they can get that, they are in good shape. #EAU (did I get that right Ronny?)
Dan, Despite your sarcasm I am sure you are aware that the vast majority of news articles that are written about this industry are done so without consultation with me. And I am totally fine with that – I do not have an inflated view of my importance here.
Your second point is more interesting. While some industry leaders I chat with are motivated by money, most want to change the world. They see a finance industry that is inefficient and wasteful and they want to do something to change that.
Prescott………….Yrah, sounds like a real winner, a real epic. Would you or your friends (who have money & happen to think exactly like you), care to meet with me. I have a few movie ideas I’d like to “share” with future executive producers like yourself. 🙂
Peter………….. “Change the world” is a bit ambitious & generic at the same time, but you further my point. People who want to change the world want recognition for their efforts beyond the pages of the WSJ. Without some mainstream exposure, some everyday common usage of terms, some something………………..6 years from now this industry will still be getting the blank stare reactions that we have both received countless times in the past 5 years when we mentioned it to anyone. This exposure doesn’t even have to be in detail (or even accurate) for now. It just has to start or p2p will head down the road of the closed end funds……………..an important development & a good investment. But who started them again? Who brought them to the investment world? Who cares right? My point exactly.
PS…….Incidentally, I know nothing about the movie Prescott cites.
Very true. P2P lending needs to enter the mainstream for it to have any lasting impact. I think in 6 years time it will be heading very much in that direction with a decent percentage (my guess would be 25%) of the population having awareness of a company like Lending Club. Now, people like Renaud may not be famous in the mainstream but I don’t think that is all that important – he is leading an industry that is changing finance forever and I think that is enough for him. When it comes down to it how many people have heard of Jamie Dimon? Or John Stumpf for that matter.
explain to me how p2p is any different than other businesses that originate debt (i.e. mortgages, student loans) and sell it to institutional investors?
For the very large investors marketplace lending isn’t terribly different from what came before it. If you had $100 million to invest in consumer credit 10 years ago you could have bought a securitization of those loans or funded the balance sheet of an originator. But if you had $5 million or $10 million that would have been more difficult. And herein lies the beauty of marketplace lending – it gives all investors, large and small, a way to directly invest in consumer or small business loans. That has never been available before.
I agree with Peter on this. Though there have been hiccups & risks along the way, tens of thousands of small individual investors have earned substantially higher interest with p2p these past 6-7 years than they would have been able to get elsewhere during this super low interest rate period. Such a thing wouldn’t have been possible before p2p came around.
got it thanks, so these are high-yielding notes generated by origination platforms. retail investors can buy them. good stuff.
very interesting industry..but feels a lot like financial services and asset management. not a mktplace
It’s a working manuscript. Maybe I can get a loan for it?
Hey, OPM is always the way to go. 🙂
*looks at comments and passes out cold*
Let the record reflect that Dan B agreed with Peter on October 27, 2014 @ 3:24 pm.
*checks to make certain earth still spinning on its axis*