Last Friday Peter and I had the honor of joining the CreditEase team on the NYSE floor to ring the opening bell and celebrate the successful initial public offering of Yirendai, their online platform. It was an exciting moment for the company and our industry since it marks the first major IPO of a Chinese P2P company.

Yirendai successfully raised $86 million by selling 8.6m shares at $10 per share and it closed the day at $9.10 for a market cap of $544 million (they have 58.5 million fully diluted shares outstanding). The stock trades under the symbol YRD and the IPO was led by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

Yirendai Spins out of CreditEase, the Largest P2P Firm in the World

CreditEase is an enormous P2P company based in China. It was one of the first P2P companies in the world when it launched in 2006 and has evolved into a full service financial services firm that provides inclusive finance and wealth management products and services in China. We love analyzing CreditEase because they represent the future of P2P lending. Their focus on “inclusive finance” means that they offer products to borrowers across the credit spectrum ranging from prime quality borrowers, to near prime borrowers, to sub-prime borrowers.

Their first loan was a student loan and over time they have expanded to almost every major (P2P) lending category including student loans, auto loans, rural loans, mortgages, small business loans, and consumer loans for home improvement, weddings, vacations, and other life events. In addition, early on they realized that P2P lending was only their first product and they have since expanded to wealth management products, which include equities, real estate, credit, alternative investments, and insurance. They have a huge network of over 230 physical locations, they have grown to over 44,000 employees, and they have originated over $25 billion in loans. They are like Lending Club, Avant, LendUp, SoFi, LendingHome, and Charles Schwab wrapped into one company. [Read more…]