Jan
Lending Club Statistics: Denying Most Loans
I decided to review the statistics at Lending Club and I scrolled down past the table towards the CSV file of data. There I noticed an amazing figure — Loans Not Approved for Listing. 5,137 loans for $44.9 million dollars have been denied for listing on Lending Club. The total number of loans approved is only 645 for $5.2 million. Only 11.2% of all loans submitted to the site were approved for listing, so Lending Club is attempting to keep out many of the lower quality lenders despite the fees that they could earn for originating possibly many of those loans. [Update: See the comments by Rob at Lending Club to know what loans are denied.]
I am glad to see how many loans they are filtering out, but one statistic on the page bothers me – the percentage of Lending Club’s late loans is currently premature to present in my mind. Currently, the percentage late is listed as 0.47% with a footnote that reads:
“A loan status changes from ‘current’ to ‘late’ when a payment has not been made within 15 days after its due date. For purposes of the statistics presented on this page, the entire amount of principal remaining due (not just that particular payment) is then considered ‘late.’”
A better footnote would also include that the average loan is only 79 days old. (I mentioned in an earlier post that Prosper posts a similar short-term statistic, but Prosper does footnote the time frame covered.) Seventy Nine days… that means the average borrower has only needed to make two out of 36 payments. Approximately 162 loans out of 633 issued (26%) have not had a single payment due yet (less than 30 days old), so those should be entirely thrown out of the late calculation. A better number is actually 0.849% late, but again it is still premature to present that statistic. ( (4 late / (633 – 162)) = 0.00849)
Notes: 1) On the fully paid loans, I had to estimate the issue date (#90376 and #122065) because the issue date field is blank. I used the average of the issue date of the loans on either side. 2) All statistics are current as of Thursday January 10th.
I wouldn’t be too worried about the filtering. Their are two reasons that I can think of. Frst, the site is still new small, and they may not want to list to much untill they get the bugs all worked out. Second, as an investor, it gives me a little bit more confedence in the applicants.
I just wish I knew why they were rejecting the listings.
I am not worried about how many loans Lending Club is rejecting. In fact, I think that it is a good thing from the lenders point of view. I originally complained about how few loans there were. However, now I see it is not that Lending Club could not be offering us more loans to buy, but they are passing up money themselves because they don’t think that many of the people applying are reasonable credit risks. I wonder how many of them move over to another P2P site to try to get a loan after being rejected.
I agree it would be interesting to see some stats on the people who are not passing inspection.
The loans that are rejected are below 640 FICO. Those same people can apply for loans on Prosper but they usually do not get funded.
Tom, that would have been my guess too, but that is amazing that so many people apply for a loan without checking thier own credit score first.
Doesn’t the check by Lending Club just add an extra credit inquiry on their record?
PLP:
Glad you notice the numbers around Loans Not Approved for Listing.
This reflects our commitment to create a safer investment option with quality borrowers. There are several reasons why these borrowers were not approved for listing:
1) FICO lower than 640
OR
2) DTI higher than 30%
OR
3) A current delinquency
Based on your concerns, we will start excluding loans that had not had a chance to pay their first payment from the late % calculations. I agree it would more accurately represent the late %.
We will also fix the missing issued dates on the fully paid loans.
Give us a few days to make the adjustments.
Thanks
Rob
Director
Lending Club
PLP – no, it doesn’t add an extra credit inquiry to their record. At least I don’t think so. On Prosper it only shows up as an inquiry if a loan is funded.
Thanks Rob for stopping by to comment on why people are denied for loans and for looking into the late equation.
Also, can you answer that credit check question specifically about Lending Club? At what point in the lending process does an inquiry show up on the borrower’s credit report? Thanks!
Tom, I checked the criteria that Rob is stating do not list on Lending Club and many of them are actually being funded on Prosper. Check out this search on Prosper data. That is a search on BOTH higher than 30% DTI AND one or more current delinquent account. (Rob says that either of these factors would have caused the loan to not be listed on LC.) Over 1,300 loans have been funded according to that search criteria with only those in B credit rating having a positive ROI — only 0.11%! Of course that is a small fraction of the loans listed and funded on Prosper, but at least some of them are receiving funding.
If you search for just loans funded when the borrower had one delinquency, there are over 7,000 loans funded. Almost 4,300 were funded with a debt to income ratio of more than 30%.
PLP, take a look at this article I wrote back in June – Prosper Lenders avoid high risk loans. There are certainly many loans that do get funded but I’d take a look at when those loans were funded. There has been a trend to avoid those loans lately. In addition, look at the dollar amount of those loans. I bet most of the recent loans that have been funded are under 5K.
Another way to look at it –
There are 576 current listings on Prosper where the borrower has at least one current delinquency and a DTI of 30% or higher. Only 14 of these are more than 10% funded. Of course some of those are new loans that will get funded as their listing matures.
If you look at all loans funded at Prosper, the percentage does not change much over the last two six month periods. I pulled all loans funded where the borrower had 30% or more debt to income ratio for three periods 1) Jul 1, 2006 to Dec 31, 2006 2) Jan 1, 2007 to Jun 30, 2007 and 3) Jul 1, 2007 to Dec 31, 2007. I compared that to all loans funded for the same periods to see the percentage change. Here are the results:
Period 1: Jul 1, 2006 to Dec 31, 2006
> 30% DTI: 931 loans for $5.61M average loan size $6,082
Total: 4337 loans for $20.91M average loan size $4,822
% of Total w/ 30% DTI: 21.3% of all loans and 26.8% of dollars funded
Period 2: Jan 1, 2007 to Jun 30, 2007
> 30% DTI: 1,912 loans for $16.68M average loan size $8,723
Total: 6,198 loans for $43.11M average loan size $7,004
% of Total w/ 30% DTI: 30.8% of all loans and 38.4% of dollars funded
Period 3: Jul 1, 2007 to Dec 31, 2007
> 30% DTI: 1,646 loans for $14.17M average loan size $8,610
Total: 5,266 loans for $37.44M average loan size $7,109
% of Total w/ 30% DTI: 31.3% of all loans and 37.9% of dollars funded
So for this one risk factor (Greater than 30% debt to equity ratio) there has not been any reduction in the percentage of total loans funded. Additionally, the average loan value for this category of loans is actually higher than average. Obviously, this is just examining one risk factor, but it is still interesting because I would have thought that it might have reduced over the last six month period.
Here is one of the six above queries if anyone wants to pull similar loan data. Jul 1, 2007 to Dec 31, 2007 with > 30% DTI. The parameters are easy to quickly change to create the other five data selections.
All this Prosper data is awesome. I may have to call up my old data mining professor and see if he wants to write a paper together.
I don’t know if you saw the lending market survey for January yet. Here’s one thing Chris Larsen had to say, “At Prosper, we also saw a dramatic switch in the prime versus subprime market with subprime declining from over 25% in 2006 to barely 5% currently.”
Maybe I need to do smaller than six month segments. Also, I think that he is using their credit grades rather than the 30% DTI. I should rerun the analysis using the credit grades and see if it matches his report. I imagine that it will.
[...] presents Lending Club Statistics: Rejecting Most Loan Applications posted at Personal Loan Portfolio. This statistic really surprised me: only 11.2% of all loans [...]
[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to the Personal Loan Portfolio RSS feed or take a look at the site map. Thank you for visiting!I participated in the second peer to peer lending carnival which is hosted at Brip Blap. There were too many good submissions to decide on a favorite post in this carnival, but I will post links and comments below to a few favorites. I submitted my article on Lending Club rejecting most loan applications. [...]
[...] I make bad decisions in Prosper lending. In contrast to Prosper, Lending Club only currently posts loan statistics, but they will likely make similar data available in the [...]
[...] at PersonalLoanPortfolio wonders Why Lending Club Denies Most Loans. This is a very interesting question, and one that I’ve asked Lending Club about in the [...]
[...] Lending Club Statistics: Rejecting Most Loan Applications [...]
If they aren’t likely to get funded, its probably better that they are filtered out. Last time I went to lending club I was turned off by the interface. Maybe its worth checking it out again…
Monday Morning Carnival Review…
Good morning. I had busy weekend and I’m just getting back into the swing of things. I’m going to start with linking to some of this weeks blog carnivals. I’ll be back with links to my favorite pos……
[...] Portfolio RSS feed or take a look at the site map. Thank you for visiting!Recently I noticed that Lending Club is denying most loans. Since that time, Lending Club has started posting the rejected loan profiles on the statistics [...]
[...] Loans by Current or Late Status. Eric points out that this chart is currently useless because of the average age of the loans. I mentioned the same thing about the loan late rates posted on Lending Club’s site. [...]
[...] Loan Portfolio Experience in P2P Lending on Prosper and Lending Club « Lending Club Statistics: Denying Most Loans PLR Interviews Fynanz CEO Chirag Chaman [...]
I must add that Lending Club removed my loan because of a small delinquncy which was 6 years old so as Rob mentioned “current delinquency” didnt apply in my case and they lost a good borrower. I dont think that was fair considering I have a 680 credit score and not late on anything for the past 6 years.
I like the idea of these lending clubs but I have to tell you from my brief review, it appears that no one wants to take a risk for a decent return. If you wnat to make a higher return then you will need to fund the higher risk loans and isn’t that the real purpose behind this “alternative” lending process? If anyone who has a high FICO score wants a safe loan they can go to a bank to get one. These “safe” borrowers are not the target market of the P2P lending process. You don’t offer the protections and benefits a bank offers to the borrower and the shareholders involved so you shouldn’t as a P2P lending expect your cake and be able to eat it also. Borrowers who are turning to P2P lending are “by definition” those individuals in many cases who have been turned down by the banks and other regulated institutions because they don’t qualify for the unsecured loans available. Although I think the idea of P2P lending is wrothy, there are just too many fuzzy lines and caveates and limits barring needy borrowers from getting loans that could help them get on their feet. Individuals who are seeking loans through a P2P lending organization are obnviously in need of funds and a structure should exist to help them as long as they can complete the paperwork and their privacy is assured. The FICO and other restrictions need to be better balanced against the nice return investors get once these loans are paid back. As I see P2P lenders are still getting a hefty return compared to other investments and for a comparable risk. So take the risk and fully fund loans for those people who need the funding. Stop nibbling around the edges to get the best of all worlds. Those seeking a loan through a P2P process and do not have prefect credit are your customers so provide the means to get them the laons they need and be happy. Afterall, from what I see you charge fees and high interest rates for the level of rsik per loan. So what’s the hype all about concerning wanting a safe investment. P2P lending is what it is –a risk for a greedy reward.
This comment is “right On”…thanks.
[...] I can attest to this problem. I’ve put in about $1,500 into Prosper, mostly in loans with loan amounts of between $50 and $125. I opted for borrowers that Prosper rated as “A” or “AA” credit, although I did sign up for one “C” borrower. Those are their highest grades. By doing that, I avoided the high interest rates that some of their loans bear. The highest rates were often yielding over 22 percent. The A and AA notes fell in a range of between 10.15 and 19.75 percent. Apparently, their standards are high. Only about 11 percent of applicants are approved for a listing. [...]