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This extends my posting on the blog roundup of Lending Club quiet period postings…

HollowOak asks: “How far behind is Prosper? Or do they get kudos for having started the SEC filing months ago?”

Lazy Man and Money is calling Lending Club dead:

I have been worked for a number of start-up companies and they had one thing in common - they are extremely fragile. A high percentage of new companies fail.. I’ve talked to a few other Lending Club members… and they said they are gone and never coming back. They feel their trust has been violated. With each day that Lending Club can’t or doesn’t say anything to justify this inactivity, the more trust is lost. I might be blowing this out of proportion, but I’d rather err to the side of being conservative until I have reason to believe otherwise.

LazyMan is correct that their inability to communicate this issue over the next few months (?) is going to hurt Lending Club. It was communicated poorly, so I can understand why many people must assume the worst.

ProsperousLand wondered why he took yesterday off in his catch up post today about Lending Club halting new lenders. Mike had posted previously about Prosper filing with the SEC. RateLadder also posted information on Prosper’s SEC filing. The key line from my perspective from the Prosper filing is: Read the rest of this entry »

I have already commented on Lending Club’s quiet period and referral program suspension. I decided to check other blogs to see what they have to say on the email notice that went out today. Since I was reading everything anyway, I decided to post links and a few quotes to everything that I could find using Google’s Blog Search for Lending Club.

Peer-Lend commented on the uncertainty of the meaning of the communication:

There has been a large amount of speculation recently in many corners that the P2P Lending models might be subject to some legal uncertainty regarding whether the loans should be classified as securities… The speculation has primarily been concerned with who, in fact, owns the loans (notes), and how exactly that ownership [is transferred]….

It is unclear whether LendingClub has ceased operations as a result of an SEC action or whether LendingClub has chosen to bite the bullet and submit to regulation voluntarily. This event could have major repercussions…

The g-spot posted:

My guess is their legal team is Read the rest of this entry »

Due to the Lending Club quiet period, the Lending Club referral program has ended. The program was a good one — I earned over $300 in referral fees through this website by blogging about my experience creating a portfolio, creating a video, gathering advice for new lenders, the inception of the referral program and the Lending Club bonus program.

I hope that they bring back the referral program after the quiet period is over.

From the quiet period email sent out today:

Q2. What about referrals?
A2.1 The current referral program is terminated. If you have referred someone who has already signed up as a lender or a borrower, or if you have been referred by someone and have already signed up as a lender or a borrower, you will be receiving your referral payment within the next few days.

Technorati Tags: lending club, peer lending, p2p lending, affiliate programs, referral code

Photo credit: TheTim

Lending Club sent an email today that first surprised me because a quick reading of a few details sound rather ominous. However, if you read past the “you can withdraw uncommitted funds” sections of the email, or rather stick to the important stuff in the first paragraph, this email exciting news for P2P lending.

I believe that this means that Lending Club is going to succeed at making a secondary market for loans. If this works, Read the rest of this entry »

So far all my Prosper.com and Lending Club loans are current. I would be annoyed with loan defaults, but currently the number of borrowers who pay the loan in a month or less is starting to bother me. Why does a borrower bother to take out a loan for one month?

Here are a few instances from Lending Club of early paybacks that wasted my time and tied up my money while trying to find and fund loans:
Read the rest of this entry »

When Lending Club updated their website, I noticed that Rate Ladder’s screenshots looked different from mine. This was discussed in the comments on RateLadder’s blog. Kevin removed all the comments on his blog so I can’t follow up on this issue there, so I’ll have to post the explanation here… Read the rest of this entry »

Eric, of Eric’s Credit Community, today announced on his site the launch of LendingClubStats.com.

There are currently a few different chart categories including:

• Loan growth rate shows great growth in the loans extended on Lending Club.
• 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.
• Also posted are Read the rest of this entry »

I noticed that Lending Club is denying most loans. Since that time, Lending Club has started posting the rejected loan profiles on the statistics page. Scroll to the bottom of that page for the file. The data is missing several fields that you would use to evaluate a loan, but it is still interesting. For example, 285 applications of 6672 rejected loans had no FICO score. The highest Debt to Income ratio listed was 3626400%. That is not a typo — 3626400%.

Of course I am missing some key data, but one looked like a potentially good loan which was rejected for being over the 30% DTI.
$25,000.00 1/7/2008 family loan FICO: 815 DTI: 33.60% memphis TN

Lending Club may be passing up good money by rejecting loans like this one. In cases like this, it might be better to let lenders decide if they want to take the risk. However, on others I was glad to see the loans rejected because there was an amazing amount of complete junk Read the rest of this entry »

Lending Club updated their interface today with some great improvements. They announced a few days ago in their blog that these changes were coming along with a reminder of the Lending Club 5% bonus program. Also mentioned was the number of lenders on Lending Club doubled in the last month!

But I am writing today about the changes to the Lending Club interface. (Before and after screen shots below.) Many of the improvements are items that I requested in my initial Lending Club review. My suggestions included Read the rest of this entry »

I checked my initial Lending Club portfolio and all the first payments have arrived on time. It is a minor milestone considering that each borrower must make 35 more payments to allow me to achieve my expected return on the portfolio. It still feels good to see the money arrive.

My first Lending Club portfolio consisted of 10 loans for a total of $375 at a wighted average interest rate of 9.27%. Despite the advantage that Lending Club allows small bids - $25 - I still extended half those loans at $50 each which was probably a mistake, but not a big one since they are all relatively low credit risks. The total payment is $11.93 per month.

It feels good to receive the first payment, but $11.93 is an insignificant portion of the entire expected payment stream.

Now the question becomes - what to do with the loan proceeds? Read the rest of this entry »