Lending Club - Rethinking Loans With Peer-Lending
Lending Club is a social lending network where members can borrow and lend money among themselves at better rates. Simple. But Lending Club is also more. Less than a year ago Lending Club was a peer lending application that let users take out loans funded by other users. By the middle of last year, a month after it passed the one hundred thousand mark, Lending Club passed the $500k mark for lent and borrowed money among members. Since then it has grown into a full website. Much like the social finance website Zopa, Lending Club is looking to turn the lending industry upside down.
From Mashable’s, Lending Club 6 Months Later: Does Peer-Lending Work?:
Based on varied interest rates as determined by the individual lenders on a per-case basis, the ROI (return on investment) is high, and the loss has been low. With $3,525,660 lent, only $15,865 has been 16-30 days late.
While traditional lending and borrowing has suffered because of the credit and market crises, a new wave focusing on peer to peer (P2P) transactions has risen over the last couple years, driven by new web technologies (web 2.0) and startup companies. Lending Club has started and grown its service targeting existing groups such as university alumni. And they might just have the edge over their competitors. Unlike Zopa and Prosper, which are its direct competition, Lending Club is the first to integrate its services into a social network (Facebook).
I hope to test-drive Lending Club in the future, so I’ll be sure to post updates on how the whole peer-to-peer lending and borrowing experience works out. Not a moment too soon to turn the lending industry upside down. Here’s hoping.
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