Entries categorized as ‘P2P Lending international’
Interesting interview with Tadatoshi Senoo, CEO of Maneo – a social lending company in Japan. He worked with MUFJ, the largest bank is Japan, and afterwards decided to set off on this venture. The interview focusses on the hardships of setting up such a company.
Social lending takes root in Japan | Japan Today
What does the company offer?
Our company provides an online social network for individual borrowers and lenders where they can find each other. Borrowers auction their conditions, including interest rate, and lenders who offer the best conditions can lend money to them. Lenders can consider whether it is a good investment from disclosed information about borrowers. But both sides cannot reveal personal information and we do not allow them to physically meet each other as a safety measure.
How does the system work?
In legal terms, our company lends money to borrowers and lenders invest on pecuniary claim to us as a fund. Although this system is theoretically complicated, the process for borrowers and lenders is very simple.
Categories: Japan · P2P Lending international · social lending
October 16, 2008 · 1 Comment
The pace of registration with regulatory authorities for social lending companys in North America continues to heat up. Following fast on the heels of the LendingClub announcement, Prosper have sent an email to members with this note that they are no longer accepting lender registrations, pending regulatory approvals.
Lending Club Reopens to Lenders while Prosper Shuts Lending Down | budgetcents.net
Until we complete the registration process, we will not accept new lender registrations or allow new commitments from existing lenders. If you’re an existing lender, your current lender agreements will be unaffected; your existing loans will continue to be serviced; you’ll be able to track and monitor your loans; and you’ll be able to withdraw funds from your Prosper account.
If you’re a borrower with an existing loan, you will continue with your current borrower agreement and be unaffected by the registration process. If you’re a borrower seeking a loan, you will still be able to create a new loan listing, which we will endeavor to fulfill through alternative sources.
Categories: P2P Lending international
Statistics on Monetto, the social lending company that opened in Poland 4 months ago. [1 Zloty = 48c/ 0.24 Euros +/-]
P2P-Banking.com » Poland: Monetto has financed 1 million Zloty loans in 4 months
Monetto.pl, one of the three p2p lending services active in Poland has financed 1450 loans applications resulting in 440 loans totaling 1 million Zloty (approx 0.5 million US$) in 4 months. The average loan amount is 2300 Zloty. The service claims 8000 registered users and a repayment rate of 97% so far (which is said to be a good result)
Categories: P2P Lending international
Interview with Doug Dolton, CEO of Zopa, the social lending company with offices in UK, US, Italy, and Japan. He has some interesting thoughts, and bullish views on the scale that social finance will achieve over time.
Social Networking Watch: Zopa, CEO Douglas H. Dolton - SNW Interview
What is your long term vision? Where could you see Zopa and the industry being in 10 years time?
I honesty think that the efficiency, convenience and trust that you get with dealing with an entity like Zopa will become more and more attractive to people. I can see this will be a multi-billion dollar business. 10 years from now or so, we’re going to have quite a bit of interactive social finance activities taking place with unsecured consumer loans and who knows beyond where that could go. Transactions involving currency exchange, transactions involved car insurance – that’s another thought, where a group of people will come together and pool their resources to provide the first tier of losses associated with car insurance and then they will buy a blanket coverage to provide a full coverage to everybody. As time goes on, we will see more and more of this democratization of finance taking place with transactions well beyond simply unsecured consumer loans.
Categories: P2P Lending international
Nice piece from Cindy on social lending, with background, some history, and current state of a few players around the world, including CommunityLend.
Innovation and Transformation Wings: Social Lending: A New Form of Disruptive Innovation in Financial Services
‘Peer-to-peer lending is a means by which borrowers and lenders may transact business without traditional intermediaries, such as banks. The process may include other intermediaries who package and resell the loans – examples include Prosper and Zopa – but the loans are ultimately sold to individuals or pools of individuals. An enabling technology for peer-to-peer lending has been the Internet, which connects borrowers with lenders, for example through an auction-like process in which the lender willing to provide the lowest interest rate “wins” the borrowers’ loan’. Other leading models striving for foothold in Canada is Community Lend.
Incidentally, we continue to make good progress with the regulators, and still plan to launch in 2008.
Categories: P2P Lending international · social lending
A good update on p2p lending over at Bankrate.
Chris Larsen (Prosper) speaks about the current opportunity, in context of the US credit shifts.
Peer-to-peer lending grows in bad economy (Page 1 of 2)
“Home equity used to be the cash management tool for the credit-worthy borrower, and that has really, really dried up,” says Chris Larsen, CEO at Prosper. “In many ways, Prosper’s three-year, $25,000 loan is a pretty good proxy for what people were using home equity for — improving their home, starting a sole proprietorship, college costs and certainly for replacing credit card debt.
“On the return side, people that are getting 3 percent if they’re lucky (can find) it’s pretty easy to get returns that might range from 5 percent to 11 percent (on Prosper).”
The notion of p2p lending to pay off locked in credit card debt is a powerful one, whose time has come. Javelin have a new estimate on the size of that market:
Mark Schwanhausser, a financial services analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, says their study shows that credit card debt is the main reason people want to engage in P2P lending. “We’re forecasting that P2P lending specifically for credit card balances will grow from $38 billion in 2007 to $159 billion by 2012.”
The author, Laura Bruce has shifted to being more bullish on the p2p lending space now.
It’s been little more than a year and a half since I last wrote about P2P. See the previous article, “Person-to-person lending: High return, but risky?” for a look at how P2P generally works.
The regulatory issues are laid out from the perspective of Zopa with quotes from Doug Dolton.
“Making a loan requires pretty much a bank license,” Dolton says. “You’ve seen both Prosper and Lending Club change their models because of that issue; they both now use Web Bank to make loans. But then on the other side, you have lenders investing. Our read on the U.S. regulatory situation was that it was a security. We couldn’t see any way around it. You needed to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and all of the issues that brings on.”
Lastly, some stats are included on the increased growth rates at Prosper & lending club, and a reference to Bankrates chart (pdf) summarising the US players.
Categories: P2P Lending international · prosper · zopa
Article at Bankrate, talks about p2p lending, in the context of the US credit problems, and how it can help both borrowers and investors.
Peer-to-peer lending grows in bad economy (Page 1 of 2)
The credit crunch has meant that many deserving consumers, who once qualified for home equity or personal loans, are being shunned by banks or offered loans that cost too much. On the flip side, the effort to fix the credit crunch is sticking savers with miserly interest rates. Put two groups of unhappy people together and they just might do business.
Categories: P2P Lending international
Hats off to ThickenMyWallet for nailing the issue on p2p lending. Suggest anyone who is tired of reading the speculation on LendingClub please take the time to read this, which includes a US definition of how securities regulations apply. Emphasis is his, and no further comment required 
Thicken My Wallet » Blog Archive » What the P2P lending industry doesn’t want you to know: of Lending Club and Prosper
Here’s the regulatory issue- IF A PERSON INVESTS MONEY AND HER
EXPECTATION OF PROFIT IS DERIVED SUBSTANTIALLY THROUGH THE
ENTREPRENEURIAL AND MANAGERIAL EFFORTS OF OTHERS, IT IS DEFINED AS A
SECURITY.
….
And, yes, this also applies to Canada as well- so CommunityLend will have to file with in jurisdictions where it operates as well if it works on a similar business model.
Categories: P2P Lending international · securities regulation
Jim Bruene over at Netbanker, quotes Prosper Marketplace on their reaction to Lending Clubs announcement earlier this week. The key quote is emphasised for reference.
Lending Club Abruptly Shuts Down Peer Lending (NetBanker)
Person-to-person lending is an increasingly popular way for individuals to borrow and lend money at attractive interest rates. Understandably it must be done in a secure and trusted way. While we’re not in position to comment on another company’s regulatory stance, Prosper believes that the way we have structured the Prosper marketplace is in compliance with applicable state and federal laws. Currently Prosper has over 650,000 members, and more than $130 million in loans have funded through the Prosper marketplace.
Categories: P2P Lending international
