CommunityLend blog

Michael is featured in this latest post at Sprouter.

Entrepreneur Michael Garrity on why obstacles and pivots can help you learn – and your startup succeed

Along with regulatory issues a big challenge that Garrity faced was fundraising, and after raising several rounds of funding he has a lot of insight on the pitching process. “Most investors are looking for a company that is uniquely positioned to grow quickly and profitably into a large inefficient market with a capable and committed management team,” he says, adding that “if you break your pitch deck down into that sentence you are likely covering the key basic qualities.”

We have had to make quite a few changes and additions to the site, which resulted in it becoming a little ragged on some of the pages.  We just implemented a new style throughout the site and have it all standarized.  Next we will tackle simplifying the pages, reducing text etc.

Details of our press release today.

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CommunityLend Inc. partners with Strength Finance to bring new financing alternatives to the rapidly growing vendor-based finance industry

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

June 18th, 2010 –CommunityLend Inc., Canada’s only online peer-to-peer lending company, has entered into a partnership agreement with Strength Finance, an industry leader in vendor-based financing solutions, to provide a new financing alternative to the rapidly expanding vendor based finance industry in Canada.

”We are excited by the opportunity to work with a real market leader in financing solutions for point-of-purchase vendor sales,” noted Michael Garrity, CEO of CommunityLend. “Strength Finance and its group of companies have spent the last 5 years building out a strong vendor network into the Home Improvement and Elective Medical and Dental finance industries and we look forward to bringing the power of our lending community into that network.”

CommunityLend, which is pioneering a unique online lending marketplace in Canada, has been expanding its methods for getting its better priced financing options into the hands of good quality Canadian borrowers looking for small unsecured loans. Through this partnership with Strength Finance, CommunityLend will now be able to introduce their private lender marketplace directly into Canada’s multi-billion dollar vendor-based finance industry.

James Plewak, CEO of Strength Finance added, “By adding Communitylend as a new lender into the rapidly growing Strength Finance platform, we are continuing to increase the options available to our vendor community and their customers. We now have a viable option to expand our platform to all types of vendor communities in exactly the same way as we have built our business to date, by providing reasonably priced finance options that will not put our vendor’s clients into financial hardship. It is exciting to work with the CommunityLend team in supporting the launch of the first Peer-to-Peer lending system in Canada.”

For more information please contact:

About Communitylend

CommunityLend Inc. (www.communitylend.com) is Canada’s only peer to peer lending service, a financial services innovation which allows borrowers to connect directly with private lenders through open online loan auctions.  Called “game changing” by financial industry analysts, this new lending model permits direct investment by eligible investors in the personal lending market. CommunityLend Inc. is registered as a Portfolio Manager and an Exempt Market Dealer in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec and is a wholly owned subsidiary of CommunityLend Holdings Inc., a Canadian corporation based in Toronto, ON.

About Strength Finance

Strength Finance is a family of companies specializing in point-of-purchase financing solutions for Canada’s rapidly growing vendor-based financing industry. Strength Finance is currently made up of 3 subsidiaries, Home Improvement Financial Services (HIFS), Health Financial Services (HFS) and International Training & Sales (ITS) Development Group. HIFS has created an industry leading financing and technology solution which is maximizing sales and profitability for its Home Improvement Vendor Partners. HFS has developed a national financial service program for dentists and laser eye doctors, their distributors and manufacturers which provides their clients fast and cost effective financing options. I.T.S. Development Group is an international automotive and corporate consulting and training company which focuses on conceptual training to dramatically increase performance and profitability. Collectively the Strength Finance Group of Companies work to dramatically increase contractor efficiency and profitability, while making it possible for a manufacturer or distributor to create its own specialty finance program for all their contractors.

Marketplace Update for May:

May produced a significant number of milestones for CommunityLend. Loan demand through the CommunityLend system in May was almost double April’s volume bringing us to almost $2,000,000 in cumulative demand in just three short months. Also, of the new demand for loans, a significantly increased percentage of borrower applicants met the strict CommunityLend lending criteria. In May, almost double the percentage of borrower applicants were accepted, over March and April applicants. Much of this was due to some new borrower origination partnerships CommunityLend announced last month which is increasing applicant quality.

Loans getting closed:

Easily the most exciting milestone in May was that our first loans closed. In the first two months of CommunityLend being live there was a lot of good activity around registration and bidding in the loan marketplace but not enough lender activity to completely close loan requests. This changed in May with a number of loan requests getting closed and the trend is accelerating in June.

New partnerships:

We signed two new borrower origination partnerships in May to help us to cost effectively drive good quality borrowers into the CommunityLend online lending system. In case you missed this announcement, we welcomed MorWEB and its growing community of Canadian Mortgage Brokers into our network this last month. We will be announcing the second partnership soon, and expect many others to follow.

Extending Lender Offer:

To show our appreciation for Lenders’ support of our emerging model, we decided to extend our Lender promotion offer until July 31st, 2010. Details on this special offer here. Take advantage of automated bidding based on your own criteria. Log back in to top up your lender account.

Refer a Friend:

The most important growth opportunity for peer-to-peer lending in Canada right now is to get the word out to other potential Lenders that this new lending model is now a reality. In this regard, we want to invite you to tell other potential Lenders from your networks about CommunityLend and to offer you some recognition for doing so. For any existing CommunityLend members who help us to spread the word, we will send you a $50.00 gift certificate for either Starbucks or Tim Hortons for each new Lender who registers at CommunityLend before the end of June. For more details on this “refer a friend” program contact us directly.

Questions on Lending and Borrowing?

9:00am – 5:00pm EST
Toll free: 1.888. 536.3025
Email us: info@communitylend.com

At the close of another week I thought we would share some of the recent activities and what is keeping us busy.  The big news that we spoke of in our last newsletter is that we now have an institutional lender on board and that means we are now filling loans.  So now we are actively seeking new borrowers to keep our new lender busy.  Feel free to tell your friends.

In terms of volumes, at the end of May we were closing in in $2 million loan demand.  The even better news is that the our story is spreading and  borrowers who meet the CommunityLend criteria are applying and telling their friends.  later this month we will begin posting the statistics on loans that are going active and we hope that will encourage even more borrowers to give us a try.

We are also busy making adjustments to the system to improve the flow and make it easier for borrowers to get through the process without interruption or offline process.  We are seeing some people get all the way through as quickly as 8 minutes.  We have a target and more plans to get that down to 2 or 3. 

Part of the plan includes a new method of bidding for our lenders and that helps borrowers by making it much clearer for their opportunity to get their loan filled and at what rate.

Finally we would like to make it dead simple for friends and relatives to inform each other about CommunityLend and expect some changes there too.

All in all a busy month and more to come.  Let us know what you think if you have friends or relatives who would like a better borrowing alternative, please send them to communitylend.com.

American Express have come out with this useful set of tips for small business folks, however the first few are good tips for everyone to aspire to.

In the aftermath of the great recession, the rules have changed regarding credit management.  Doing a good job at credit management now requires a new approach.  Small business owners can review their credit management strategy to be sure their companies are as well-positioned as possible to obtain the funding they need.

Old Practice                                                            New Rule

• Pay bills on time.                                             • Pay bills early, where possible.

• Pay credit card minimum due.                          • Pay in full.

• Assume credit terms are status quo.                 • Understand all changes to your credit terms.

• Review your credit ratings when applying           • Review your credit ratings at least annually.

  for credit

• Use your credit score when applying                 • Manage your credit score proactively for

   for credit.                                                          competitive advantage.

• Lenders assess your vendor                             • Lenders assess your vendor payment

  payment history.                                                history and your payment history with other  lenders

• Credit reviews are relatively easy.                      • Credit reviews are comprehensive

Technorati Tags: amex,credit,new rules

TORONTO (May 17th, 2010): CommunityLend, Canada’s only online peer-to-peer lending service, today announced the addition of two new advisers to the company’s rapidly growing Advisory Board: Bill Cilluffo, President of International Business for Capital One and John Philip Green, Founder & CTO of Savvica.

"We are excited to announce these two high calibre executives joining us as advisers to the company. Both Bill and John bring with them significant professional experience in areas important for the market growth of CommunityLend, such as consumer credit risk and online consumer marketing," noted Michael Garrity, co-founder and CEO of CommunityLend. “We expect them to play an important advisory role to CommunityLend as the company looks to expand its market presence in the coming months.”

CommunityLend launched Canada’s only online peer-to-peer lending service earlier in 2010. Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is an international financial services innovation which facilitates the direct matching of borrowers to investors through online loan auctions, cutting out traditional financial institutions. P2P lending has been called “game-changing” by financial industry analyst Javelin Research and has also been recognized by the Harvard Business Review in their 2009 List of “Breakout Ideas.”

Biographies of the Advisers

Bill Cilluffo

Bill Cilluffo is the President, International Business for Capital One, one of North America’s largest consumer franchises. Mr. Cilluffo is responsible for leading the international lines of business for Capital One. In this role, he is accountable for the overall strategic direction, marketing, operations and financial performance of the Canada and UK segments of the Fortune 500 company. Since joining Capital One in 1994, Mr. Cilluffo has served in several leadership positions including President of Capital One Canada where he continues to be directly involved in the daily management of Capital One’s Canadian interests. As Deputy Chief Credit Officer for the corporation, Mr. Cilluffo had oversight of all central operations for the group and was accountable for improving the credit management capabilities of the company. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Corporate Development and Divisional Credit Officer for Capital One’s Diversified businesses. Mr. Cilluffo graduated from the University of Michigan in 1994 with a degree in economics. He is also a graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Education Program.

John Philip Green

John Philip Green is Founder & CTO of Savvica, an online social media company focused on international education that operates LearnHub.com & JumboTests.com.  Savvica is funded by Educomp Solutions Ltd. (EDSO.BO), India’s largest education company.  Previously, John was the Director of Engineering at Affinity Labs, an online communities company.  Affinity Labs was funded by the Mayfield Fund and Trinity Ventures and acquired after 14 months by Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq:MNST) for $61MM.  John is an advisor to several companies on technology, marketing, and strategy, including TasteKid, a media recommendation system, SmartHippo, a community-driven comparison shopping engine for financial services, and Ampush Media, an online education marketing company.  John holds a B.Math (Honours Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo.

About Communitylend

CommunityLend Inc. (www.communitylend.com) is Canada’s only peer to peer lending service, a financial services innovation which allows borrowers to connect directly with private lenders through open online loan auctions.  Called “game changing” by financial industry analysts, this new lending model permits direct investment by eligible investors in the personal lending market. CommunityLend Inc. is registered as a Portfolio Manager and an Exempt Market Dealer in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec and is a wholly owned subsidiary of CommunityLend Holdings Inc., a Canadian corporation based in Toronto, ON.

Thanks Lenders!

We wanted to send a special “thank you” to all of our early Lenders for your support on the launch of peer-to-peer lending in Canada. These early days of our launch have been both busy and helpful in identifying areas of the service to improve upon. A number of these improvements have recently been implemented and we look forward to your continued feedback.

Extending Lender Offer

To show our appreciation for Lender’s support of our emerging model, we have decided to extend our Lender promotion offer for 3 more months until July 31st, 2010. Details on the offer here. It’s a good time to fill some Loan Requests!

Big Lender Coming On This Month

As you may have noted in our April newsletter, we have received the commitment of our first Institutional Lender on the CommunityLend platform for a $1M in lender capital. We are very excited about this show of confidence from the institutional marketplace as it will mean that Loan Requests will close much faster in the coming months. It will also mean that Loan Requests will spend less time in auction before they are filled. To ensure that all of our Lenders get the chance to participate in new Loan Requests, we would like to make the following suggestions:

• Ensure that you get your Lending Account with CommunityLend fully set-up. This includes getting your PAD/PAC agreement or bank validation completed. If you need any assistance, please free to contact us directly at 416.646.2177/1.888. 536.3025 or by email info@communitylend.com and we will gladly assist you through the process.
• Set-up a Standing Bid. We have introduced a new tool at CommunityLend called, Standing Bids which helps Lenders to automate their bidding activity on new Loan Requests. Our Institutional Lender will be relying mostly on Standing Bids, so having a Standing Bid customized for your own bidding is a sure fire way of ensuring that you can bid on all Loan Requests matching your investment criteria before they close. If you need any help in setting up a standing bid again, please feel free to contact us.
• Transfer additional funds into your Lender account to match your standing bids. Standing Bids can only automate bids from accounts which have enough capital in them to place bids. With our current lender promotion, now is a great time to top-up your Lender accounts. Once our new Institutional Lender is set up on the platform, we will be launching a number of Borrower specific marketing campaigns to drive new Loan Requests. You will likely see the positive effect of these in the coming weeks.

Refer a Friend

The most important growth opportunity for peer-to-peer Lending right now is to get the word out to other potential Lenders that this new lending model is now a reality in Canada. In this regard, we want to invite you to tell other potential Lenders from your networks about CommunityLend and to offer you some recognition for doing so. For any existing Lender who helps us spread the word to other Lenders in Canada, we will send you a $50.00 gift certificate for either Starbucks or Tim Hortons for each new Lender who registers at CommunityLend before the end of June. For more details on our refer a friend program contact us.

Lending Questions?

9:00am – 5:00pm EST
Toll free: 1.888. 536.3025
Email us: info@communitylend.com

Thanks again for your continued support.

To ensure that we are doing everything possible to encourage new lenders to join our unique online lending system, we are extending our special offer for Lenders until July 31^st, 2010. So from now until July 31^st, 2010, CommunityLend will be continuing to waive* fees for Lenders who are active in Loan Requests.  Specifically:

• We will rebate back our Lender Annual Adminstration Fee for all closed Loans in which a Lender participates by July 31^st, 2010 for a subsequent period of 6 months from the closing date of each Loan. (full details below)

Just follow this link to get started now!

- The CommunityLend Team

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*Terms and Conditions for Fee Rebate Offer:

Lender Offer:
CommunityLend will rebate our Lender Annual Adminstration Fee to any registered lenders for all closed Loans in which a Lender participates before midnight July 31, 2010 for a subsequent period of 6 months from the closing date of each Loan.

Terms and Conditions:

1. This Offer applies to all existing and new Lenders who make successful Loans in the CommunityLend online lending system before midnight July 31, 2010.
2. Only funds credited AND disbursed in approved loans within the offer period will be eligible.
3. Funds loaned may include existing funds in a Lender’s holding account with CommunityLend, on offer, in processing, or received as repayments from existing loans.
4. CommunityLend will continue to collect Lender Annual Adminstration Fee as outlined in the Lender Registration Agreement and then will rebate the lenders account on a monthly basis for a period of 6 months for each loan applicable under this program.
   • Example: A Lender participates in two Loans which close on May 15, 2010 for $1,000 each and one loan which closes on June 15, 2010 for $500. The Lender will be rebated their relevant Lender Annual Adminstration Fee for the first two loans on a monthly basis for 6 full months from May 15, 2010 and for the second loan on a monthly basis for 6 full months from June 15, 2010.
5. Lender Annual Adminstration Fee rebates will be credited to eligible Lender accounts within 15 days of the Lender Fee being withdrawn from the Lender account every month.
6. CommunityLend reserves the right to amend, withdraw or extend any or all elements of this promotion at any time, without prior notice.
7. This offer cannot be combined with any other offer, promotion, discount or scheme offered by CommunityLend or any other body.