CommunityLend blog

Our own CEO Michael Garrity appeared on Lang & O’Leary tonight on CBC.  Here is the show, and Michael appears at 48:45.  Enjoy.

Watch for the interest that O’Leary shows in our little company towards the end of the piece.  Well done Michael.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/Lang_&_O’Leary_Exchange/1308689786/ID=1752794266

We are proud to announce that we are sponsoring the HomeStars Best of 2010 Awards Shows!

Every year, HomeStars, the popular reviews site, celebrates the best home renovation companies across Canada. Companies make the Best Of list based on the ratings and reviews from the homeowners that hired them in that year. The awards shows recognize these companies for their exemplar work and service in Toronto, Hamilton, Calgary, Vancouver and, in their inaugural year, Edmonton and Ottawa.

Sales Financing with FinanceIt.ca

Many of us on the CommunityLend staff have personally used HomeStars for years. It is with delight that we can support the Canadian home renovation industry in this way, and to introduce these outstanding companies to FinanceIt.ca.

FinanceIt.ca is our new service that allows home renovation companies to increase sales by offering sales financing.

For immediate release January 11, 2011

New Sales Finance Platform Financeit.ca Launches to Help Increase Sales for

Canadian Home Improvement Companies

Financeit.ca delivers much needed in-house financing directly to Canada’s multi-billion dollar home improvement industry.

Toronto, Ontario – CommunityLend, Canada’s only online loan marketplace, today announced the launch of Financeit.ca, its innovative in-house financing platform for Canada’s multi-billion dollar home improvement industry. Starting immediately, home improvement businesses will be able to register at www.financeit.ca to provide their customers with immediate loan approvals for purchase financing.

“Canadians want finance solutions for their home improvement purchases,” explained Michael Garrity, CEO CommunityLend. ”In 2009 alone, over 50 cents on every $1.00 of home improvement purchases ended up in high interest credit cards or lines of credit because of the lack of reasonably priced finance solutions available to Canada’s home improvement companies. Our new Financeit.ca portal, gives both dealers and their customers a significantly better way to finance purchases.”

Garrity announced today that in addition to being free, Financeit.ca offers immediate loan approvals, an application tracking system and a user friendly loan dashboard. Loan proceeds are deposited directly into the dealers bank account, including the unique feature of partial funding for larger jobs.

“Financeit.ca provides our dealers with what we believe will be the easiest online application process in Canada,” continued Garrity, “It takes about 30 seconds to get a loan approval.”

Loans are unsecured with interest rates starting at 8.9% and up to 5 year amortizations, and can be repaid at any time. Again, Financeit.ca is free to use and vendors can even earn commissions. The service is available in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec for now.

“The initial response to the platform has been overwhelmingly positive,” stated Casper Wong, VP Business Development & Operations. “We started speaking with select businesses in December and now have over 40 Financeit.ca Partner applications ready for launch.”

Alex Sel, owner of Entry-Doors Toronto said, “I didn’t offer financing before, and now that I’m on Financeit.ca I’m expecting to get more sales because more customers will be able to afford my installations.”

For more information on how to become a Partner please apply online at www.financeit.ca

For Media Inquiries:

About CommunityLend Inc

CommunityLend Inc. 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.

Nice to see our CEO and our company mentioned in this Techvibes list.

Digital Media People to Watch in Ontario in 2011 | Techvibes

Michael Garrity – CommunityLend – While this Toronto-based online peer-to-peer lending community has been in the works for years, it made its official debut in February 2010. Since then the CommunityLend has attracted over $8 Million in loan demand of which $1.1 Million has been accepted and funded.

Intersting interview with Renaud Laplanche, SEO of Lending Club in the US.

Renaud Laplanche: We’re really hoping to continue to make the industry more consumer-friendly and more transparent. Certainly some regulations [have gone] in the right direction. We believe that Lending Club has a mission to drive not only this kind of regulatory reform but to change the attitude of financial services firms.

This is a good thing.  The problem with much of ecommerce is that it places a nice usable front end on to existing infrastructure.  It does not necessarily remove intermediate steps and costs and usually adds a layer of cost.  Online banking is the perfect example.  That is the root of consumer frustration that online should be cheaper but is not.

Expedia stops selling American tickets | ft.com

American and its online partners have struggled for months to agree terms as their contracts expire. American wants to pay the sites less and has pushed them to connect directly with its own computers rather than using intermediaries called global distribution systems.

As you may know the travel industry all use a couple of intermediaries, with Sabre being one of the largest.   So when your travel agent looks up a flight for you they are looking at Sabre, not AA United or BA.  Why should Expedia connect to Sabre too?  Sabre take a commission.  If Expedia uses Sabre then the only potential saving for Expedia is the cost of a travel agent.  It does not lever the competitive capability of Expedia.  By suggesting the removal Sabre Expedia places themselves in direct competition with Sabre.  (Taking that further, travel agents could always link through Expedia in the future, but thats a different point.)

By integrating direct to AA, Expedia can properly lever AA’s information and do the same with the inevitable other airlines as they come on board too so as not to lose competitive advantage.

They key though is elimination of the transaction cost inflicted by Sabre.  This is the real value in ecommerce – elimination of middleman costs and infrastructure that was built based on human front ends, in this case travel agents.

This is why I see BankSimple as a good idea but really a first step, and little different than say a PC Financial or mbanx (both Canadian – one alive, one gone).  It has taken Expedia years to build up the customer loyalty and volume to be able to take a strong stance with AA.  Can AA and the other airlines afford to not fall into place with Expedia will be the question for 2011.  Clout is one way to get inside an old industry.

Banks have their Sabres throughout in terms of independent payment networks, ATM networks, cheque clearing, EFT /ECH networks, credit card networks.  How can the BankSimples and other new entrants get past those and disintermediate and eliminate the real costs that layer on to become bank services charges.

In this post on his Bank 2 blog, Brett makes the point of evolving gaps in banking relative to customer expectation (customer behaviour) and in their capability (infrastructure) to deliver on those expectations.  He highlights some examples of new companies being funded that are in different ways addressing those gaps.

At CommunityLend we like to think we are doing our small share of that by creating a customer experience and a technology platform that exceeds the expectations of all.

The biggest disruptions in banking in 2011…

Already we’ve seen start-up investments in peer-to-peer lending (Zopa, Lending Club,Prosper, Kiva, etc), payments alternatives (i.e. Jack Dorsey’s Square), Personal Finance tools (Geezeo, Mint, GreenSherpa, Blippy, etc), and even in Banking itself (BankSimple,MovenBank).

Congrats to Lending Club for going over the $200 million mark in December 2010.

Starting today, every private auto listing on Canada’s largest used car marketplace, AutoTrader.ca, now includes a financing option provided by CommunityLend.

The AutoTrader.ca + CommunityLend collaboration includes a contextual financing calculator integrated into the gray price box about halfway down the page.

Canadians are accustomed to shopping for cars based on monthly affordability, rather than total purchase price, after being conditioned by new car manufacturers who have marketed cars that way for more than a decade. Now Canadians can shop private auto listings that way too.

By “every” private listing, we mean every listing in Ontario under $25,000. We will soon expand the program to other provinces, and to higher priced cars & trucks.

To put the scale of this partnership into context, the volume of private auto listings is over $6 Billion per year in Canada. (This does not include used car dealerships, just individual sales.) No one has ever offered a comprehensive financing solution to meet the needs of these car buyers and sellers until today’s launch.

Here come the holidays…

Snow is falling in most of Canada and most Canadians are firmly focused on the Holiday Season. Here atCommunityLend , our first year of operation is coming to an end but our plans for 2011 are just getting started. In this month’s update we are announcing a very exciting new product launch: FinanceIt.ca™. Read the full details below! Also in this newsletter, we include some nice things people have said about us recently in the media. But let’s start this newsletter where we always do, with some of our recent marketplace metrics.

Loan Marketplace Stats

Here are the key marketplace statistics for our year to date to November 30, 2010:

• Loan Demand increased significantly in November to over $6.45 Million.
• Loan Requests Accepted and available for investment hit a new milestone for us to just over $1 Million.
• Our Average Loan Size for Accepted Loans grew in November to $7,201 (from $6,669 last month).
• And, our Average Offered Interest Rate lowered again to 13.15% (from 13.39% last month) due to an increase in credit quality of borrowers.
• We continue to have 0.0% delinquency on all loans originated to date.

CommunityLend’s new “FinanceIt.ca”

FinanceIt.ca™ is Canada’s newest and most advanced sales financing service. It allows qualified Canadian businesses to provide their own in-house financing directly to their customers. Our initial offering is focused on Home Improvement Vendors and provides them with everything they need to get reasonably priced finance options to their customers, quickly and efficiently.

Here are some features of FinanceIt.ca™:

• A complete lending platform, including ID verification, credit review, EFT, and collections
• Instant approvals that are valid for 90 days
• Automated legal documentation
• Works on iPad and other mobile devices
• Funds are deposited into our partner’s bank account
• No fees of any kind

For full details on joining Canada’s newest sales finance solution, visit www.financeit.ca.

In the News

The Next Web
10 Canadian Startups You Should Know About

“Canada is ripe with start-ups, but being a huge country it’s easy to miss some of the really cool ones that we should be keeping an eye on. #8 CommunityLend.”

Questions about borrowing or lending?

Contact our team anytime atinfo@communitylend.com
or call us toll free: 1-888-536-3025 (9:00am – 5:00pm EST)