Author: wiseclerk

CommunityLend to offer p2p lending in Canada

wiseclerk

CommunityLend.com has announced the start of p2p lending in Canada on the site in fall 2007 enabling person to person lending without a bank as the middlemen, thereby eliminating banking fees. It promises lenders higher returns and borrowers lower interest rates and flexible payment options on loans. It aims to 'revolutionize the way lending works in Canada'. 

Earlier it will launch a working pre-view which allow users to test drive the site without using real money. CommunityLend expects useful user feedback during this work preview which it plans to use to enhance the site until the launch date.

CommunityLend is driven by an impressive team which includes Michael Garrity (Founder and President), ex-Bank of Montreal exec and BankWatch blogger Colin Henderson and John Philip Green, currently Director of Engineering at Affinity Labs and Co-Founder of of Savvica and Rapleaf.

CommunityLend profits as it can pick the best form the existing models (Prosper, Zopa). It will not just replicate one site. Few is known about the plans, but the announcement states that Community Lend will include auctions and groups (as does Prosper) as well as selectable paypack periods (as does Zopa).

Sources: p2p-kredite.com and others

P.S.: If you blog about this a link back here would be appreciated. Thank you!

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Communitylend preview

C4-World to launch MyC4 – competition for Kiva

wiseclerk 2 Comments

C4-World.com announced that it will start closed beta testing on MyC4.com in May. On MyC4 social lending will aid African businesses. Individual lenders grant loans for the duration of 6 to 12 months. A difference to the microfinance concept of Kiva.org is that lenders will earn interest. Furthermore C4-World aims to not only offer money, but also knowledge to the entrepreneurs in Africa through it's online community. 

Public launch of MyC4 is scheduled for Q4 2007. Minimum investment is $200. I am to participate in the closed beta and will publish my experiences.

Dzogchen view on good groups

wiseclerk

Dzogchen analyses in this thread which Prosper groups have grown fast and larger. He uses own categories like 'distressed borrowers' to analyse group performance and found out that groups directed at some causes have experienced much higher defaults then others. E.g. in 'distressed borrowers' 12.1% are delinquent, while in 'entrepreneurs' it's 6.2% compared to 0.5 in 'computer users. techies'.

Following discussion included whether this allows predictions and if listings without groups are better risks. An asked for report was if borrowers that posted in the 'Review My Listing' did have a higher rate of defaults.

Short urls to link to prosper listings, loans and groups

wiseclerk

Based on an idea from frequencydip and using code first implemented by zieri of zierious.com I just added short urls, which are much easier to remember and do not use that much space in forum signatures or elsewhere.

Everybody can now use the following short URLs:

This URLs instantly without delay redirect to the prosper.com pages.

New group promotion tool for prosper group leaders

wiseclerk
Wiseclerk today released the prototype of a group promotion tool to be used for marketing purposes on websites.

The prototype displays all open listings of a given group. They look roughly like this:

Example display for group "Apple User Group":
prosper group promotion tool example

Example display for group "ProsperLenders":
prosper group promtotion tool

However this is only a picture. To see the full function, which includes automatic links to each of the listings check the the example in the upper right on this website (point the mouse over a listing).
The display will automatically update daily.
Be aware that while width is fixed, height of display will automatically change according to number of open listings. Therefore placement should be carefully selected, e.g. in left or right bar of a website.

To get the code for your website go here:
http://www.wiseclerk.com/group-promotion.php

As mentioned, this is a prototype.
I did choose a rather simple layout, allowing for the group leader to put his own headline above it, or to choose a border, or to place a prosper button alongside.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome!