Countries

Bankless Life Launches P2P Lending in Austria

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Bankless-Life.at was launched as the first p2p lending service in Austria by the non-profit association “Von Menschen für Menschen” (engl. by humans for humans). The members-only site (membership fee is 60 Euro per year) allows borrowers with a given minimum credit score and a minimum income requirement of 1,000 EUR per month to apply for loans between 1,000 and 30,000 EUR. The wanted interest rate is set by the borrower, selectable loan terms are 12, 24, 36, 48 or 60 months.

Lenders are charged 3 Euro per bid. The fees for borrowers are rather high: In addition to the membership fee borrowers pay 0.5% to 2.5% (depending on term) origination fee, 0.8% tax plus 2% premium of the loan amount for the Anleger-Pool, which is a mechanism similar to the one used by German Smava spreading default loss risks among lenders.

According to chairman Siegfried Fischer Bankless Life has 1,800 members two weeks after launch.

The German blog P2P-Kredite.com has more details in yesterday’s article ‘Bankless- Life startet P2P-Kredite.com Österreich‘.

Studienaktie – P2P Student Loans with a Twist

wiseclerk

Studienaktie.org is a Swiss non profit association offering p2p lending to students. The name translates to student share and is rather fitting, since the concept literally allows the investor to invest in a student and profit from his career development. Unlike with other p2p lending platforms for students,  investors do not really give a loan, but rather buy a share offered by the student.

An example illustrates how this works out. A student might offer to sell you a share for 100 CHF (approx 97 US$) now while in return promising to pay you 0.25% of the annual salary he will earn in 2017. Meaning if his salary will be 80,000 CHF in 2017 the investor will be repaid 200 CHF for his share then.

So this is really a bet of the investor on the students career chances.  To help on the selection investors can browse anonymous dossiers of the students and contact them. Chances for a positive ROI a probably good since Studienaktie originated at the university of St. Gallen, which has an elite reputation. Studienaktie is open to students of other universities, too.

The contract is signed directly between investor and student and the payment is directly facilitated between the 2 parties. Studienaktie only provides the platform. Investors pay a yearly membership fee of 100 CHF to participate.

The aim of the non-profit organisation is to enable more and better education.

Moneyauction – Booming P2P Lending Service in Korea

wiseclerk

Moneyauction, a Korean p2p lending company, says it is “the No. 2 [website] in Korea’s non-bank area, but the number 1 website in the finance area”. And it has impressive figures to prove it. Between June 01th, 2007 and Sep. 15th the loan amount applied was 56.6 million US$.

Moneyauction partnered with telecommunication carrier Korea Telecom and offers a mobile service allowing borrowers to apply for and lenders to bid on loans via their cell phone.

In 3 months Moneyauction plans to launch a secondary market (called ‘Divided bond trading’). A spokesman told P2P-Banking.com that he expects this new feature to boost the transaction volume.

(Source: company management)

Swiss Private Banker: P2P Lending a Threat to Bank Balance Sheets

wiseclerk

In an video interview in June, Konrad Hummler, managing partner at Swiss Bank Wegelin & Co, states how he sees p2p lending as a threat to banks.
P2P lending services could replace vital functions of banks. He says government influenced major banks are to inefficient. Established institutions will use calls for regulation to protect their business against newcomers.

(The interview is in German language)

A P2P Lending Service in a Cooperative Banking World

eKwiti 1 Comment

The main specificity of the French banking landscape is the important credit union culture. France has a strong history in cooperative banking, which gave birth to today’s important French banks as Credit Mutuel for example.

Will this history have an impact on the P2P lending development in France?

It’s interesting to notice, that the first P2P lending service in France, FriendsClear, just inked a partnership with one of these cooperative banks: Credit Agricole, a former farmer cooperative which evolved into one of the main modern global banking players.

At the end of this year, thanks to this partnership and the bank license, FriendsClearwill be able to open a genuine crowdfunding P2P service for very small businesses. I will come back in a later post on the details of this partnership and how the service will be provided; I just wanted to underline the specificity of the French Banking landscape and the credit union culture for P2P lending.

For FriendsClear’s Founder, Jean-Christophe Capelli, it makes no doubt that it has a strong positive impact. “I see a very bright future for P2P lending around the world, but especially in France, where we have a cooperative banking culture” he declares, and French banks seem intrigued even interested in this new practice. “It reminds them of their origin, when farmers got together to help one of them buy a plough or a youngster to settle. With P2P lending we are in very similar model, which has probably been neglected over time. It reminds them of their values of solidarity.”

Thus, about the actual #bankbloggerfight between James Gardner and Chris Skinner to know whether P2P lending is disruptive for the banking industry, Jean-Christophe sees it very differently in France: “it is reflecting their own image, where they have arrived, and whether they are still relying on their founding values. In this case, the disruption will much more be on the image they want to send out, on their marketing, and further on their DNA.”

Having contacted several French banks to build this partnership, Jean-Christophe noticed a strong interest in P2P lending: “the innovation manager of a big bank, showed me the strategic road map for 2012 and they targeted a strong presence in P2P lending”.

FriendsClear doesn’t fear competition, though, quite the contrary, they’re looking for it: “the most important part in our business today, is to spread the word. You don’t wake up in the morning, thinking, I’m going to take a P2P credit. The way to approach finance should evolve, and we need to get away from the idea that the best way to manage money is to take a revolving card. If there were a couple of other serious P2P services, we could reach a far more important part of the French population and let the usage evolve more quickly”.

For the moment, the only competitors to FriendsClear would be banks. But they are actually not targeting the same population, and that is probably why banks will want to get into P2P lending to access this new fringe of the market: “if the Credit Agricole has been so keen on working with us, it’s because they realized that, with their current offer, the very small businesses were not addressed. With P2P lending, they see a way of enlarging their offer to this population.”

Even if France is very late in providing a genuine P2P service, the specificity of the French culture could accelerate the market penetration.

The author lives in France and reports as a guest blogger on french p2p lending trends for P2P-Banking.com. Also posted in ekwiti

CommunityLend Approaching Launch in Canada?

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Microlending.ca reports that CommunityLend may be ready to launch soon as it cleared another registration hurdle. A legal document published at the Ontario Securities Commission site gives lots of details on CommunityLend’s p2p lending plans.

It also reveals that p2p lending in Canada will (at least initially) be restricted to accredited investors (high wealth individuals).

See Dan’s articleat Microlending.ca for a review of the document.