13 minute video (careful the video is >300 MB, requires fast internet connection) on MyC4. MyC4 facilitates peer to peer microloans to African entrepreneurs.
The video shows the situation in Uganda and many borrowers who talk about their plans. During an audience the founder gets praise by the wife of the president of Uganda for the concept.
Highly recommended viewing.
Canadian Communitylend.com started a blog. The first post in the Communitylend blog is "links for 2007-11-01". Odd post to start a blog for a new service. I expected more excitement and insights. Maybe it was not intended to be public and rather a test.
Globefunder is (still) announcing to launch its peer-to-peer lending service soon.
To keep you occupied reading while waiting, P2P-banking.com has gathered some tidbits of information on Globefunder (US launch):
A recent Prosper S1 SEC filing is a step towards the planned secondary market as this Prosper press release confirms. The secondary market will allow Prosper lenders to trade loans they have invested in. Excerpt from the press release:
…Following effectiveness of the registration statement, Prosper intends to establish and maintain a secondary trading market online auction platform, or Resale Platform, pursuant to which lenders may seek to transfer borrower notes to other Prosper registered lenders. …
Excerpt from the SEC filing:
If Prosper is able to establish the Resale Platform, Prosper intends to charge all selling Lenders a nonrefundable resale listing fee of $0.25 per Note being listed for auction resale, or $0.50 per Note being listed for resale with an automatic sale feature. Listing fees will be charged and collected at the time the listing is posted on the Resale Platform by deducting the resale listing fee from the selling Lender’s funding account. Prosper also intends to charge the selling Lender a resale transaction fee equal to 1.0% of the resale price, subject to a minimum fee of $0.50, which will be deducted from the resale proceeds.
Further discussion here.
Zopa's new Zopa listings contain several pieces of information. Apart from the "basic information" which include loan amount, loan length, preferred rate, loan purpose, borrower ID, borrower signup date and listing end date, these are:
Credit score
The rating we give to the borrower’s credit score at Callcredit, a UK credit reference agency, relative to other Zopa borrowers
Affordability
Zopa rating (stars) for the borrower based on income and expenditure details provided by the borrower.
Stability
Zopa rating (stars) for the borrower based on details provided by the borrower, such as residence and employment.
Personal profile
Listing text supplied by borrower
Income/Expenses
Self reported detailed budget (see screenshot above for example) Continue reading
Prosper.com applied several changes as described in this announcement. Some of the changes were expected as plans had been known, some were surprises.
Portfolio plans
Portfolio plans allow the lender to automatically build a conservative, balanced, moderate or agressive portfolio. That means the lender no longer picks individual loans to bid on but chooses to invest in a plan. The feature is implemented based on Prosper's standing orders. The difference is that it uses standing orders predefined by Prosper, not by the lender. Prosper shows "estimated returns" for each portfolio – currently ranging from 8.37 to 11.06 percent.
Comment: Lendingclub introduced this concept earlier on. Lenders are currently examining and debating on which rationale Prosper did build the standing orders behind the portfolios.
Estimated ROI is shown in listings
Prosper now shows the estimated return on each listing, including predictions for defaults and costs for the servicing fee. The default estimate is now based on Prosper's own data (past performance) rather then Experian data.
Comment: This display does improve lender information especially for unexperienced lenders.
Ended listings hidden (surprise!)
Prosper now hides all data of expired listings. Continue reading