UK

Zopa loan volume

wiseclerk 2 Comments

As there is no Zopa loan statistics site, it is not possible to track the Zopa growth daily. You have to wait for the instances where Zopa announces milestones.

Today Zopa – in an announcement to celebrate it's third birthday, said:

Since we launched in March 2005, £20 million in unsecured personal loans have been arranged at Zopa in the UK. More recently growth has been boosted by the global credit crunch which is driving unprecedented demand for P2P personal loans as banks become less competitive and tighten their lending criteria. All of this has also pushed up returns to Zopa lenders to an all time high.

At the current exchange rate that is approx. 40 million US$.

 

Digesting new Zopa listings infomation

wiseclerk 1 Comment

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 announces new features for lenders

wiseclerk 1 Comment

Prosper has confirmed that it will release new lender features over the next few months. Most important is an risk estimator that will allow lenders better to gauge the default risk when bidding. Prosper will use its own data from past loans to calculate the risk level rather then only rely on Experian data like in the past.

See Mike's question and answers with Prosper Andrew and Matt's story on the changes for more details.

James Alexander, Zopa co-founder, on peer to peer lending

wiseclerk

Intruders TV did a long interview with James Alexander of Zopa.com covering the development of Zopa, regulation, market approach, lender and borrower advantages, the competition and other topics. The video starts of with polling passers-by on the street whether they heard of Zopa and would use peer-to-peer lending themselves.

(Source: Intruders.tv) 
P.S.: Noticed the bulletpoint on the whiteboard "Sell loan on phone".

 

Zopa demand figures

wiseclerk

Lenders at Zopa do not (yet) select an individual borrower but rather select a market and a rate at which they want to lend their money. This is matched to borrower demand and if a match is found, money is lend out.

There is a 3rd party site tracking the development of the Zopa demand volume and charting it (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly). Recently the amount requested has gone down in most markets.

 

(Source)