UK

Zopa listings preview

wiseclerk 1 Comment

Tuesday I wrote about Zopa's plans for Zopa listings. Now a preview of how the new Zopa listings will look is available. With this feature Zopa will take the step from anonymous borrowers to a more personal look with borrower listings and profiles. To create a listing borrowers will have a credit grade of at least C.

I looked at the preview today and found the resemblance to Prosper.com layout striking in many points. The listing overview will look like this:

Zopa listings preview

The loan listing itself has photos, a loan details section, a personal profile section and borrower information. Furthermore it will have a Questions and Answers Section allowing the lender to ask questions. Looking at the following example the forecast graph in the upper right looks exactly like the same feature Prosper offers:

Zopa listings

The 8 page preview description gives more example screens of Zopa listings, which Zopa says it will introduce within the next months.

Lender feedback (which is limited so far) has been mixed.

With this changes, should the Prosper & Zopa merger that Jeff & Heather wish (it is really only wishful thinking!) ever happen, then at least the layout question seems decided now.

 

 

Zopa plans to get more personal

wiseclerk

"Prosper on Zopa" – "but better"

That is how the new Sales & Product manager Tanya Cordrey of Zopa described the planned Zopa Listings yesterday in a Zopa Chat. Quote: "It is the ability for borrowers to post listings and it gives lenders the opportunity to lend choose individuals"
Zopa plans to get this feature live next month.

The question about the chance for a secondary market was answered by that there is not enough volume yet (maybe next year). The chat was attended by many Zopa employees including the CEO. The transcript is available.

Zopa criticism

wiseclerk

Browsing the Zopa forums today, I noticed that negative posts by lenders are on the rise. This is quite different from the mostly positive feedback in earlier months.

Lenders are:

While the staff in many cases does not immeadiately solve the voiced problems, at least they are much more responsive in the forum compared to the Prosper staff in the Prosper forum.

Some of the complaints may turn out to be misunderstandings. Bear in mind, that only a tiny minority of the Zopa lenders are active posters in the Zopa forum, therefore it is quite possible that a fast majority of Zopa's lenders is still very satisfied with the service.

Users suspect problems may have risen, because Zopa stuff could be tied up with issues concerning US launch.

Communication approaches of P2P lending services

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Today I will take a look at the communication approaches of Prosper, Lendingclub, Zopa and Smava. Since it is hard to judge the individual customer support these companies offer, the focus of this post is on the mass communication channels. To communicate their services to the lenders and borrowers the services can use the website's FAQ/tutorials, a forum, blog(s) and newsletter(s).

Prosper.com
Prosper has very detailed FAQs, which leave no aspect open. There are tutorials, videos and webinars. The Prosper forums are very active. While Prosper announce changes to the service in detail (here), the policy usually seems not to comment on individual users questions (except for the bug report section). Prosper seems to rely on users to communicate and educate each other in the forums. There has been criticism about censorship and deleted posts in the forums which led some users to set up an prosper independent forum.
As far as I can tell Prosper has no blog of its own, but there is a personal blog of the CTO John Witchel. But it is not very active and will probably not be found by the average Prosper user.

Zopa
The Zopa FAQs are detailed, too. The Zopa Forum is quite active with Zopa staff members responding to posts and questions. Zopa has a company blog which has a leisurely tone and often is offtopic. In my opinion it could get more informative for lenders or borrowers.
The same applies to the newsletters Zopa sends out.

Smava
Smava maintains a very detailed and good FAQ. The Smava forum is pretty quite, but Smava staff usually is responsive to user questions. There is no blog. Smava is only 3 month old and so far there have been only 2 or 3 newsletters, which were mainly a summary of developments.

Lendingclub
Lendingclub communicates very different from the others. Mainly it relies on it's blog which is in fact directly on the Lendingclub.com homepage. The blog is very active with up to 2 or 3 posts per day. Not only does it explain details of the lendingclub service but also has general advice on personal finance, e.g. on obtaining and maintaining good credit. Lendingclub has lots of guest authors contributing to the blog. The FAQ are somewhat hidden and only available to logged in users (unless you know the direct link). The information, when located, is detailed (e.g. states). As far as I am aware there is no Lendingclub forum.

My impression is that Prosper and Smava communicate in a style that appears more corporate and 'old fashioned' always pondering what information can be released and what for. Prosper has occasionaly received rather aggresive feedback of users, citing them of being non-responsive to the wishes of their users.  Zopa has a more buddying tone – hey take it easy. Lendingclub sounds educational to borrowers, aiming to help them by supplying them information. On the other hand Lendingclub's approach seems a little marketing driven, because their approach gains them search engine and blog visibility.

Cash in an hour – Wonga

wiseclerk

Though not p2p lending, I found the concept of British Wonga (not yet launched) remarkable. With no debt and a decent credit record, british consumers can apply for a loan of up to 200 pounds (at about 14 percent interest) and receive the deposit less than 20 minutes after application. Subsequent loan applications can be for higher sums.
Wonga does not draw the money from a bank, an undisclosed partner underwrites the risk.