P2P Lending Service Lending Works Launches

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P2P lending service Lending Works launched today. The service says its unique selling proposition is that it offers lenders actual insurance and thereby more protection than the provision funds scheme major UK competitors like Zopa and Ratesetter do offer. Reading the fine print, there is insurance, but capped at 10% bad debt, which should be sufficient in the current market situation: ‘The Lending Works Shield provides cover of up to 10% of all Lending Works loans and so provides a market leading 17 times cover‘ [compared to a stated 0.58% industry wide personal loan borrower default rate]. Lending Works is open to UK residents with a UK bank account.

I also noted that Lending Works allows lenders the option to exit their investment prior to the loan duration if they accept a fee of 0.6% (or 20 GBP) whichever is greater.

Available loan terms range from 1 to 5 years.

Lending Works says it has raised 3.5 million GBP prior to launch.

Zopa Promotional Offer: Rate Promise

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Today Zopa announced yet another promotional offer for lenders: Rate Promise. In this limited time offer Zopa promises lenders that ‘… the money you lend within the Offer Period, for up to 5 years, will earn an average return of 5% over the lifetime of those loans.‘ That is after fees. The offer is valid from January 9th till Feb. 3rd. Actually for some lenders this will mean even higher guaranteed returns – see full T&C of the Rate Promise here.

I think Zopa’s repeated promotional offers (cash backs and now rate promise) are signals that Zopa feels the impact of the p2p lending competition which entice Zopa’s customers with models that seem more appealing (there has been a lot of discussion that with the introduction of Safeguard Zopa became much less transparent) or could yield higher returns. In terms of p2p lending loan volume originated per month the main competitors are certainly gaining ground on Zopa.

While this is a (nearly) no risk offer for those lenders managaing to invest during the promotion duration, users on the Zopa Talk board do wonder what longtime impact this has for Zopa. And rightly so as Zopa will have to cover any shortcomings from its fee margin. Done repeatedly it will effectively result in an unlisted fee decrease.

I am sure it will fulfill the probable short term goal: increase funds on offer and originations in January.

International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes December 2013

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December was a month with mixed developments. While the US services and selected other services continued to grow, other services – especially the UK ones – had a slow month with decreasing volume. Of course this is influenced by the Christmas holidays. I do monitor development of p2p lending figures for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.

Table: P2P Lending Volumes in December 2013. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to US$ for the sake of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed:
If you want to be included in this chart in future, please email the following figures on the first working day of a month: total loan volume originated since inception, loan volume originated in previous month, number of loans originated in previous month, average nominal interest rate of loans originated in previous month.

This month I added 3 more UK services to the table and removed Squirrl, Continue reading →

Auxmoney Now Sets Interest Rates Based on Own Score Classes

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Auxmoney introduced a major change to the way interest rates are set. Instead of letting borrowers select the interest rate they are willing to pay, p2p lending service Auxmoney sets interest rates based on self-computed credit scores starting today. Auxmoney says it uses over 300 factors to grade borrowers either AAA, AA, A, B, C, D, E or X. The model now resembles the models Lending Club and Prosper use to set interest rates. In an earlier article I had compared different models p2p lending services use to set interest rates.

Near-term I expect borrower demand to rise due to this change since for most borrowers interest rates will be lower. However lower interest rates will lessen attractiveness for lenders and probably reduce funding percentage (in the weeks before this change approx. 30 to 40% of loan request got funded).

(via P2P-Kredite.com)