communitylend.com

Communitylend Closes – Company Focuses on FinanceIt instead

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Today Canadian p2p lending site Communitylend announced that it will close the p2p lending marketplace to focus on its consumer lending business. Communitylend will continue to service existing loans; there will just be no new ones.

Quote from the announcement:

If you have been following the CommunityLend Peer to Peer (P2P) Lending story over the years you might have been wondering why we have been so quiet here here recently.   The short answer is that we have been trying to decide how much more time to spend on our P2P Lending site in light of a larger and faster growing consumer lending business we also operate called Financeit™.

We have now made the decision that we will be suspending the operations of our P2P lending site so that our team can focus solely on Financeitâ„¢.

This has not been an easy decision for us but one which has come about over time because of our observation that P2P Lending, as it needs to operate within the Canadian regulatory system today, has enough headwinds blowing against it that getting to a significant scale was going to be both expensive and difficult.   As we searched for solutions to these challenges as a P2P Lending operator, we kept our focus on our desired goal, to create a lending product for Canadians that gave them a less expensive and more convenient way to get an instalment loan.

We realized that we needed to get closer to where the borrowing “transaction”’ occurred instead of recruiting the borrower after the fact.  People buy things in a store location (offline and online) and too often just use their credit cards and then carry balances with high interest rates.  We realized that helping people at this transaction moment was the key to driving interest in our lending product.  This conclusion led us quickly to focus on sales finance and starting in late 2010 we launched a market leading sales finance platform called Financeitâ„¢. Continue reading →

CommunityLend Raises 1.5 Million CAN$

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CommunityLend has closed a 1.5 million CAN$ private placement from several individual angel investors and an institutional investment fund. The proceeds of this private placement will go to scaling up loan origination, loan adjudication, and loan servicing operations, the company says, continuing:

This investment comes on the heels of a successful year since our launch as Canada’s 1st (and only) online consumer loan marketplace by CommunityLend Inc. Monthly loan volume has more than doubled each of the last 3 months and we are projecting this pace of growth to continue throughout 2011.

(Source: Communitylend blog)

CommunityLend Starts FinanceIt – Offers Sales Financing Solutions for Businesses

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Canadian P2P Lending company CommunityLend has launched new site: FinanceIt. FinanceIt allows Canadian businesses to provide their own in-house financing directly to their customers. Initially FinanceIt targets home improvement vendors, a line of business in which FinanceIt says Canadians finance 51 cents on every dollar spent.

Features of FinanceIt include:

  • A complete lending platform, including ID verification, credit review, EFT, and collections
  • Instant approvals that are valid for 90 days
  • Automated legal documentation
  • Works on iPad and other mobile devices
  • Funds are deposited into our partner’s bank account
  • No fees of any kind

This is a highly relevant development for p2p lending. If successful, CommunityLend will achieve four goals:

  1. Increase loan demand while at the same time cutting marketing expenses/efforts to reach potential borrowers
    The promotion of the loan offers will be in fact done for free by the business that offers the financing for its goods
  2. Build strong business relationships to vendors, which can be broadened should CommunityLend develop more p2p banking products aimed at businesses in the future
  3. Identify borrowers in person (at the store)
    While I cannot judge how crucial this is in the Canadian market, it would be very useful in some other markets for p2p lending services to have
  4. Validate the purpose the loan is taken out for
    Usually in p2p lending unsecured loans can be used for any purpose the borrower wants. While some sites ask the borrower to describe the loan purpose in the listing this is never tracked or validated for it would be time-consuming and costly – just not worth the effort.
    In a financing solution it is obvious what the loan will be used for. How is this information valuable? Communitylend will have very good data on how default rates differ depending on the loan purpose allowing them in mid-term to improve the pricing of the credit risk into the offered interest rate.

I believe this is a major step for p2p lending coming out of a single product niche (unsecured loans) into a broader p2p banking approach. And banks should watch out. Offering financing solutions to businesses is a core product for some banks.

P2P lending marketplaces in other countries should explore if offering loan financing to businesses is a viable route for them to grow too. In fact I know one p2p lending company that already has similar plans in the working and will start financing in 2011. Continue reading →

P2P Lending Site CommunityLend Adds Car Loan Cooperation

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Communitylend has partnered with Canada’s largest used car site AutoTrader.ca, now offering a car financing option through Communitylend for every listed car.

The option is limited to private listings in Ontario for cars with a sales price of up to 25,000 CAN$.

This is a good partnership for Communitylend as it will profit from increased exposure to potential borrowers.

(Source)

Related Article: P2P Lending With Cars as Collateral

CommunityLend Taps Broker Market

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Canadian p2p lending service CommunityLend announces:

MorWEB partners with CommunityLend Inc. to provide direct access to
unsecured lending options for the Canadian Mortgage Broker market

Marlborough Stirling Canada (MSC) is pleased to announce that direct access to CommunityLend, Canada’s only online Peer-to-Peer lending service, will now be available to the broker market using MorWEB.

MorWEB brokers will now be able to seamlessly refer clients directly to CommunityLend to arrange unsecured loans from private investors.  This will provide another value added service to customers of mortgage brokers using MorWEB.  Phase one of this novel integration is now available on the MorWEB platform with a more comprehensive integration scheduled for later this year.

CommunityLend, …, launched earlier this year and is exploring a number of different marketing options to spread the word about its services and to recruit good quality borrowers looking for more competitive rates for small unsecured loans.

”We are excited by the opportunity to work with one of Canada’s leading software providers to the Mortgage industry,” noted Michael Garrity, CEO of CommunityLend.  “We understand the important role of Mortgage Brokers in helping their clients to find the best rates on loans to meet their needs. …”

Since CommunityLend is restricted to accredited investors* by regulation, this marketing move uses an existing multiplier to reach potential lenders. It continues the earlier reported trend of existing financial institutions partnering with new p2p lending players.

(Source: CommunityLend blog)

*corrected – an earlier version of the article wrongly stated “institutional lenders” – see comment below