P2P-Banking.com

Astonishing. Traditional bankers awarded Zopa the Banker Technology Award for Best Internet Project. Now, should we expect to see banks setting up project teams to launch their own social lending services? Or how will banks leap forward to be a part of the "future of finance"?

Source: FirstRung via TheBankWatch

Prosper loans have meanwhile surpassed 66 million dollars loan volume. A look at wiseclerk's prosper loan aging table shows that Prosper.com succeeds in increasing originating loan volume nearly every month. Currently new loans for about 8 million US$ originate each month.

However the figures also show an alarmingly high volume for late and defaulted loans. Especially when looking at older loans (the new ones do not have aged enough to be technically able to default). For example of 2.1 million dollar loan value that originated in June last year, $177,000 loan value has defaulted and another $105,000 are 3 or more months late. The default rate for loans from June 2006 will therefore be well above 10 percent at the end of the 36 month term. And this is no execption. For March and April 2006 defaults are already higher than 10 percent of originating loan value.

Another service apparently offering p2p lending in Korea is Donjoy.net. According to unverified information published by a company representative, Donjoy is in operation since 2005 and allows interest rates of up to 66 percent.

Internet usage in Korea is booming, most surfers enjoy broadband internet access. Furthermore the population is very open minded towards new technologies.

This year two P2P lending services launched.

Popfunding.com allows borrowers to get loans up to a maximum amount of approx. 2000 US$. Interest rates are auctioned. Maximum interest rate is 29 percent. The CEO is Hyun Uk Shin. According to the Korea Times the service does NOT charge fees from borrowers or lenders. Only bank fees have to be paid. If a borrower fails to make a payment popfunding.com will disclose his identity and contact information to the lender. 

Moneyauction.co.kr has a similar concept. 

Financial regulators are looking into the concepts to check if they are in compliance with korean laws.

(Sources: Ringblog, Korea Times) 

The figure quoted for borrowers that are late with at least one payment at dutch Boober.nl is 3.8 percent. This strikes me as quite high, considering operations of started only February this year. A (user composed and maybe not complete) list of the loans that are currently late at Boober, can be found here. 

Schweizer Kredite

Actually Zopa.it is not run by the British Zopa Ltd. but by the franchise “P2P s.r.l” with offices in Milano. The company has licensed the use of the brand and the technology for Italy. Zopa.it will allow Italians to borrow up to 40000 Euro (roughly $55000), which is a high amount, compared to p2p services in other countries.

The company was created by Nova partners, Milan, together with New College Capital Ltd.

CEO of the Zopa.it is Maurizio Sella. Sella is Chairman of Finanziaria Bansel SpA, parent of Banca Sella group, Chairman of Banca Sella SpA , Chairman of Banca Patrimoni e Investimenti di Torino and President of Ente Luigi Einaudi. He was also Chairman of the Italian Banks Association (ABI) from 1998 to 2006. In 2003 he was appointed Director of Toro Assicurazioni SpA and Assonime.

It is possible to pre-register on Zopa.it to be notified at launch time.

Sources(1, 2, 3 and own research)

Correction and Update: I must excuse myself to have confused the CEO of Zopa Italy with another Italian banker with identical name. As Carlo of Zopa Italy pointed out in a comment to this post: “Zopa Italy’s Ceo is Maurizio Pietro Sella, not Maurizio Sella. Maurizio Pietro started is working career with Banco di Santo Spirito (Capitalia Group), then joined in 1990 Citibank, where he had several assignements (mainly in London and Switzerland) and in 2002 the Julius Baer Group in Geneva. Before Zopa Maurizio Pietro was CEO of Julius Baer Creval Private Banking Spa, a joint venture between the Julius Baer Group and Gruppo Credito Valtellinese.”

According to unverified sources the venture raised 2.8 million Euro funding from its shareholders. It is speculated that Zopa Italy will take higher fees (maybe 1 percent from lender and 1 percent from borrower) than Zopa in England. This seems possible since consumer banking costs in Italy are generally higher.