P2P-Banking.com

A year ago Boober.nl launched as first peer to peer lending service in the Netherlands. While Boober faced some hardship (especially on regulation issues) the first year of Boober can be called a success for the company. So far Boober has funded over 2 million Euro in loans in the Netherlands. Compare this to the 1 million Euro Smava.de has loaned in the much larger German market in the last 10 months.

But not all lenders are satisfied with the results. The PIVN an association of lenders, on Jan. 14th called for an investment stop. The main cause are fee changes. Richard van den Toorn, Secretary of PIVN, told P2P-Banking.com:

It's not going very well with Boober, although they claim otherwise. The
PIVN (association of investors) has indeed given an advice not to invest
in new loans until some of her demands have been met. Reason for giving
such an advice is that Boober changed their payment-policy for the
investors radically, without consulting the PIVN first. It's so much the
height of their fee …, but that they are making sure the
benefits are going to Boober first, leaving the investors [lenders] with the risk of
remaining payments from the borrower. (more…)

Only recently did Lendingclub.com provide the download of statistic data on the Lending Club loans.

Now Eric (who also runs Ericscc.com) started another statistic site, this time providing insights in how the numbers at Lendingclub develop. The following chart shows loan origination by month:

Watch the following video explaining why a Google.org initiative has commited 10.1 million US$ to fuel the growth of small and medium sized enterprises in developing countries. With a focus on India and East Africa Google aims to:

• Lower Transaction Costs
• Deepen Capital Markets
• Catalyze Capital

While you cannot lend as an individual in this Google initiative, have a look at Kiva, MyC4 or Microplace which have similar aims.

Prosper.com recently changed it's portofolio plan segment criteria and the bidding guidance. A longtime lender speculates in an analysis that the changes were necessary due to rising default rates.

Yesterday a collection of interesting articles was compiled at BripBlap: (more…)

Globefunder announced the launch of Globefunder India, which it claims is the first p2p lending service in India.

GlobeFunder India is now up and running, making us the first online lending marketplace to establish operations there. If you are a lender in India, the good news is that you will soon have a way to capitalize on one of the most vibrant and fastest growing economies in the world.

I checked the website. "Up and running" does not mean that you can register as a lender or request a loan so far. In fact borrowers will not use the website in the Globefunder India process:

While in the U.S. lenders can access borrowers directly, in India the sheer size of the lending market and the regulatory environment necessitate a slightly different approach. In partnership with global managed services provider Intellecap and some of the leading banks in India, GlobeFunder India links lenders and borrowers through a network of well-established Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs).These MFIs are rated based on their credit worthiness similar to individual borrowers on the U.S. GlobeFunder marketplace, and these MFIs in turn work with individual borrowers through their extensive on-the-ground networks.

According to Globefunder there is an unmet loan demand in India of 40 billion US$.

If you are an Indian resident and use Globefunder India, please share your experiences in the Globefunder forum of Wiseclerk.com Thank you.

2007 was a year of launch and growth for most players. What trends in peer to peer lending can be expected in 2008?

More competition and entering more national markets (probability 100%)
In many markets multiple p2p lending services will compete for the attention of lenders and borrowers, especially in the largest market: In the United States Globefunder.com and Loanio.com will launch. In other markets, where there is no national p2p lending service established yet (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, Spain), p2p lending will be introduced by the launch of a service.

Insurance against defaults (probability 75%)
Not totally new, since Boober.nl and Smava.de already offer some protection of the loan principal. Insurance can be implemented as a classical insurance product (supplied by an insurance company) or as a market mechanism, spreading the risk over multiple loans.

Secondary market (probability 25%)
One of the disadvantages for lenders currently is that on all p2p lending platforms, the invested money i locked in for the duration of the loan term. Prosper.com has allready announced that it plans a secondary market, enabling lenders to sell and buy loans any time. Depending on the market there are huge regulatory hurdles to allow trading of loans. For example German executives told P2P-Banking.com that on the German market a secondary market is unlikely for years to come.

Cross-market lending (probability <25%)
Aside form the social lending approaches (Kiva, MyC4, Microplace) so far all service are open only for lenders and borrowers that live in the same market. If lenders could lend to borrowers in markets with higher key interest rate than the market the lender lives in, the advantages could outweight the risks. In the European Union due to the Euro zone there would be no currency exchange risk. Again there are steep regulatory hurdles to be taken.

Variable interest loans (probability ?)
So far all loans are for fixed terms (prepayment allowed) with fixed interest rates. Variable interest loans could add flexibility. The interest rate could rise or decline following an indicator (e.g. market prime rate). Another possibility would be a mechanism where the variable interest rate would rise or fall as a result of the level of defaults of the credit grade. This could protect lenders, if the actual default ratio is higher then the forecasted default ratio.

Third party bidding management (probability?)
Just a thought. Lenders could allow a third party to manage their portfolio. Like an investment funds the lender would invest an amount of money, while the funds manager does the actual selection of loans. This could possibly be done by a sophisticated software (would you trust this?) selecting loans by statistical analysis of performance of loans with similiar parameters or by a fonds manager. The later is unlikely because the amount of time needed for each loan is too high to be covered by fees.

I'll check at the end of 2008 to see how these trends developed.

More and more p2p lending services are launching, each catering to different markets and different target audiences. Some derive more features from "ancestors" Prosper or Zopa, some less.

All follow the aim to allow lenders to directly lend money to borrowers without a bank acting as intermediary. This aim is sometimes not pursued strictly to the point. Smava actually partnered with a bank to comply with regulation, Zopa US partnered with credit unions, but nevertheless it serves as comprehensive definition.

Dividing p2p lending services in categories could follow several possible factors:

• price building mechanism (auction/non-auction; interest set by platform/by borrower/by lender)
• purpose of loan (private/business/both)
• social lending vs. lending for profit

I think the last factor is most useful for the definition of categories. It affects all parts of the service from marketing to operations. The differentiation is in the objective the majority of the lenders had when selecting the platform. Were they attracted by the motivation to help an individual through a loan or by the motivation to earn interest? (more…)

Globefunder is now open for loan request by borrowers (minimum credit score of 640 required). The signup for individual lenders at Globefunder is still "coming soon". 

A Columbus Business First newspaper article gave more details a few days ago: 

Interest rates for borrowers on GlobeFunder range from 8 percent to 20 percent. GlobeFunder makes its money by charging a onetime 1.75 percent fee to borrowers on their loans, and charging lenders 50 to 100 basis points of their investment over the 24- to 60-month loan term, Decio said.

A basis point is one-100th of a percent.

GlobeFunder is responsible for servicing, collecting and, if necessary, selling nonperforming loans to debt collection firms, Decio said. (more…)

The unrest after elections in Kenya might also to some degree impact operations of Kiva and MyC4 which are funding p2p loans in Kenya. As Jessica Jackley Flannery of Kiva reports operations of the local MFIs in Kenya have been interrupted:

The situation on the ground appears to vary widely from community to community. However, one consistent report is that business is not operating as usual; most MFI operations have been interrupted or stopped altogether in the last week, whether due to imminent danger in their region or the general disruption in daily life caused by turbulence elsewhere. Thankfully, as far as we know, none of our partner MFI staff have been hurt. Unfortunately, due to the magnitude of the situation, we anticipate that many entrepreneurs will have been displaced, hurt, or otherwise adversely affected.

Please be patient as this situation unfolds. We expect possible disruptions in our Kenya MFI partners’ operations as the staff on the ground recover.

On MyC4.com the local provider Growth Africa Capital writes from Nairobi, Kenya:

It probably hasn't escaped your attention that the Kenyan elections didn't go a smoothly as we had all hoped and has resulted in a lot of unrest, violence, destruction and even deaths.

As I type (noon, 2nd January) things are slowly getting back to normal in Nairobi. The situation is also improving in Mombasa, though we are yet to get the same good news from the central Rift Valley, Western and Nyanza provinces.

We should have a full overview in terms of the wether any of the opportunities funded via MyC4 has been affected by the unrest by Monday (7th January).

Once safe to do so, we will look at the areas in Nairobi affected by the unrest and wether affordable funding will make a difference in the affected people's lives in terms of re-establishing their businesses. So stay tuned for opportunities that will help get Kenya and its enterprising people back to normal - your investment may make a huge difference.

While the situation in Kenya is somewhat unclear, the crisis is already impacting Uganda's economy. MyC4 only recently started in Kenya. The majority of loans are to entrepreneurs in Uganda. 
Ronald Isabirye of the local provider in Kampala, Uganda about the consequences: (more…)

Effective today Prosper.com has raised the closing fees for borrowers:

…The rationale behind this increase is to enable us to better cover our administrative costs and bring our fees more in line with the market. We have endeavored to continue to keep the fees very straightforward for our borrowers.

The origination fee schedule for borrowers of first and second loans will be as follows:

AA 1.00% (no change)
A 2.00%
B 2.00%
C 3.00%
D 3.00%
E 3.00%
HR 3.00%

…

Origination fees paid by existing borrowers and for listings that have already been created will not be impacted.