This is a guest post by Tuomas Talola, CEO of coming Finnish P2P lending site Lainaaja and blogger at Cloudfunder.
Peer-to-peer lending has been growing rapidly since the inception in 2005. Lending amounts are small compared to traditional banks, but potential is immense. What would it take to really break into mainstream and become a potential option to large customer masses?
What Is the Chasm and Target Customers?
Geoffrey A. Moore wrote a highly appraised book called Crossing the Chasm in 1991. The book was about high-tech products marketing during the early stages and the difficulties of reaching majority of customers. In this post I’ll take a look what can be learned from the insights of the book and how to apply it to P2P lending.
Crossing the Chasm - Source:Wikpedia
According to Moore, there is a chasm between early adopters (technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (pragmatists). Visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations and this might be the reason why many technology products fail. Selling to the Early Adopters is easier, they are people who are always looking the new revolutionary technologies. As a group, they are easy to sell but very hard to please. (more…)
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.
In October Smava Poland (Smava.pl) entered a cooperation with Euro Finanse, an independent vendor of financial products and services. Smava says the cooperation already yields very positive results. The first three weeks of cooperation brought a 50% growth in loan volume.
Euro Finanse was selected as partner due to it’s sales strength and presence not only in the large cities but with 450 financial consultants throughout the country, says CEO Przemysław Moscicki.
Apart from sales activities the consultants can handle additional tasks like verifying identities of borrowers in person and validating income statements.
To my knowledge Smava.pl is the first p2p lending company to use an offline sales channel to sell the service.
Lendingclub.com currently runs a promotion. The 25,000th investor to register wins 2,500 US$. To be eligible a registration is enough (no purchase/investment necessary). The winner will be announced after Oct. 31st.
The borrower who receives the 10,000th loan from Zopa UK will be lucky – it will be an interest free loan.
Furthermore Zopa has a referral promotion in July. Zopa pays 100 GBP (approx. 165 US$) to members that refer a borrower who successfully gets a loan in July.
I am blogging this live while listening to the Kiva conference call. Kiva plans a loan matching program, where lenders and institutions can opt to automatically match loans made by other lenders.
Some statements/explanations from the conference call:
Today 6 or 7 people out of 100 that visit the Kiva website actually make a loan (conversion rate)
Lenders can select to match any loan, or select loans by criteria
Lenders can opt to match immediately or only if they have periods of inactivity
Minimum account balance allows to reserve some money in the account (only balance over this minimum is used for matching)
Donations to the Kiva organisation are mandatory(!) when using the matching feature
Kiva says the new feature allows to automate the lending process and hopes that it inspires others to lend more.
The matching program will probably be launched in summer 2009.
On terms of automation there are similarities to the autobid feature MYC4 has.
See the following presentation for more details on the plans.
P2P Lending service Pertuity Direct has launched an affiliate program. The new referral marketing campaign of Pertuity Direct pays:
35 US$ for each referred completed and approved borrower application for a loan
50 US$ for each completed investor application
performance incentives for websites that generate at least 5 leads per month
The campaign runs at affiliate network CJ, where Lending Club does administrate it’s affiliate program, too. Lending Club pays 35 US$ commission for each loan application and 60 US$ per lender registration plus performance incentives.
Canadian p2p lending service 
