P2P-Banking.com

Prosper will run television ads (preview them online). The TV spots will be aired in test markets starting this week.

Prosper.com made the videos of the Prosper Days 2008 available. Thanks Prosper!

I will just feature one session here. In "Managing large portfolios" Adam Weyeneth, President of Fair Deal Credit talks about the issues for institutional lenders that want to invest into the asset class of p2p loans.

Link to this video and the related videos of the other sessions.

CBS recently featured Prosper and Lendingclub under the headline "Beating the financial giants at their own game".

IOU central launched the first active p2p lending service in Canada today. Borrowers can request loans from 1,000 to 25,000 CAN$ and select a term between 1 and 36 months. IOU central allows the borrower to specify a minimum amount at which he will accept the loan, should it not fully fund in the 2 weeks listing duration. IOU Central pulls the TransRisk credit score of the borrower, provided by Transunion Canada. According to the press release, lenders can expect to earn interest rates between 5 and 25 percent.

Borrowers pay a closing fee ranging from 1 to 3 percent depending on their credit score. Lenders pay an annual servicing fee of 0.5 percent of the open principal balance. Only Canadian residents can borrow or lend. The borrower needs to have a Trans union credit score.

Borrowers may have several loans, but the total outstanding principal may not exceed 25,000 CAN$.

Lenders earn interest on deposited money (bank prime rate minus 2.5%). Individuals may lend up to 5 million CAN$. Corporations may lend up to 50 million CAN$. Minimum bid amount is 25 CAN$.

Studying the team of IOU Central I noticed Robert Bialek (VP Technology) and Arkadiusz Hajduk (Product Manager), which were the founders of FairRates.dk, a p2p lending service in Denmark, which now is part of IOU Central. An assumption would be that IOU Central acquired (or merged with) the company, to gain the knowledge and experience made.

The IOU Central launch did beat Communitylend in being first in the Canadian market. Communitylend has long announced to launch a Canadian peer to peer lending service, but has not launched yet. 

To discuss IOU central, the lending or borrowing experience or to ask questions on the service you can use Wiseclerk's IOU Central forums.

(Link)

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.

Kiva.org send a newsletter to lenders yesterday with current numbers:

• Over 16 million US$ in loans funded
• Average Kiva loan funds in 1.01 days
• More then 170,000 lenders
• 25,000 entrepreneurs received a loan

Kiva has grown a widespread group of supporters, ranging from Kiva Fellows over company supporters to a lively community discussing at Kiva Friends or contributing at Kivapedia.

KivaTV is showing a mix of promotional, educational and informational video clips.

Kiva still maintains a low default rate, which currently is 0.2%. The 20 Kiva loans I myself have invested in are all repaying on time.

13 minute video (careful the video is >300 MB, requires fast internet connection) on MyC4. MyC4 facilitates peer to peer microloans to African entrepreneurs.

The video shows the situation in Uganda and many borrowers who talk about their plans. During an audience the founder gets praise by the wife of the president of Uganda for the concept.

Highly recommended viewing.

Intruders TV did a long interview with James Alexander of Zopa.com covering the development of Zopa, regulation, market approach, lender and borrower advantages, the competition and other topics. The video starts of with polling passers-by on the street whether they heard of Zopa and would use peer-to-peer lending themselves.

(Source: Intruders.tv) 
P.S.: Noticed the bulletpoint on the whiteboard "Sell loan on phone".

Video on the Globefunder.com business model.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Globefunder team says it is aiming for millions of loans requiring full scalability of system.

Reuters has a video on German p2p lending site Smava.de. This is the first video I saw that's in english language. Features Alexander Artope, co-founder and CEO of Smava.