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…)

Today for all new loans the interest rates at Lendingclub.com increase by 0.5 percent. At Lendingclub, unlike other p2p lending sites, the platform not the borrower sets the interest rate (based on credit grade). The increase was in reaction to rising borrower demand after Lendingclub eliminated state loan rate caps last week by going nationwide.

As a lender you can profit furthermore from two current promotions at Lendingclub. You get a 5% cash bonus if you lend 5,000 US$ or more by Feb. 3, 2008 (max. 20,000 per lender). Plus you get a 25 US$ signup bonus, if you sign up through this referral link.

Questions? Suggestions? Use the Lendingclub forum.

Every once in a while, I read a post in the Prosper forums that provides lots of insights. Today I found this post interesting where several lenders debate the advantages and disadvantages of investing in Prosper.com and long-term lenders share their opinion. Suggested reading for new lenders.