Comments on: Lending Club is Dead

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:50:58 +0000

I dont think lending club is dead. At least I know it works for some of my friends. I think I will still try it.

By: David

David — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:45:57 +0000

They are only being shutdown since the government doesn’t want people to help each other out easily. They want us to keep going to banks to pay outrageous interest and other fees to keep us down. When I was younger I wanted to be a successful millionaire, however the more money I made the more restrictions corporations and the government placed to keep us down. That killed all of my motivation since I realized they will do anything to keep us down. The only millionaires are probably people who accidentally slipped through the cracks of the system, before the government had time to put up a new rule to block people from making money.

By: jimbo

jimbo — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:18:15 +0000

hey.. i just wanted to mention that i’ve
been investing for about 1 year with
the lending club + prosper. Lending
club checks the borrowers out much much
better than prosper.. i have had
absolutely 0 defaults, with the grade A
loans there viritually is zero risk, but
carefully choosing all grades, the few
that go into a grace period always follow
thru.. i don’t think prosper screens the
borrowers nearly as good.. i’ve had a good
solid return of 10% on very conserative
lending including their service fee and
with prosper somewhere between 5 – 7% at
the very best.. overall i am very
impressed with the lending club

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:02:43 +0000

Prosper will, they are in much better shape now than Lending Club was back then (IMO).

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:44:30 +0000

LendingClub is back from the dead and now Prosper is in hibernation. I wonder if Prosper will survive the registration process?

By: DebtKid

DebtKid — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:36:40 +0000

Lazy ~ Man, you know how to pick the controversial titles, huh? I just posted my thoughts on the whole Lending Club registration….we disagree a bit, but I still like your new theme : )

http://www.debtkid.com/my-take-on-lending-clubs-sec-registration

Peace

By: nwdirector

nwdirector — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:54:32 +0000

I, like Chuck, won your contest, yet didn’t get my account set up before the April 7th DEADline.

Let me echo my thanks as well for the opportunity. Sounds like maybe I can use your SmartyPig card instead! Ha! :)

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:50:11 +0000

Well, I’m not going to call their customer service to try to read between the lines. If they can send e-mails out to all their customers and their customer service can say such things on the phone, they should send out an e-mail of whatever they said to you. If they can’t send out such an e-mail due to the quiet period, they shouldn’t be saying such things to you.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:16:46 +0000

To be honest, I’m not so sure LC is dead. I just got off the phone with their customer service and I found out a few interesting things (by reading between the lines of what they said and could not say). I am still going over my notes and running everything through my internal computer… I will definitely write about this next week… so be sure to stop by.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:18:16 +0000

I personally don’t think LC is dead, nor will they be when this “quiet” period is over (unless it lasts more than 3 years). First, they’re still taking borrowers and offering them the same rates. Thus, their appeal to a borrower should be no different than it was before. Second, those that lent money (myself included) are pretty much stuck with them for 3 years… unless ALL our loans get paid back early. So, we’re pretty much forced to wait and see what this “new” LC is going to be like. I think LC will lose ground to Prosper, Zopa, and any others during this period – advertising and maintaining a presence in the market place do mean something – but they won’t be dead, just behind. I’m not sure what they have in store with respect to P2P lending, but I hope their new business model will still be as attractive as the old. I don’t like Prosper’s model, so I may drop out of P2P all together if they don’t come back with something similar or better.

By: Brip Blap

Brip Blap — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:26:18 +0000

At this point those of us who are “in” as P2P borrowers really have to be more concerned about how this affects perception of the industry as a whole. I can’t begin to imagine anyone will be leaping in to commit funds to LC once they come back, so they are done. But it also gives me a pause in thinking about upping my position in Prosper or any other P2P lending business.

Growing pains in a toddler-aged industry!

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:53:11 +0000

What’s weird is that LC looks like they are still taking borrowers. So maybe it’s not dead, but taking a different path?

I’ve heard of SEC quiet periods before, so maybe they are thinking of holding the notes themselves, and then reselling them in the aggregate. Not P2P, but still allowing people to lend to each other. A $1,000 investment could be spread across 1,000 loans.

By: Dividend growth investor

Dividend growth investor — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:38:49 +0000

I kinda liked LendingClub better than Prosper. Probably because bidding on ledning to people was not as competitive as it is on Prosper :-)
Maybe now is the time that a big company steps in a buys LendingClub?

By: Four Pillars

Four Pillars — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:14:49 +0000

I don’t think you are exaggerating at all. Since when does a company stop selling a product while they “are developing a new one”.

I think I might post about this tomorrow – I don’t think this changes the fundamentals of p2p lending but it obviously doesn’t help the industry very much.

Mike

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:59:02 +0000

@Eden: I think the business model for P2P lending is sound. At it’s base it’s just letting the masses be the bankers – collecting that money for themselves rather than earning a couple of percent in a bank.

I think the challenges that P2P companies have largely comes from the regulatory issues that arise when you have 50 different states and the federal government making laws. Over time, I believe the companies or the laws will adapt to make it work. I’m convinced that Lending Club would be operating as normal and everyone would be happy if the law was simplified.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:56:01 +0000

I wasnt joking when I made the picture of lending club in the trash can: I think we all know this is their end.

By: Eden

Eden — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:28:40 +0000

Is that really surprising? One successful P2P lending site sticking around is asking enough (Prosper I suppose is the likely winner right now) so it makes sense that others would fail.

These are highly risky/speculative places to put your money. No one should be shocked if they walk away from any of these companies with zero dollars left.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:55:22 +0000

The thrill is gone… I’m pulling out of LendingClub.com altogether (even though my blog states a possible return once they ‘come back’) since I, like so many other lenders, feel violated since I’ve put in $1k per month since November only to get screwed by this event. I went ahead and started up my lending at Prosper.com again in earnest ($500+ instant transfer) as I believe there will only be two P2P’s (for profit) left standing in a month or two (Zopa and Prosper). Love the tombstone, made it my desktop wallpaper as a reminder of the mishandling of fiduciary responsibility on the part of LC to make sure all their ducks were in a row before opening up to the public and grabbing my cash. My condolences to other lenders… May other opportunities come your way soon! I’m just awaiting final notice of the failures of LC to stay solvent and alive, then I can have complete closure.

Sincerely,
Jeff (aka FANAFI)

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:31:38 +0000

Trent: I know what you mean. Handling people’s money is expensive stuff – many laws and regulations are involved. I did see that they secured 10M last August and had most of the platform built. There might be an underlying money issue, but it might be more of a situation of not handling the regulations right. The fact that they are still taking borrowers tells me that it’s not likely a funding issue.

Brett: I’m with you, I hope they aren’t dead. I will be happy to see them get back to doing business as before. Perhaps not having that trust is the biggest thing.

Austin99: Thanks for reminding me. I don’t read my RSS feed, so I imagine it might have looked funny to a number of people this morning. I’ve now gotten rid of that.

No Debt Plan: I suppose I should have said they are in coma. They are obviously looking to come back strong after this. Fate might say something else in the meantime.

By: No Debt Plan

No Debt Plan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:30:12 +0000

You would think if they were dead in the water that they would come out and say it. I don’t have any of my real money sitting around in Lending Club, just the sign up bonus. I’m going to hang out and see what happens. I’m playing with house money right now.

I can only imagine the cheers going on at Prosper HQ!