Lending Club reached an important milestone having reached $10,000,000 in loans originated. According to the stats, they have no loans defaulted (120 or more days late). That seems like an amazing statistic with 1214 loans out there. However, from this chart of originations by month, a large number of their loans are relatively new. Still Lending Club has a very good success rate with keeping loans current. There are very few loans that are 16-30 days late.
In looking at the data, I find it very interesting that one two loans with grades E or F are late. However, there are are 11 loans that are late with grades B, C, D. This makes me think twice about whether we truly have enough to go on. If you believe that the data is comprehensive, it would make sense to go for the bigger returns.
While on the topic of P2P Lending, Prosper and Lending Club have been making waves in the press recently. Late last week, Time Magazine wrote this article about P2P lending. And earlier this month Forbes wrote an article as well. CNBC even stepped in and did a segment on P2P Lending. It looks like we are approaching the years where P2P lending will come of age and become a household name.
If you are curious about lending money on Lending Club, Sign up through this link. Lending Club will give you $25 after your verify your account (I’ll receive $25 as well). Update: Offer may be expired now (12/9/2008).
Read Wiseclerk for more coverage on Lending Club reaching the 10M mark.
P2P lending can be a great addition to your portfolio, but be careful. Taking risks with low credit borrowers is not a good way to make money. Just ask the sub prime mortgage people.
It seems like Lending Club aims to keep many of the low credit borrowers away. Prosper is more open to allowing low credit borrowers, and leaves it up to lenders to price the risk appropriately.
Thx for the great info Lazy Man! While the whole idea seems a bit scary (as w/ any new concept involving money), I haven’t had a chance to dive right in yet and learn more. So thanks for all the links and articles on here, it’ll def. help to get me started.
Unrelated to the post, but I think you may not be able to claim to be a “Lazy Man” with your finances when you do P2P lending, it is totally like 100x less lazy than index funds =P
Brandon, you’ve got a point there. I’m not so sure that line of thinking is going to work with my wife.
I made small loans on Prosper that have just started to pay and I have a couple on Lending Club as well. I only put in $100 total into the two because everyone says you should only put in what you can afford to lose.
I like Lending Club because they gave me a loan to pay off higher rate credit cards and my first payment is due tomorrow.
Some people say that the people who borrow on these sites are bums who cannot get a loan anywhere else…but I am not a bum. I am happy that I got a rate that is lower than my credit cards and I have the money set to pay back my lenders every month.
I guess you can say I love Lending Club…regardless of wht the naysayers think. :-)