Learn To Lend

Consumer interest fuels peer lending growth As a lender, the accelerating adoption of the “social banking” model is important to you, it means higher volumes of people looking to borrow money. Not all of those people entering the market will be low-risk investments, in fact many of them will be the opposite.  However, as the total size of the population grows so will the number of borrowers in each credit category. ...

More than just Personal Loans Ben Rogers of the Filene Research Institute looks ahead to the future of peer lending in his interview with Lending Club CEO Renaud Laplanche and sees more than just basic personal loans. This doesn’t come as a surprise to many people.  Peer lending started out in the most basic format, one person lending money to another with no collateral supporting the loan. As the industry ...

Why pay a bank 20% to borrow money on credit cards when you can borrow from your family for much less? This is the question that prompted Sir Richard Branson to create the peer lending company, Virgin Money. Branson had a personal run-in with a bank when trying to find startup money when he was a young entrepreneur. "I wanted to build a recording studio and I went to the ...

What you should know about bidding a Prosper loan too low The competitive nature of the bidding process gets some lenders to bid down interest rates on Prosper to the point where the loan isn’t worth the risk of reward. In the heat of the moment lenders are more likely to make an offer to fund a loan so they can get a piece of the listing they’ve been watching & ...

What you should know if you want to be a peer-to-peer lender Lending money on sites like Prosper & Lending Club can be a great way to diversify your investments if you take the right approach managing your downside risk. Who doesn’t want to maximize returns and reduce risk, but it’s easier said than done right?  A recent article from MarketWatch offers some advice to lenders on how to go ...

We have two mortgages on our house, the first with the bank and the second with our grandparents.  When we needed money to buy our first home, the grandparents lent us about 20% of the total. It was a win/win, they were earning a higher interest rate on the money than they would have at the bank.  Not only we were paying less interest than we would have ...

Prosper CEO and Founder Chris Larsen reported that about 75 percent of all borrowers had AA credit when Prosper launched in 2006 and now almost 95 percent are in that AA category. With only 5 percent considered subprime borrowers, this is a positive trend for people looking for quality investments via peer lending. The trend of borrowers with higher credit ratings on Prosper will hopefully translate to lower risk loans, and ...

Prosper, Lending Club, & Zopa right for different types of lenders You need to understand the model you're utilizing in peer-to-peer lending. They all have nuances and differences. [Mark Meyer, director of the Filene Research Institute] Depending on the level of risk you’re willing to accept and the amount of return you’re targeting for your loan, you’ll want to consider different person to person loan sites: Lending Club, only those with ...

If someone on the street asked you to borrow money, what would you want to know before lending them cash? If they don’t have the right answers, they don’t get the loan!  It’s the same case with borrowers on sites like LendingClub and Prosper, don’t lend them any money unless they’ve met all of your criteria for a borrower. Many times people asking for money on peer lending sites forget ...

Fynanz appears to be the first to take a niche approach [in peer to peer lending] with a service dedicated to funding student loans A new company named Fynanz aims to offer students an alternative to the troubled student loan industry by creating a private marketplace for private student loans from friends, family, alumni, and investors. To apply for a loan, students fill out an application and create a personal ...