Lending Club Bonus, Higher Interest Rates, and Website Updates

Over the weekend Lending Club updated their website and raised the base interest rate 25 basis points. They have an incredible 5% bonus if you lend $5000 or more by February 3rd and a $25 bonus for new members that signup using this link.

I like the new account summary screen VERY much.

Lending Club Account Summary

I was very hopeful that this upgrade was going to minimally fulfill my request for a complete advanced filter and a lender statement and as a stretch had hoped it would have continuous lending match with a complete advanced filter. While the changes are extensive they fall a short of my hopes.

The advanced search options are not complete. I was not able to filter on 2 of the fields I use to determine whether to extend credit: inquires in the last 6 months (I want values of 0-1, but occasionally go up to 2) and bankcard utilization (what I really want is for the person that uses their credit and has more available credit than they are requesting, but at Prosper I settle for a filter of 3-80%). Without these filter options, I still need to manually browse each and every loan to determine their extended credit. I do like the delinquencies in the last 2 years filter (I set it to zero). After going through a page and half of searched loans in reverse APR order I found 1 loan and called off my hunt to put the remaining $375 (rounded $25 increments of $386.07). I will wait until I accumulate $500 via referrals and interest and try the lending match, hopefully there is an extended credit filter of at least what is available via search.

Lastly, I still do not see a way to determine when the payments (principal, interest, and fees) were paid into my account. I assume they will have to solve this for tax accounting, but I hope they include it in interface. I would like to track my Lending Club loans in Quicken with the same manner as my Prosper loans in Quicken.

Overall a solid upgrade, but it still leaves me wanting more. I am sure they will continue to make improvements and they have an incredible 5% bonus if you lend $5000 or more by February 3rd and a $25 bonus for new members that signup using this link so if you are considering trying Lending Club now is as good a time as any.

January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Features, Lending Club

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17 Responses to “Lending Club Bonus, Higher Interest Rates, and Website Updates”

Personal Loan Portfolio on January 22nd, 2008

These changes seem to meet my needs for now. I should have mentioned in my review of the changes that I would like to also filter by inquiries. It would also be nice to be able to save your searches.

Where did you see the available cash detail and the remaining principal detail? That looks like you moused over or clicked on something to make that appear. It does not appear in my screen as far as I can see. I checked both Firefox and IE to ensure that it was not something browser specific.
J on January 23rd, 2008

I don’t understand why LendingClub is getting let off so easily by you guys.

A MONTHLY STATEMENT IS A #1 PRIORITY!!!

I ask you: Do you have money deposited/invested at any other financial institution that does not send you (or make available online) a monthly statement?

Hey, Lending Club … MONTHLY STATEMENT! …GET IT DONE! NOW!
Kevin on January 23rd, 2008

@J
I don’t think I am giving them a pass… I have personally told them that the lack of a lender statement or equivalent is my main reason for not adding more money and going after the 5% bonus on $5K.
J on January 23rd, 2008

Yeah, sorry Kevin. I guess I was responding more to the first comment here.

I don’t see how anyone can say that LC has “met my needs for now” as a lender.

Monthly statement is a must have!

In fact, it seems like it should be a legal requirement for a financial company.
Personal Loan Portfolio on January 23rd, 2008

J: It has met my needs for now. However, I must admit since to date I have only been looking at one month of payment information, so I had not noticed that it was life to date rather than for the month. I am sure that they will get it done soon enough. If Lending Club does not complete it soon enough to meet my needs, I will complain along with you. I don’t think that there is any need to panic yet.

RL: Can you answer the question I asked: Where did you see the available cash detail and the remaining principal detail? Thanks.
Rob on January 24th, 2008

@J: The account changes you see now are a stepping stone towards providing monthly statements and full ledger-like reporting. As you can see, it is currently showing “cumulative” numbers. We are working to provide the ability to “filter” your activities by dates/months, which will allow you to have a “monthly statement” kind of view. This will be available sometime later this year.

And to be perfectly honest, you can’t really accuse Kevin or PLP to be “letting us off so easily”. These guys both have records of giving us tons of feedback in the past, and in fact, this release’s features were driven by some of the feedback they had provided to me in the past…. I can count on them to give me an earful every time

Thanks for the feedback. We are listening… and taking action.

Rob Garcia
Director, Web Production
Lending Club
Kevin on January 24th, 2008

@Rob
Thanks for the excellent feedback

@PLP
Do you mean where did my screen shot come from? It came from my account page.
Personal Loan Portfolio on January 24th, 2008

I am referring to the call out boxes (with the slightly darker backgrounds) that are below your numbers 386 and 1,800. The two boxes list out all the detail that makes up those numbers.

I cannot find those two detail boxes anywhere on my summary page or in the details. Did you make them for clarification or are they part of the standard functionality that you are seeing? Thanks.
RateLadder on January 24th, 2008

@plp

That is how my screen looks. That is a screen capture from the first screen I see when I login.
Personal Loan Portfolio on January 24th, 2008

Odd! That is not how my screen looks.

Mine looks exactly like the graphic in the link below. There are no call out detail boxes below my subtotals like you see. I have not trimmed them off in the picture.
http://www.personalloanportfolio.com/images/updates/new_lending_club_account_summary.JPG

I logged on in FireFox and IE 7.0 and I do not see those boxes.
RateLadder on January 24th, 2008

That is odd. I only logged in on IE7.
Personal Loan Portfolio on January 24th, 2008

I sent Rob an email asking him why the difference…

And thanks for answering my question and posting your screen. Otherwise, I would not have known there was an issue.
J on January 25th, 2008

@Rob

“We are working to provide the ability to “filter” your activities by dates/months, which will allow you to have a “monthly statement” kind of view. This will be available sometime later this year.”

Later this year?!

It doesn’t seem that the importance of monthly statements is getting through to LendingClub.

I take - and TRACK - my finances seriously, Rob.

ALL of your site development resources should be working on getting monthly statements out the door ASAP - before any other site improvements.

As woefully inadequate I think the loan search functionality on LendingClub is, monthly statements are orders of magnitude more important.
Personal Loan Portfolio on March 19th, 2008

Thanks for turning back on your comments. I posted a follow up on my Lending Club screenshots difference. My screen looks like yours with the detail at the bottom of the page. Rob says that the detail at the bottom disappears while funds are in transfer.
Lending club dead on April 8th, 2008

I just took out all my money, its dead.