Rate Ladder

Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO of Lending Club in California recently spoke with Jackie Hyland from ABC News Money Matters about Lending Club, where borrowers with good credit can obtain personal loans from complete strangers. It was touted as providing a unique and creative way to get a loan that will offer lower interest rates than most credit card companies and banks can. (Note: Prosper is in a quiet period and has more or less shut down lender operations. Loanio (Loanio Blog) has just launched but lack the secondary market of Lending Club.

Here is my synopsis of the interview…

Lending club operates in the same way as a normal marketplace, however instead of having buyers and sellers, the website caters to borrowers and lenders. “Borrowers are there to get a loan, and lenders are there to make investments in these loans requested by the borrowers and fair interest rates as a result, and at the same time feel good about it because they’re helping other people.” Renaud Laplanche told Money Matters.

Peer to Peer lending or P2P lending allows borrowers and lenders to cut the middle man out, exchanging loans for an average interest rate of 10% to 12% instead of whatever high interest rates lending institutions are currently offering. With the recent credit crunch, not only is the demand for peer to peer lending alternatives going up, but Lending Club has also experienced a dramatic increase in the supply of lending options as lenders look for new ways to invest as returns on the stock market slow.

Since May of 2007 when Lending Club was founded, more than $20,000,000 dollars in loans have been offered through the website on a peer to peer basis. A new SEC-backed program was introduced to Lending Club only ten days ago, and has already facilitating the lending of more than $1 million dollars from lenders to borrowers on the website.

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Back in April of this year, the Lending Club announced that it would be going into a quiet period due to the beginning of a registration process involving the SEC, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Now the Lending Club is pleased to announce that the process has been completed, and now the Lending Club is available both to borrowers and to lenders as well. The Lending Club community is taking a major step forward with this SEC registration, which is also a grand step forward for social lending in general. Because of this SEC registration, the Lending Club is establishing itself as a viable investment alternative to the more traditional set of debt and credit instruments and products that only the larger financial institutions tend to offer.

What this SEC registration means for lenders and borrowers:

- It means that under the registered offer, lenders with the Lending Club will be able to invest in notes corresponding to portions of loans that are made to members who are borrowers. These notes will have stated interest rates that range from 6.69% to 18.63%, once a 1% service charge has been applied.

- It means that Lending club is going to become the first social lending network that gives lenders the option of a trading platform, because Lending Club partnered with FOLIO Investments Inc. On this trading platform, the lenders who become customers of the FOLIO Investments, Inc. Company will also be able to put up notes for sale in the event that liquidity is needed before a note’s term is completed.

- It is also believed that the SEC Registration will significantly accelerate the mainstream adoption of the social lending concept, which will allow more potential borrowers to get the funding they need more quickly.

As a result of the current financial crisis that our economy is experiencing, consumers are beginning to build a great distrust of larger financial institutions. For this reason, consumers are beginning to demand alternatives that allow them to have much more control over their investments and finances. Lending Club is leading the way to delivering this much needed alternative by crafting a network where lenders can fund loans that were posted by borrowers. The Lending Club community continues to show borrowing behavior that is exceptionally responsible, especially over the past 18 months. Since May of 2007, the default rate for these loans has remained below a mere 2 percent.

The prospectus that the Lending Club filed with the SEC is available in PDF format. In a time where the financial landscape is making the concept behind Lending Club even more useful both to borrowers and to lenders, the Lending Club is clearly thrilled that they are once again able to accept business from new lenders as this allows them to facilitate healthy lending relationships between responsible borrowers and responsible lenders, providing a much needed alternative form of borrowing and lending in times of economic crisis.

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I though Prosper had already done this: http://www.rateladder.com/2007/10/30/prosper-files-s1-with-sec/

From Prosper This morning:  http://blog.prosper.com/2008/10/15/prosper-filing-registration-statement-enters-quiet-period/

Prosper has started a process to register, with the appropriate securities authorities, promissory notes that may be offered and sold to lenders through our site in the future.The registration filing is a necessary step toward making the secondary lending market available to the community. This is something many of you have been asking for, and we believe the liquidity of a secondary market will make Prosper even more vibrant.

Until we complete the registration process, we will not accept new lender registrations or allow new commitments from existing lenders. If you’re an existing lender, your current lender agreements will be unaffected; your existing loans will continue to be serviced; you’ll be able to track and monitor your loans; and you’ll be able to withdraw funds from your Prosper account.

If you’re a borrower with an existing loan, you will continue with your current borrower agreement and be unaffected by the registration process. If you’re a borrower seeking a loan, you will still be able to create a new loan listing, which we will endeavor to fulfill through alternative sources.

A successful registration can take several months, but we assure you we will do our best to move forward as quickly as possible. Until this process is complete, we’re required to be in a quiet period and will be unable to respond to press, blogger or other inquiries about Prosper or the registration filing until it becomes effective.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and want to thank you in advance for your understanding and support.

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A few weeks ago Rob Garcia at Lending Club announced updates to the lending account management features.  I apologize it has taken me this long to cover the update, but I have been busy at work and frankly without lenders having the ability to lend money I was lacking motivation.  Well I got to it this weekend and so I thought I would give a quick writeup…

Monthly Statements

This has been a long time coming.  On page 2 is exactly what I need in order to track Lending Club in Quicken the way I track Prosper in Quicken.  Here is the information on that page for Jan 08 (more interesting than then months since the quiet period began.)

Lending Club Statement

Account Activity

This information is also now available via the account activity tab… Here is my recent activity…

Lending Club Account Activity

Creating Your Own Portfolio Views

This seems like it might be a good way to group loans so that loan performance could be compared by loan groups. It is up to the account holder to define the “portfolios”. This seems like a good feature for the large lender interested in dissecting their performance; however, there is a major thin data problem for any loan group of less than 35 to 50 loans minimum.

Other

There are some other change when it comes to traversing your account. basically around retrieving and sorting loan while on the Lending Club website…

My Conclusions

Statements were sorely overdue and I am glad to have them. When is this quiet period going to end?

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• Lending Club Files S1 with SEC Lending Club has filed an S1 with the SEC (link to S1 filing). It looks to be similar in nature to the Prosper filed an S1 reported here on 10/30/2007. This continues the Lending Club quiet period started on 4/8/2008. Originally I had guessed 7 months to 1.5 years for......

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Lending Club has filed an S1 with the SEC (link to S1 filing). It looks to be similar in nature to the Prosper filed an S1 reported here on 10/30/2007.

This continues the Lending Club quiet period started on 4/8/2008. Originally I had guessed 7 months to 1.5 years for the Lending Club quiet period and I stand by that guess… 2 months and counting… Good luck Lending Club, your lenders are eagerly waiting the outcome…

I thought the following portion of the Q&A was interesting…

Q: Will the Notes be listed on an exchange?

A: No. The Notes will not be listed on any securities exchange.

Q: Will I be able to sell my Notes?

A: The Notes will not be transferable unless and until we are able to establish a resale platform for Notes. Although we are working to establish a resale platform, there can be no assurance we will be able to do so, or, if we are able to do so, when a resale platform would be available. Therefore, lender members must be prepared to hold their Notes to maturity.

Here is the email announcement I received from Lending Club…

Dear Kevin,

We filed with the SEC earlier today. You can read the registration statement on the SEC Website at www.sec.gov. This is an important step in the process that we announced on April 7. Until the registration process is complete, we continue to be in a quiet period and are not at liberty to disclose more details on the process and timing. Please find below the text of our press release.

Kind Regards,

Patrick Gannon

Lending Club Files Registration Statement with the SEC

SUNNYVALE, CA – June 20, 2008 – Lending Club announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Act of 1933 relating to its social lending platform.

The registration statement seeks to register the offer and sale of up to $600,000,000 in Member Payment Dependent Notes to be issued by Lending Club in a continuous offering following the effective date of the registration statement. The Notes will be issued in series with each series of Notes corresponding to a single consumer loan to a borrower member. Lender members will direct Lending Club to apply the proceeds Lending Club receives from the sale of each series of Notes to fund a particular consumer loan selected by the lender member originated through the Lending Club platform.

A series of Notes will be issued only if and when the corresponding member loan closes and is funded. Lending Club will have an obligation to make payments of principal and interest on the Notes only to the extent that Lending Club receives payments on the corresponding member loan. The terms of the Notes, including interest rate and initial maturity, will correspond to the terms of the corresponding member loans but will reflect a four business day lag on payment dates and maturity to allow the platform to confirm payments received on the corresponding member loan.

Lending Club will offer the Notes only through its website directly to lender members.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but it has not yet become effective. Copies of the Lending Club registration statement can be accessed on the SEC website: http://www.sec.gov/. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities law of any such state.

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