Search Results for: lendingclub

LendingClub vs. Prosper Loan Performance Comparison, 9-Month Update

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

I invested $10,000 into person-to-person loans in November 2012, split evenly between LendingClub and Prosper. It’s been a little over 9 months since then, so I wanted to give a detailed update in addition to my brief monthly updates. The primary goal of this portfolio is to earn a target return of 8-10% net of defaults, but I also wanted to see if there were significant differences between the two competitors Prosper and LendingClub.

I’m also considering liquidating both portfolios after 12 months have passed. I’m getting a little bored with the experiment, and having to sell the loans would also allow me to compare the ease of selling either company’s loans on the secondary market.

Portfolio Credit Quality Comparison

I wanted to keep these portfolios comparable in terms of risk level, while still trying to maximize overall return net of defaults. Peter Renton of LendAcademy made this helpful chart comparing estimated defaults rates with their respective credit grades. Since each company has their own proprietary credit grading formula, they don’t match up perfectly.

Here’s my portfolio breakdown:

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My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


$10,000 P2P LendingClub & Prosper Loan Portfolio Update – April 2013

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Here’s the April 2013 update for my peer-to-peer lending portfolio, the last of three “real money” portfolios being tracked monthly as part of my Beat the Market Experiment. See also the $10,000 Benchmark and $10,000 Speculative portfolio updates.

For this one, I started with $10,000 split evenly between Prosper Lending and Lending Club, and went to work lending other people money and earning interest with an 8% target net return. So it’s also a race-within-a-race to see which option offers the best returns.

$5,000 LendingClub Loan Portfolio. Below is a screenshot of my LendingClub account as of 4/1/13. I’ve had loans at LC before, but sold them all on the secondary market and started fresh for this tracking experiment. Here are screenshots of my total balance and my portfolio details. I would say my overall risk level is moderate-conservative with mostly A and B rated loans (top two grades).


(click to enlarge)

The portfolio is now 5 months old, with 208 currently active loans, 9 loans that were paid off early, and 5 in funding. Two of the active loans are currently between 31-120 days late, which according to LendingClub have a 53% recovery rate overall. But to be conservative I will now assume the remaining $48 in principal to be completely lost. The current weighted average interest rate is reported as 12.33%, which will hopefully offer enough cushion to still net an 8% return.

I pick loans using a preset filter based on my LendingClub filters post as well as my Prosper filter research noted below. I never spend any time reading individual loan descriptions, keeping it passive and scalable. The filters are saved online and it takes just a minute to reinvest interest, although I still tend to forget until I do these updates. In addition to outstanding loan principal, the account also has $37.02 in idle cash, $125 in funding limbo, and $40.39 in accrued interest.

LendingClub.com account value: $5,161 (includes principal + accrued interest, minus 30+ day lates, after fees)

$5,000 Prosper.com Loan Portfolio. Below are screenshots of my Prosper account page as of 4/1/13.

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My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


$10,000 P2P LendingClub / Prosper Loan Portfolio Update – March 2013

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Here’s the 3rd and last piece of the monthly updates for my Beat the Market Experiment, a set of three real money portfolios started on November 1st, 2012. See also my $10,000 Benchmark and $10,000 Speculative portfolio updates for March 2013.

For this one, I started with $10,000 split evenly between Prosper Lending and Lending Club, and went to work lending other people money and earning interest with an 8% target net return.

$5,000 LendingClub Loan Portfolio. Below is a screenshot of my LendingClub account as of 3/1/13. I’ve had loans at LC before, but sold them all on the secondary market and started fresh for this tracking experiment. Here are screenshots of my total balance and my portfolio details. I would say my overall risk level is moderate-conservative with mostly A and B rated loans (top two grades).


(click to enlarge)

The portfolio is now 4 months old, with 206 currently active loans, 7 loans that were paid off early, and one is in funding. Two of the active loans are currently between 16-30 days late. The current weighted average interest rate is 12.36%, which means I can lose 4.36% to defaults and still net an 8% return.

I pick loans using a preset filter based on my LendingClub filters post as well as my Prosper filter research noted below. I never spend any time reading individual loan descriptions, as I’m trying to keep this mostly passive and scalable. The filters are saved online and it takes just a minute to reinvest interest, although I still tend to forget until I do these updates. In additional to outstanding loan principal, the account also has $249 in idle cash, $25 in funding limbo, and $38 in accrued interest.

LendingClub.com account value: $5,160 (includes principal + accrued interest, after fees)

$5,000 Prosper.com Loan Portfolio. Below are screenshots of my Prosper account page as of 3/1/13.
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My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


$10,000 P2P LendingClub / Prosper Loan Portfolio Update – February 2013

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Here’s the 3rd and last piece of the monthly updates for my Beat the Market Experiment, a set of three real money portfolios started on November 1st, 2012. See also my $10,000 Benchmark and $10,000 Speculative portfolio updates for February 2013.

I started with $10,000 split evenly between Prosper Lending and Lending Club, and went to work lending other people money and earning interest with an 8% target net return.

$5,000 LendingClub Loan Portfolio. Below is a screenshot of my LendingClub account as of 2/1/13. Keep in mind that I had loans before, but sold them all on the secondary market and started fresh for this tracking experiment. However, the charged-off loans from that period stayed on my record even though the overall return for my very conservative loan portfolio back then was over 5%.


(click to enlarge)

I now have a total of 194 active and issued loans. I used simple loan criteria based on my LendingClub filters post as well as my Prosper filter research noted below, saving me from having to look through individual loan descriptions. The portfolio is very young, but so far all loans are current (16 days past due is considered late). The current weighted average interest rate is 11.66%, which means I can lose 3.66% to defaults and still net an 8% return.

LendingClub.com account value: $5,113.27 (includes principal + accrued interest, after fees)

$5,000 Prosper.com Loan Portfolio. Below are screenshots of my Prosper account page as of 2/1/13.
[Read more…]

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


$10,000 P2P LendingClub and Prosper Loan Portfolio Update – January 2013

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Here’s the last part of the monthly update for my Beat The Market Experiment, a set of three real-money portfolios started on November 1st, 2012. See also my $10,000 Benchmark and $10,000 Speculative portfolio updates for January 2013.

On 11/1/12, I deposited $10,000 split evenly between Prosper Lending and Lending Club, and went to work lending other people money and earning interest with an 8% target net return.

$5,000 LendingClub Loan Portfolio, January 2013 Update. (A little late on the update, although only about $9 in extra interest was accrued since 1/1.) Below is a screenshot of my LendingClub account as of 1/9/13. Keep in mind that I had loans before, but sold them all on the secondary market and started fresh for this tracking experiment.


(click to enlarge)

Since last month, I invested another $400 for a total of 191 active and issued loans. I used simple loan filters based on my LendingClub filters post as well as my Prosper filter research noted below, and haven’t spent any time looking through any individual loan descriptions. The portfolio is very young, but so far all loans are current (16 days past due is considered late).

LendingClub.com account value: $5,082.51 (includes principal, accrued interest, net of fees)
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My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


P2P LendingClub and Prosper Loan Portfolio Update – December 2012

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

As the last part of my ongoing Beat The Market Experiment, here’s the December 2012 update for my consumer loan portfolio. See also my $10,000 Benchmark and $10,000 Play portfolio updates for December 2012.

On 11/1/12, I deposited $10,000 split evenly between Prosper Lending and Lending Club, and went to work lending other people money and earning interest. Here’s how I’m doing it:

  1. 8-10% target return, net of defaults and fees. Each site provides an estimated return based on the interest rate and expected delinquency rate, but I am also using specific filters to try and maximize my return. Overall, I would say my risk profile is moderate/conservative. If I can get an 8% net return over the next 3+ years in the current interest rate environment, I’ll view the portfolio as a success.
  2. Minimal time commitment. I’ve done the manual loan-picking thing, and I’m over it. 400 loans at $25 a pop would take forever. Both sites allow you to save customized loan filters and use an automated investment algorithm to pick a portfolio for you.
  3. Loan Filters. I’m constantly tinkering with the loan filters, but you can get a good idea of what I am using by reading this best Prosper filters post and this older LendingClub filter post. Nothing too fancy, just some broad filters based on historical inefficiencies that may or may not persist.
  4. Loan term lengths and reinvested interest. I thought about only buying loans with 3-year terms in order to have a clean ending timeframe to this experiment, but in reality that would leave a lot of cash at the end as many people pay off their loans early. Also, higher rates are found in 5-year loans. Given the ample liquidity I found in secondary market, if I wanted to end the experiment I could just sell all my loans and cash out. (In October, I sold all of my existing loans on the secondary Folio market in a matter of days, quite easy as long as you’re willing to sell at a discount.) This way I will reinvest any additional cash into new loans maximize return.

LendingClub Details
Below is a screenshot of my LendingClub account as of 12/3/12:
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My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Prosper vs. LendingClub: Credit Card Debt Consolidation Loan Comparison

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

What is the best place to lower your interest rates and consolidate credit card debt in order to pay it all off? The first thing to try is to call up your credit card company and negotiate your existing rate down. If that isn’t satisfactory, you could switch issuers and do a balance transfer to a new card with a low introductory rate. If you have qualifying credit, you can take advantage of no fee 0% APR balance transfer offers for up to 15 months.

I would say the next option to consider is P2P lending, which in my experience has lower rates than personal unsecured loans from banks. P2P is gradually becoming an accepted source of loans as shown by announcements of new institutional money coming in from hedge funds. Prosper has been around since 2006 and has done over $300 million in loan volume since inception, and LendingClub has been around since 2007 with over $500 million in loans. Both are now registered with the SEC.

Prosper vs. LendingClub Similarities

  1. Unsecured loans. Such loans are backed only by the borrower’s promise. If there is a default, the lender can’t repossess any property or garnish wages. The primary deterrent to defaults is a poor credit score that will increase future borrowing costs and potentially other side effects including affecting employment.

    Alternatively, you may be considering paying off your credit card debt with a home equity loan. This would change your unsecured debt into a secured debt. The danger is now if you don’t pay off that loan, you could lose your house. If that added risk doesn’t make a difference to you, then a home equity loan or line of credit will probably offer you a lower rate.

  2. Flexible amounts. You can borrow more or less than your actual outstanding credit card balance, and you’re usually given a choice of amounts for the same interest rate. But remember, the purpose of consolidation is to help speed up the process of getting rid of that debt.
  3. Fixed rates over the entire term. The problem with credit cards is that the rates are often unpredictable. “Variable” rates are linked to a benchmark rate, but even “fixed” rates that aren’t guaranteed for X months can just mean they’re fixed until you get a notice that they are now “fixed” at a new, higher number. Given the current low interest rate environment, you should be wary of rising rates.
  4. No prepayment penalties. You can pay off your loan early at any time, with no fees.
  5. No application fee. There is no fee to apply for a loan. If your loan successfully funds and you get the cash, then you will be subject to an origination fee that is rolled into your monthly payments.

Prosper vs. LendingClub Differences

  1. Minimum credit scores. Prosper minimum stated credit score is 640, LendingClub minimum FICO score is 660.
  2. Maximum loan amounts. Prosper maximum loan amount is $25,000, LendingClub maximum loan amount is now $35,000. Both lower the limits depending on credit profile.
  3. Slightly different fee structures. Both companies charge an origination (closing) fee once you successfully get your loan. If you don’t get the loan, no fees. They have slightly different fee schedules, but both have origination fees ranging from about 1% to 5% for the majority of loans. Both charge $15 fees for late payments or failed payments.
  4. Different loan term lengths. Depending on your requested loan amount and other factors, each lender may offer different terms. For example, LendingClub told me that loan amounts from $1,000 to $15,975 are only available with a 36-month term, even though they do offer 1-year and 5-year loans in other cases. However, with a $10,000 loan at Prosper I was given the choice of 1, 3, or 5-year terms. In general, the longer the term, the higher the interest rate at both places.
  5. Check processing fees. LendingClub charges a $15 processing fee per payment made by check. Prosper does not. Both companies allow you to make payments via automatic ACH withdrawal from a checking account with no fees.

Prosper vs. LendingClub Interest Rates?

Their full criteria for determining what rate you’ll pay is not disclosed but is based on a number of factors. Really, the best way to see which one will give you the best deal is to ask each one for a free quote. In both cases, getting a rate quote will involve looking at your credit report, but it will not result in a credit inquiry and will not hurt your credit score. If you do decide to move forward and get the loan, only then it will show up on your credit report.

My experience. I applied for a $10,000 debt consolidation loan at both places. I was offered a 1-year loan at 8.17%, a 3-year loan at 7.49%, or a 5-year loan at 10.85% annual interest rates at Prosper. I was offered a 3-year loan at LendingClub at 6.62% interest rate. For a $10,000 loan over 3-years and including all fees, my LendingClub payment was $307 per month and Prosper payment was $311 per month. So even though the interest rates seem rather different, the final monthly payments ended up closer than expected (though still a $150 difference in total payments over the whole 3 years).

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


LendingClub 1099 Forms and Tax Reporting Questions

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

If you’re a newer investor in Lending Club P2P notes, you may be wondering how to handle your investments at tax time. Will I get a 1099? Even if you do get a 1099, it might not cover all your loans. Unfortunately, the documentation provided by LC is often inadequate on its own. Here is what their website says you will receive in terms of tax documents;
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My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


LendingClub Investment Criteria – What Loans To Avoid?

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

LendingClub.com (LC) is a website that securitizes person-to-person loans so that you can lend money to other people in as little as $25 increments, and you earn the interest. The idea is to replace banks and credit cards as the major middlemen used for lending. Here’s an illustration from their site:

Now, if you read my previous posts on LendingClub, you know I’m skeptical about getting 9.5% returns in the long run. My LendingClub Net Annualized Return is currently 6.8% after fees. If I can stay in the 4-6% range, I’d be happy as I view this activity as a hobby. My favorite loan so far is helping a young couple purchase a tiny 200 sf house-on-wheels.

The investment process is set up such that LC examines the loan application and assigns it a credit grade with an interest rate from 6.39% – 21.64%. All you have to decide is whether to fund the loan or not in increments of $25. You can’t change the rate. Therefore, the key is to quickly fund the relatively attractive loans and avoid the unattractive ones.

You can view historical performance data at the LC website, but it is very raw. I recently came across a new site called LendStats.com that has been sorting through the data and presenting it in some very insightful ways. The owner KenL uses a nice, simple formula for return on investment (ROI) and one can see from the data several ways to improve your returns.

Loan Factors To Avoid

Business loans. If you look at all the loan categories, only the ones under the Educational and Small Business categories have negative ROIs. (Educational loans have a much smaller sample size.) In general, perhaps it is a form of adverse selection when someone with a business idea must resort to making a personally-backed loan from strangers to fund their idea. Also, it may be that the economy is so tough that only select new businesses survive.

Borrowers with mortgages. Until recently, a mortgage holder was deemed more credit-worthy than a renter. That person had to have the means to make a 20% down payment and pass underwriting from a bank. Now, with so many people underwater in their homes, the ROI from renters is higher than mortgage-holders. Renters have greater flexibility with their cashflow. I suspect many people find themselves so bogged down by their mortgages that they decide to simply declare bankruptcy and forget about all their other debts as well.

Loan amounts greater than $20,000. Loans over $25k have a negative ROI overall, with $20k loans not doing much better. Bigger loans means bigger risk, which apparently isn’t adequately compensated for by higher interest rates. Also, I am wary of people doing the “borrow-and-bankrupt” route where they try to amass as much debt as they can and then declare bankruptcy after either a huge party, leaving the country, or hiding assets.

Borrowers with more than 2 credit inquiries within last 6 months. Average ROI consistently goes down as the number of inquiries on your credit report goes up. This indicates that you are also trying to get credit from others, and thus your debt-to-income may be higher than reported. In general, this also increases the likelihood of either desperation, fraud, and/or impending crisis.

Any F and G rated loans. The general trend is still supporting my original plan of only buying the highest-rated A loans, however there are some improvements in the B through E grades. Loans with the lowest grades of F and G continue to have negative ROIs. These are also the loans with the smallest sample size, but since there are so few of them anyway I find it easier to simply avoid them.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


LendingClub P2P Loan Investment Returns Update 2010 Q3

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

LendingClub.com is a website that securitizes person-to-person loans so that you can lend money to other people in as little as $25 increments, and you collect the interest after some fees. The idea is to replace banks and credit cards as the major middlemen used for lending. “Investors earn better returns, borrowers pay lower rates.” I’ve been investing some money with them since they started in 2007.

Last time I wrote about LendingClub in May, I expressed concerns about their historical performance data living up to their marketed 9.65% returns and then LendingClub responded on why they thought things weren’t that bad. It’s been 3 months, so I figure it’s a good time for another update.

The first part of their argument is that they think that loan performance over time will go like this, with a drop and then significant recovery near the end of the term:

However, I don’t see that behavior happening. As you can see below, the older the loans, the lower the overall performance. Returns just keep dropping for loans going from 1.5 to 3 years old. There is no rise or recovery at the end of the three-year term. Data was taken from actual LC loans with observation date of August 17th, 2010.

Loans Originating Second Half of 2008 (about 1.5-2 years old)

Loans Originating First Half of 2008 (about 2-2.5 years old)

Loans Originating 6/1/2007 to 12/31/2007 (about 2.5-3 years old)


Note the change in the y-axis scale

Now, the next part of their argument was that all the loans that originated before they changed their credit requirements and interest rates at the end of 2008 weren’t a valid data set to be analyzing. (That doesn’t make me feel much better because as an early adopter, I hold a lot of those loans.) While improved underwriting may make the average returns higher, I don’t see why it should affect the overall performance behavior over time.

2009+ Loans Only

Okay, so the newer vintage loans that originated after January 1st, 2009 take into account their current lending criteria. In the end, we’ll just have to see if people really get higher returns. From now on, I’m going to try and track the performance every quarter. Here is the performance of loans originating in the first half of 2009, as of August 17th, 2010. Since it a loan has to be late for 4 months to be actually considered in default, this means the loans only have effective ages of 1 to 1.5 years.

So far, not too bad at about 8% return. Here is the performance of loans originating in the first quarter of 2009 with two observation dates (May 2010 and August 2010) overlaid on top of each other. You can see that the loan performance has decreased slightly over the last 3 months. I hope that I am wrong, and that the performance does start to improve.

You may call me a LendingClub basher, but I still consider myself an active investor and supporter. I want them to have awesome returns, but the data simply doesn’t support the likelihood of earning 9.5% annually. Investors should go into it with realistic expectations, and ideally an interest in P2P social lending. Despite this, if LendingClub can average, say 6% returns going forward, that would still be quite an accomplishment for this new business model. I know I’d be happy with that.

To Prospective Borrowers
Honestly, LendingClub is more attractive as an option for borrowing money and/or credit card debt consolidation. You can borrow up to $25,000 and you can know your rate before actually applying for the loan. If the rate quote they give you can be beaten elsewhere, then just walk away with no obligation. When writing your loan application, try to include as much applicable information as possible (reason for loan, how will you repay, monthly budget breakdown) and answer all lender questions promptly for the best results.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


LendingClub Responds To Concerns About Investment Return

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

LendingClub requested an opportunity to clarify the Net Annualized Return measure and overall Lending Club performance discussed in my updated analysis based on historical return data. I’m just going to go ahead and share it in its entirety. The following is provided by from Renaud Laplanche (CEO) and Rob Garcia (Sr Director of Product Strategy).

Is Average Net Annualized Return Meaningful?
The first question raised was whether or not the aggregate 9.64% net annualized return is representative of a track record that is long enough to be meaningful, considering that it includes many loans issued recently. This is a valid question, and we believe the answer is positive: the average age of the Lending Club portfolio is around 12 months and, considering that it takes 4 months for a loan to default, a 12-month average age is really reflective of an 8-month track record. In a 3-year unsecured loans portfolio, defaults typically occur faster in the first 6 to 8 months, after which they start to level off. See for example data provided by our friends at ZOPA, who service a portfolio with characteristics similar to the Lending Club portfolio.

[Read more…]

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

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LendingClub Default Rates vs. Loan Age Graph

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LendingClub is supposed to provide me with an official response to my updated analysis of their loan performance numbers. Hopefully it will shed more light on how their advertised returns are calculated.

While I’m waiting for it, here is another chart I put together for prospective lenders using data from LendingClubStats.com, which pulls directly from LendingClub’s own statistics database. The full term for LC loans are 36 months (3 years). This chart organizes all loans by their age, allowing you to compare new loans and old loans on a more equal basis. Only officially defaulted loans are included, not late loans with payments up to 120 days late. The numbers are sorted by credit grades A through G.

I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves for now, and save my opinions for another time.

New Lender Incentives – Free $25 to $250 Bonus
If you are interested trying P2P lending with no risk, you can still use this special $25 lender sign-up link to get a free $25 to try it out with no future obligation. There is no credit check and you don’t even have to deposit anything. After you are approved, the $25 will show up in your account balance, and you can lend it out immediately.

If you’ve done your research and are willing to jump in with both feet, those that are willing to invest at least $2,500 at once and link a bank account can get a $100 bonus when you get a referral from an existing member. (Yes, you must actually invest $2,500 in loans.) Send me an e-mail if interested.

You can also view my personal LendingClub portfolio details here.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.