Archive for Mark Morozov
ThinCats Joins U.K. Business P2P Lending Market
A new company, ThinCats.com, has entered into the U.K. peer-to-peer lending market, joining the ranks of Zopa, Yes-Secure, and Funding Circle. Unlike many of the first generation peer-to-peer lending companies that focus on consumer loans, ThinCats aims to provide an additional fundraising option to small and medium sized businesses. Businesses can take out loans between [...]
P2P Financial Brings Crowd Funding to Canada
The business of peer-to-peer lending continues to evolve, with companies such as Peerform and National Family Mortgage developing products that allow family members to give each other loans and companies such as Rebirth Financial and MicroVentures developing services that allow businesses to directly raise venture capital from individuals. Toronto-based P2P Financial has taken this business [...]
Bitcoin Exchange Rate Drops 55% in 48 Hours
The massive run-up in the value of Bitcoin may be over. After reaching an all-time high of more than $31.00, Bitcoin’s exchange rate is plummeting. On Thursday, June 9th, Bitcoin was trading consistently between $28.00 and$29.00, however, by the end of the day on Friday that value had dropped to a range of $23.00 to [...]
Lending Club PRIME: An Automated Way to Invest in Peer-to-Peer Lending
Some investors get turned off by peer-to-peer lending because it’s not a “set it and forget it” investment. Rather, you need to actively manage your account and find new loans to fund that meet your investment criteria as you receive payments from borrows. There’s also a lot of strategy in selecting the right loans to [...]
Prosper.com Raises Interest Rates by 1%-2% on All New Loans
Prosper.com announced on its blog on Wednesday that it would be increasing the interest rates charged to all new borrowers. Previously, borrowers with pristine credit could get loans with interest rates as low as 5.04%. Under the company’s new rate structure, that will increase to 6.04%. Borrowers with lower credit scores will see less of [...]
Lending Club Scam? Learn Why People Worry About Peer-to-Peer Lending
If you were to perform a Google search for Prosper.com or Lending Club, you would find the word “scam” in the list of autocomplete suggestions provided by Google. The words “lending club scam” and “prosper.com scam” are commonly searched for not because Prosper.com and Lending Club are operating outside of regulatory approval or are illegitimate [...]
MicroVentures Melds Venture Capital and Peer to Peer Lending
MicroVentures Marketplace has launched a new service that aims to bring concepts from peer to peer lending into the world of venture capital. The company allows businesses in a number of sectors to raise funding from individual investors on its platform. Businesses looking to receive funding pay a $100 preliminary application fee. If MicroVentures approves [...]
Prosper.com Sees New Growth, Loan Originations Up 125%
Prosper.com, a California-based peer to peer lending company, has seen a 125% increase in the dollar value of loans that the company has setup during the last six months. During the month of March, Prosper setup $4,513,931 in loans between borrowers and lenders on its website. Comparatively, Prosper.com setup a mere $2,007,958 in loans during [...]
Kiva Reaches $200 Million in Microfinance Loans
Kiva.org, a non-profit which facilitates microfinance loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, announced that it had setup more than $200 million in loans to entrepreneurs across the globe. The milestone comes just twelve months after the non-profit hit the $100 million mark in facilitated loans. The microfinance non-profit has seen significant growth since its launch [...]
CommunityLend Launches Licensed Peer-to-Peer Lending in Canada
Nearly three years after starting to build out what they hoped would be the first social lending company in Canada, CommunityLend has finally launched for borrowers and lenders in the Canadian province of Ontario. Despite having a lot of the technical pieces in place for years, CommunityLend’s launch was continually delayed for regulatory reasons. Now [...]
Prosper Adds Florida Lenders, Lending Club Adds Missouri
P2P Lender Prosper announced today that they are now welcoming lenders from Florida. Florida is the fourth most populous state in the U.S., which adds 6% of the population to Prosper‘s addressable market. Along with recent announcements opening Rhode Island and Virginia, Prosper is now available to 54.1% of the U.S. population. Rival social lending [...]
5 Reasons P2P Loans Beat the Pants Off Credit Cards
Today the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 goes into effect. Although the changes included in this reform are good for consumers, and eliminate some of the credit card industry’s most egregious practices, smart consumers shouldn’t finance their purchases by paying the interest to credit card companies at all. Here are five [...]
Prosper’s S-1 Approved by SEC; Re-Launch Expected Tuesday
On Friday the SEC approved P2P lending company Prosper‘s sixth amendment to its offering of $500 million in person-to-person loans. The S-1 is effective as of Friday, July 10 at 3:30 PM, and the final Prospectus is dated July 13, 2009. It has taken Prosper almost exactly nine months to get their S-1 approved, which [...]
Lending Club Posts Strong 1H 2009, Loans Growing 7% Per Month
Lending Club, the P2P lending marketplace which re-opened with SEC approval last October, has seen steady and impressive growth through the first half of 2009. The company has funded $18.2 million in loans since January 2009, and loan growth has averaged nearly 7% month-over-month during that period. According to a blog post in June by [...]
Be Employee Number 3-6 at Loanio; They’re Hiring
If you counted Loanio out after issuing only $14k in P2P loans last fall, you’ll be surprised at this recent second wind. On Tuesday, they filed an S-1 with the SEC, and over the last few months, have been posting job listings for a Chief Operations Officer (COO), Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Chief Marketing Officer [...]
Prosper Readies for Relaunch
Apparently, the third amendment’s the charm. Having filed a third amendment to its S-1 filing with the SEC just last week, Prosper has added a maintenance message to the header of its site, stating that the site will be offline all weekend for “system upgrades and configuration changes”. This is probably an indication that Prosper [...]
Lending Club Adds Self-Directed IRAs
This morning, Lending Club announced that investors could now invest in loans through a self-directed IRA (Individual Retirement Account). Self-directed IRAs are administered by EntrustCAMA, part of the Entrust Group. To open an account, go to Lending Club’s retirement accounts page and start the process. There is a minimum account balance of $5,000, and a [...]
Lending Club Makes $12M Series B Official
Earlier this week we noticed a funding announcement via Twitter from Luc Hardy of Sagax, assuming he was the VC responsible. According to the press release made public today, Lending Club has raised a $12 million Series B round led by Morgenthaler Ventures. Rebecca Lynn, a Morgenthaler Principal, will be joining Lending Club’s board of directors. Norwest Venture [...]
LendingClub Proposes New Structure in S-1 Filing
LendingClub has filed an S-1 with the SEC, in which it proposes a new regulatory structure for person to person lending, as well as providing some interesting data about the company itself. The proposed regulatory structure describes a model in which LendingClub issues loans directly to borrowers, and rather than selling the promissory notes to [...]
LendingClub Raises $10.2M Series A Round of Venture Capital
On August 23, LendingClub announced that they were about to close a Series A round of venture capital funding for $10.2 million from Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners. This first round of venture capital follows a $2 million round of angel investments to date. Along with the funding, LendingClub announced that Jeff Crowe (Norwest Venture [...]
P2P lending is heating up! These early companies exploring the platform will be very successful. I'm Impressed 
Did u actually get the funds, is this a payday loan?