Zopa and Zopa Italy have ended the franchise agreement which allowed Zopa Italy to use the Zopa branding. As a result, Zopa’s Italy operations will be rebranding under the name Smartika.IT.

Smartika CEO Maurizio Sella recently made the following announcement about the name change (this is a rough translation from the original Italian):

The franchise contract that tied Zopa Italy Srl at Zopa Ltd. is resolved on the basis of strategic assessments and marketing to ensure the full technological independence and brand.

Zopa Italy Srl has therefore assumed a new name while changing corporate form: we Smartika Spa. But more importantly, we will begin to operate through smartika.it site with a new digital identity.

Welcome to the planet Smartika!

WebNews, PaperBlog and P2P-Banking.com have recently reported on the name change.

This article (Zopa Italy Rebrands as Smartika) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.

The U.K. association, known simply as the Peer2Peer Finance Association, says on its website that it was setup to “primarily to ensure this innovative and fast growing sector maintains high minimum standards of protection for consumers and small business customers.”  Specifically, the association plans to ensure that its member associations meet minimum capital requirements, segregate participant funds, have clear governing structures, effectively communicate with customers, have a reliable IT infrastructure and fairly handle complaints.

The Peer2PeerFinance association is an attempt from the U.K. peer-to-peer lending industry to self-regulate. It’s likely that the U.K. government will develop new rules to regulate the peer-to-peer lending and finance markets in that country during the next year or two and industries that do an effective job of self-regulation often face burdensome regulatory requirements. The association explicitly says that will “work hard to ensure that the new rules will include effective regulation for the peer-to-peer finance market.”

Not all U.K. peer-to-peer finance and peer-to-peer lending companies are welcome to join the association. Member companies must meet certain best practices laid out in the associations’ rules, by-laws and  operating principles. The association has noted that other companies have expressed interest in being part of the association and may join if they meet the requirements in the future.

A trade-association specifically geared toward peer-to-peer lending is the latest in a series of innovations that the U.K. has brought to the peer-to-peer lending industry. Zopa was the first peer-to-peer lending company to launch in 2005 and there are a number of companies which offer peer-to-peer financing for small businesses and start-ups, a model that has yet to get off the ground in the United States. U.K. peer-to-peer lending companies now facilitate for more than £100 million ($164.2 million) in loans each year.

It’s unlikely that a peer-to-peer lending trade association will develop in the United States, since there are currently only two major players, both of which have launched close to five years ago. There are a few other fledgling companies, such as Peerform and National Family Mortgage, but there isn’t a third player that has traction similar to that of Prosper or Lending Club.

This article (P2P Finance Trade Association Launched in U.K.) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.

Here’s Zopa’s official explanation:

You might know that Zopa is a little unusual amongst the now 30+ peer-to-peer lending companies running worldwide in that we facilitate the vast majority of loans through the Zopa Markets; almost all the other peer-to-peer lenders make all their loans using something more like our Listings. Indeed, we weren’t first-to-market with the Listings approach, adding them to our site about two and a half years after we first launched. Since then some 700 Zopa borrowers have received loans totaling £4.3m using Zopa Listings and there’s been some great ones in there; from guitar re-stringing, to a planetarium, a few bits of plastic surgery and of course plenty of cars.

Sadly though, while those figures sound quite good, they only represent a very small proportion of total Zopa lending and that proportion is declining too, while the rest of our business is growing rapidly. Couple that with Listings being much more long-winded to underwrite and we hope you’ll understand why we’ve taken the tough decision to draw Zopa Listings to a close.

… we’ll remove the functionality from the site that allows borrowers to create a new Listing. All the Listings that are already live before this point will of course be allowed to continue to their natural conclusion and once they’re all finalized, we’ll remove all references to Listings from the site.

If you’ve taken part in any lending via Listings, you’ll still be able to keep track of them and monitor how they’re being repaid in My Loan Book, where you can now find a link to your borrower’s original Listing page in the detail page of the loan in My Loan Book (click on the borrower’s username to open this view).

We hope you understand our decision.

Best wishes,

The Zopa Team

Wiseclerk.com first broke this story earlier in the day.

This article (Zopa UK Eliminates Individual Loan Listings) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.

From Zopa’s blog:

“We’re on the hunt for a superb business analyst and a webdesign powerhouse to join the Zopa team. The two job ads can be found here, and we’d love it if you applied sooner rather than later or shared the information with anyone you think might fit the bill. Not only is this a great opportunity to join Zopa on a full-time basis and shape both the future of Zopa and your own experience, we also have a great selection of fresh biscuits every week, a bunch of fun and enthusiastic colleagues and a splendid location in the very centre of London!”

This article (Zopa Is Hiring: Work for a Peer-to-Peer Lending Company) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.

In an update on their blog today, Italian P2P lender Zopa Italia has announced that the site will not relaunch until October or later. Zopa has been working on the establishment of sub-accounts for lenders as part of an agreement with the Bank of Italy, and is pushing the relaunch date out now that they have more details on the technical integration issues involved.

In today’s announcement, Zopa named banking partner IMEL.EU (European Institute of Electronic Money), specialists in electronic funds transfers, who will hold a separate account for each lender before loans are disbursed to borrowers. The regulatory and technical integration of the parties has turned out to be much more involved than what Zopa initially expected, and the relaunch date is uncertain. Zopa has promised to provide an update by mid-October at the latest.

Zopa Italy borrowers and lenders are understandably upset, wondering whether the cost of the Bank of Italy’s request will require new fees or tariffs. The most biting criticism comes from Mario, still angry at the Bank of Italy‘s initial intervention, who wonders how Italian regulators can focus on the straw in Zopa’s eye while the beam of the credit crisis is lodged in their own.

Zopa Italy’s main social lending competitor, Boober Italia, has also suspended new user registrations and has posted a message on their web site stating that they are investigating actions by the Bank of Italy. Boober claims these actions “have nothing to do with P2P lending at Boober.it”, but that is a dubious claim given Boober’s aggressive actions to curtail site activity.

This article (Corrected: Zopa Italy Relaunch Delayed) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.

No date has been set for the site’s launch, but Zopa follows American P2P lending company Prosper, who announced a joint venture with SBI Holdings to launch a Japanese site in August 2007. During 2007, Zopa launched sites in both the United States as well as Italy.

This article (Zopa announces launch of Zopa Japan) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.

The differences between a Zopa listing and a Prosper listing are few. Zopa has adopted a similar set of features for listings, including:

• Pictures
• Description
• Friends
• Endorsements
• Questions & answers
• Public bid history

One of the only differences is that Zopa listings are active for 12 days by default, whereas Prosper offers 3, 5, 7, and 10 day options. One of the complaints from Zopa members who commented on the new design was that he didn’t like the idea of tying up his funds for 12 days waiting for the auction to end.

Kudos to Zopa for soliciting feedback on the upcoming feature in advance, although they could have done a better job of cleaning out any Prosper artifacts that were still in their mockups. For example, the “Funded/Forecast” graph that’s prominent on Prosper listing pages is also shown prominently on the Zopa listing mockup.

We’ll see if Zopa makes changes based on member feedback as they develop and release this feature over the next few months. This may be the feature that allows Zopa to follow through on their long awaited launch in the US market, which is slated for some time this fall.

This article (Zopa planning to introduce borrower listings) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.

Kudos go to design agency Poke out of London, who created the award-winning design for Zopa’s redesigned site, which launched in late 2006.

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1. Crossing the Pond - Jan 2006, launch estimated for “early this year (2006)”, later revised to “Q2 2006?
2. Zopa raises $15m for US launch - Mar 2006, launch estimated for “later this year (2006)”
3. Zopa revises plans for U.S. debut, will start with national service - Apr 2007, launch estimated for “later this year (2007)”

Let’s hope they pull it off sometime this decade…

This article (Zopa US – the boy who cried wolf) was originally developed by and is property of Peer to Peer Lending News. Checkout P2P Lending News for the latest social lending, microfinance and financial innovation news.