Lending Club is an online lending community where people can borrow and lend money, bypass the banks, and supposedly get better rates. What’s really interesting about this is that Lending Club operates entirely via Facebook. It is a Facebook community and does not operate as a standalone website (although they have plans to). Read/WriteWeb listed Lending Club as one of our Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work, noting that it’s a peer lending application that lets users take out loans funded by other users. Lending club opened on Facebook on May 24th, as a featured app in the F8 Facebook event.
On Thursday July 26, Lending Club passed the mark of half a million dollars lent and borrowed among its members, just a month after it passed $100k. This milestone was passed 7 weeks after they announced the first loan on June 6, which the company says “is certainly faster than we anticipated.” The company says that to date, there have not been any default or late payments. The close ratio on the site is at 84%, meaning that more than 4 out of every 5 loans get funded – and a borrower always has the ability to relist a loan if it didn’t get funded the first time.
The interest rates seem on the high side, with the average interest rate now at 10.71% – which the company says is “partially due to larger loans, which usually carry higher interest rates.” The average loan size has also gone up lately, fom $4,700 to $5,250 in the last 4 weeks.
Lending Club Statistics
- First loan closed June 6, 2007
- Passed $250,000 in loan origination July 5, 2007
- Passed $500,000 in loan origination July 26, 2007
- Loans issued 104 ($528,200)
- Verified lenders 524
- Total members 3,061
- Facebook Installs 11,931
- Top Facebook group Apple Students (102 users)
- Fastest growing network New York, NY (82 users)
- Average Interest Rate 10.71%
For other ‘money’ apps on Facebook, check out this great list from Netbanker.
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)