« Citibank Mobile Getting Closer: FAQs Posted | Main | Wells Fargo Adds Value to Mobile Bill Payments, But Not in the Way You Are Thinking »

First Peek: CommunityLend, Canada's P2P Lending Startup

By Jim Bruene on March 21, 2007 4:14 PM

CommunityLend banner

Since publishing the first third-party research on so-called person-to-person, or social, lending, last year (link to report here), we've heard from entrepreneurs around the globe looking to replicate the model in their country. Most are still operating in stealth mode, but one has recently lifted the veil just a bit, with a placeholder website and email announcement list (see screenshot below). It's called CommunityLend, <communitylend.com> and it's targeting the Canadian market.

There's not much detail on CommunityLend site, but the startup already has 50+ Google links, many stemming from a brief mention in a March 9 Finextra article (here). The Founder and President is Michel Garrity, previously VP Marketing & Sales at ePost. Others on the team, at least in advisory roles, are ex-Bank of Montreal exec and BankWatch blogger Colin Henderson and John Philip Green (profile here), currently Director of Engineering at Affinity Labs and Co-Founder of of Savvica and Rapleaf.  Development efforts are spearheaded by a Toronto-based Ruby on Rails shop, Unspace.

It looks like an innovative group and it will be interesting to see how they approach the social lending market. We'll keep you posted as the company moves towards its fall 2007 launch goal.   

Contact: info@communitylend.com

Comments (5)
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Most Recent Posts:

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.netbanker.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/608

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference First Peek: CommunityLend, Canada's P2P Lending Startup:

» CommuntyLend: a new player in social lending from Visible Banking
CommunityLend to set up online P2P loan exchange in Canada, article found on finextra on 09 March 2007.Social lending is booming: the concept in based on Peer-to-Peer technology, enabling people to lend borrow money without the middlemen (the banks). The [Read More]

» CommunityLend wird P2P Kredite in Kanada anbieten from P2P-Kredite.com
  Ein weiterer Markt wird für Kredite von Privat an Privat erschlossen. CommunityLend.com plant den Start in Kanada für den Herbst 2007. Vorher soll ein Testlauf stattfinden (ohne echtes Geld), der dazu dient Feedback und Verbesserungen von den Use... [Read More]

Comments (5)

There is also www.p2ploans.ca for canadiens social lending..

It looks like they have a good team indeed.

I can't wait to check the platform, and see what their key differentiators are: Zopa and Prosper are already doing well, and those two sites benefit from respectively over two and one year of experience in Social Lending: they both have a dynamic and committed community.

CommunityLend will probably do very well in Canada, but I am not sure how successful they will be outside the country... Currently, Prosper is the clear leader in the US, and Zopa will enter the US market very soon...

Jim, Thanks for the update and for covering the development side - I suspected it would be in Rails, so thanks for confirming that.

Even from the temporary homepage, you can tell they're cooking up some Web 2.0 goodness.

Trey, In my "deep" Google search on the company, it looks like you guys were the first to mention CommunityLend by name. Another first for OpenSourceCU!

OOOH, weird! You know I think I saw it off of Colin's LinkedIn page. Who says LinkedIn isn't valuable for something?! :)

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, please note that we will read your comment before it is approved to go up on the blog. However, we'd prefer that you and our other readers didn't have to wait. If you'd like your comments to appear instantly in the future, you can create a TypeKey account and we'll set you up as a trusted commenter!)


Please enter the security code you see here

Sponsors

Finovate 2008 - Come see the future of finance & banking!

New Models in Lead Generation - Check out the best new ideas in getting customers online!


Sponsored Links

Events

Research

  • New! New Techniques for Secure Online Finance: Sandboxing, keyboard encryption, and real-time mobile integration could lock in more online customers - Find out more
  • NEW! New Models for Lead Generation Auctions, personal finance communities, and tools provide alternatives to Google AdWords- Find out more
  • NEW! Online Investing Communities: Will social networking revolutionize saving & investing?- Find out more
  • Searching for Customers 3.0: Search engine marketing for financial institutions- Find out more
  • Person-to-Person Lending 2.0: Disruptive service or market niche? - Find out more

Products & Services

  • Compare CD (certificate of deposit) interest rates and read customer reviews at Bankaholic