| By Jim Bruene on June 1, 2007 9:29 AM | Comments (9) |
Just as the dust was clearing from the latest social lending launch, Lending Club, which opened on Facebook exactly one week ago (coverage here), we received word of another P2P lending exchange Loanio. The founder is revealing little about the new company at this point, but you can see from its logo and tagline, People Lending to People, what market it has its eyes on.
Loanio's one-page website allows you to enter your email address for future notifications. We'll be covering all six North American P2P lenders (see note) in an upcoming update to last year's Online Banking Report on the market for P2P loans. (Hint: we will publish a longer-term forecast which will show more robust opportunities past the 2006-2011 period we looked at in our last report.)
Note:
Right now the North American market consists of five pure P2P lenders:
- Prosper (US, launched Feb. 2006)
- Zopa (UK, but coming to the US in 2007)
- Lending Club (US, launched 25 May, 2007)
- Community Lend (Canada, not launched)
- Loanio (US, not launched)
Plus, P2P loan servicer:
- CircleLending (now owned by Virgin USA, launched 2001)
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The market has yet to reach anything close to critical mass. With only five players worldwide, it's hard to consider this anything other than the equivalent of a really bad TV pilot that is unlikely to be picked up for the fall season.
@mike
Jim gave the 5 players for North America. Worldwide there are already more.
See P2P-Banking.com for a list by countries (at the moment I am preparing an article about Korea. In Korea alone there are 3 players).
But you are right, there are many markets and oppotunities yet untapped.
Person-to-Person Lender clubs are not a new concept. There are alot of these types of so calle dclubs here in america. Especially within asian cultures.
Loanio, What a terrible name : (
Couldn't you come up with something better?
Is there any new information on this site? I do agree with a previous post in that the market for P2P Loans is very nascent. My hope is that the early pioneers don't muddy the waters too much. Prosper recently took a major short-term (maybe long-term, but we'll see) step backwards with the elimination of group leader rewards (and effectively the elimination of groups). Time will tell, but it would be great to get an update on Loanio if you have one. Thanks, P2P-Loans.com
Here's another -- Fynanz : http://fynanz.com -- Does anyone have any details on them?
Prosper does not offer any method for lenders to liquidate and leave, other than to stop lending and wait for their existing notes to mature or default. They need to create a process for other lenders to buy other lenders notes that are not in default.
Do any of the others Zopa, Lending Club, Community Lend or Loanio offer a vehicle to liquidate and leave?
I know it's been a year since this post but we finally have some screen shots of Loanio.
http://prosperlending.blogspot.com/2008/09/loanio-touts-platinum-verification-and.html
It looks like they just launched.