| Website | lendingclub.com |
| Category | Consumer Web |
| Employees | |
| Description | peer lending site |
| Total | $34.2M |
| Angel, 5/07 | $2M |
| Series A, 8/07 Canaan Partners Norwest Venture Partners | $10.3M |
| Series A, 9/08 | $6M |
| Series B, 3/09 Morgenthaler Ventures Norwest Venture Partners Canaan Partners | $12M |
| Unattributed, 5/09 SVB Financial Group Gold Hill Capital | $3.97M |
Lending Club is a peer lending site that brings together lenders and borrowers. They started in May 2007 as a Facebook application, but have since expanded to other social networks. The loans are aimed at good-credit borrowers, and are primarily used for credit card refinancing and small business loans.
Lending Club loans have fixed interest rates with average loan durations of three years. Borrowers must go through a credit check and grading process before they can post their loan requests.
Lending Club lenders have been experiencing a 9.05% average annual return since May 2007.
Other p2p lending sites include Zopa, Prosper and Kiva.
| Website | lendingclub.com |
| Blog | blog.lendingclub.com |
| Stage | Live |
| Launch Date | May 24, 2007 |
| Tags | p2p-lending, peer-to-peer-lending, social-lending, person-to-person-lending, people-to-people-lending |
Lending Club makes borrowers go through a credit assessment and hand out credit grades ranging from A-G. Lenders can browse borrowers’ profiles and find someone they want to lend to depending on the amount of risk they are willing to take or depending on who the borrower is (like a friend).
Borrowers can use anonymous screen names to post their loan requests on the Lending Club Facebook application. Most of the loan requests are for consolidating debt so most borrowers probably don’t want their credit histories to be public information. On the other hand, being open with potential lenders can increase the chance of landing a loan.
According to Lending Club, average loan sizes clock in around $5,500, with $1,000 being the minimum loan size and $25,000 the max. Borrowers with low credit grades have higher average interest rates than borrowers with high credit grades.
