September 5th, 2009
There are now nineteen live listings on WikiLoan.com. Not surprisingly, none of the listings have been issued funds from a lender. The borrowers are asking for outrages interest rates based on their credit ratings. There are borrowers asking for 4% interest rates for their unsecured loans! Most of the listings have F ratings (scores between 0-599) and are asking for rates under 10%.
I can’t blame the lenders for avoiding this site for now. WikiLoan should advise their borrowers of reasonable rates based on their credit scores. LendingClub sets the rates, and prosper shows lenders how likely their loan will be funded for a range of rates.
November 23rd, 2008
Well it seems I may have opened my mouth a little too soon. During a post on 10/30/2008 I reviewed the borrowing process at LendingClub.com. One of the pros I mentioned was “The loan has never shown up on Experian ( it has been over a year) . This is great for people wanting to consolidate debt. Your credit score rises as you use the loan to pay off credit cards and your debt to income percent falls.”
As of today, a year and one month after I recieved a loan from lendingclub.com, they have finally reported to experian. The loan is categorized as an installment debt with fixed payments which is not a bad hit on the credit score. In fact, after the loan was reported, my score did not budge.
LendingClub.com did report immediately to transunion and equifax. Until today, it had seemed that experian was forgotten. This news should not stop you from consolidating debt with a peer lending site. If you can receive a loan at a lower interest rate with fixed payments while paying off unsecured revolving debt, your credit score should still rise.
E.M.
October 15th, 2008
LendingClub.com announced yesterday that they have reopened the investing portion of their website. This is great news especially for those who have existing loans or investments using their service. In late 2007 LendingClub.com froze the investing portion of their site, and did not accept any new registrations. I’ll be posting a review on their service hopefully within a week or two.
“We are delighted to share with you the good news that we have completed our SEC registration and reopened the site to lenders this morning. You can now login to your account and invest by clicking here. What does this registration mean for you? Under the new program, you will now invest in notes that correspond to portions of loans made to borrower members. The notes have stated interest rates ranging from 6.69 percent to 18.63 percent, after a 1 percent service charge is applied. By partnering with Foliofn Investments, Inc., a registered broker dealer, Lending Club becomes the first social lending network where you have the option of a Trading Platform to put your notes up for sale in the event you need liquidity before the 36-month term of a note. Any new note (issued after October 12, 2008) can be traded on the Trading Platform. You can also buy notes from other lenders.
The Lending Club community has continued to show responsible borrowing behavior over the last 18 months and our collection process has proved very efficient, as demonstrated by the fact that since May 2007 the default rate has remained lower than 2 percent. Please also take the time to review the statistics page to monitor the general evolution of the loan portfolio. ” LendingClub.com
