Announcing Peer & Social Lending Press - a new addition to the family!

Today I am excited to launch a new part of Peer & Social Lending called Peer & Social Lending Press. The idea came from the many news and press releases that I receive via email from companies in the industry.  This information isn’t the best fit for this blog, but it certainly deserves attention.  In my mind, there needs to be a central location where these news stories are posted and I hope that is what Peer & Social Lending Press will become.  Content will cover a broader range than this site and will feature all of the major players in the peer to peer lending industry. Keep an eye out on the new site as well as twitter for when press releases are posted.

Check out the new site here:

http://press.peersociallending.com/

LendingRobot now registered as Investment Advisor with the SEC

LendingRobotAs social lending continues to mature, it comes to no surprise that the third party automation tools continue to mature with it.   I’m excited to share that LendingRobot is now registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as an Investment Advisor.  If you are a Lending Robot user you already received an email earlier this week.  Besides this being a step in the right direction for third party tools, this change also comes with a new fee structure which I’ll outline below.  I’m hoping this change will also prompt retail investors who were previously reluctant about using a third party tool to reconsider. [Read more...]

Peer & Social Lending will be at LendIt 2014!

LendIt - the leading conference for p2p lending is May 4-6 2014.  Through a combination of credit card rewards, generous friends in the area offering a couch and a great p2p lending community - I am extremely excited to announce that I will be in attendance!  I never thought that this would be a possibility for 2014 and I can’t wait to be immersed with a group of people and companies who are just as excited as I am about the p2p lending industry.  I am committed to creating valuable content for readers and learning more about p2p lending will only continue to keep me motivated.  This an interesting time in history as traditional banking continues to be disrupted.  If you’re going to be at LendIt, be sure you stop and say hi!  I’ll be the one lobbying for LendIt 2015 to be in Wisconsin :)

If you want to learn more about LendIt 2014 check them out online here:

http://www.lendit.co/

Peer & Social Lending - A Year in Review

wisconsinwinterAs we approach the end of 2013, I want to say thanks to all of our readers. We are happy that we are able to provide content that others find valuable.  The site has been around since May, 2013 and even though that seems like a short amount of time, I feel like we have been able to accomplish a lot and hope bigger things are in store for peer to peer lending and the site in 2014.

[Read more...]

GroundFloor Announces Pilot Project Details

GroundFloor announced the details behind their pilot 100% crowd funded real estate investment project today. They’ve chosen to base it in the city of Atlanta so that they can take “…advantage of Georgia’s innovative securities laws and the Invest Georgia Exemption.” Their goal is still to make real estate investing available to all regardless of net worth and income. Essentially they are trying to do to real estate what Lending Club and Prosper have done with traditional loans. This is a company that we’ve been watching for some time now and it’s exciting to see them finally release their first project.

The pilot project will open on November 20th, 2013 with minimum investments at the $100 level. Their goal is to raise $300,000 to fund two loans. These loans will be used to refinance, renovate, and lease a Midtown residential development. Sadly, you must be located in Georgia to invest in this project which makes it inaccessible all but the 3% of the US who live there.

If you’re interested in more information about GroundFloor or want to invest in their pilot project (must be located in Georgia) please check out their website. If you’re interested in their most recent press release (11/11/2013) you can find that online as well.

Free Lending Club Guide

We’ve been busy here at Peer & Social Lending and have created a basic guide to investing with Lending Club that you can get for free!  Simply subscribe to receive updates on the right side of our homepage and we will send you the free guide once you confirm your email.  We have taken much of the information we learned as new investors in Lending Club in hopes to help others who are considering adding peer to peer lending to their investment portfolio. The guide will serve as a starting point for those new to investing in Lending Club  and we hope you find it valuable. Feel free to contact us with any feedback.

-Brian & Ryan

Peer and Social Lending website introduction

We were previously known as Lending Club Statistics.  There were several reasons that prompted this change, but ultimately we decided that since we were interested in more peer & social lending companies that our domain name should reflect that.  An example of this is when we featured a Q & A from a new peer to peer real estate company groundfloor.  We will be continuing to focus on popular companies like Lending Club and Prosper, but will not be limiting ourselves to those topics.

P2P-Picks Update

I knew that eventually changes would be coming to p2p-picks and I would no longer be able to select “top” notes for free during the feeding time.  That time has come… I received this email from Bryce Mason on October 3. (owner of www.p2p-picks.com)

Dear Subscribers,

We’ve been working hard to address some of your top questions during the last few months, and are excited to share news that will dramatically improve your P2P-Picks experience. For detailed information you can read further, but in brief we are:

*    Enabling technology to let you consume our picks automatically.

*    Discontinuing our website-based picking process.

Your top request has been to combine our rigorous research with the ease of automated investment. The popularity of P2P lending, as I am sure you are keenly aware, has almost made automation a necessity. Consumption of loans occurs so quickly that it has resulted in a frustrating user experience and an inaccurate billing system on our end. So, while P2P-Picks cannot directly make purchases for its subscribers, we are changing our delivery system to solve these issues and give you options.

Toward this end, we have developed an application programming interface (API) that can fetch picks and receive usage statistics for billing purposes. This will allow software developers a way to integrate our picks with their automation solutions. By reporting actual usage back to us, we will also be able to generate accurate bills. We are making our API available to developers so that you will have choices about how you use our service. Further, we have already initiated partnership discussions with most major P2P account management application providers. Automation and the eventual initiation of paid subscriptions unfortunately require dismantling the web interface that you’ve been using for the last year, but overall this should be a major improvement in your P2P-Picks experience.

Our first partner, Blue Air Solutions, owner of www.bluevestment.com, is in the process of linking its account management software to P2P-Picks. In short order, subscribers of both platforms will be able to have a completely managed solution for their LendingClub accounts! We wanted our beta users to hear it first, but a broader announcement is forthcoming.

As always, we welcome your feedback and hope you find our service useful.

Yours Sincerely,

Bryce Mason, Ph.D.
Principal
P2P-Picks, LLC

 

It appeared that for awhile p2p-picks was still working, but I have not had any luck using it the last 2 days.  Temporarily, I am trying to look at newly listed notes during the release times and grabbing high grade notes. I am considering a subscription with interestradar as Brian has already done for note selection.  We will be sure to keep everyone updated on how we are investing in notes.  I have seen a significant increase in loan availability so it has been pretty easy to stay invested.

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Welcome to LendingClub Statistics!

As the name implies, we are here to provide insight and statistics into the peer-to-peer lending industry. In short, companies like LendingClub and Prosper aim to cut out the middle man (banks) so average people like yourself can lend/borrow to other individuals around the U.S. For peer lenders, it is a great opportunity to earn fantastic yields. For borrowers, it gives them the opportunity to borrow money at an affordable rate while not being at the mercy of interest rates of credit cards, business loans etc.

Brian and I have both have accounts through LendingClub and will provide updates periodically of our experiences.

We hope you find the information here of value.

-Brian and Ryan