Posted by Renaud Laplanche :: December 9, 2007 @ 10:44 amWe would like to extend a very warm welcome to Zopa, which launched in the US this past week. The Zopa team did a great job with the new US site, which looks great and contains lots of informative content. Borrowers can apply for a loan at interest rates ranging from 8.75% to 16.99% and lenders can invest in a CD and earn up to 5.1%. A feature we really like is the ability for lenders to waive part of their interest to help lower the borrowers’ payments, a great way to help friends and family. We believe the launch of Zopa in the US and the upcoming launch of 2 new players (GlobeFunder and Loanio) in the next few weeks will continue to establish person-to-person lending as a mainstream alternative to banks and credit cards.
Welcome, and congratulations!
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Kudo's for your warm welcome of Zopa. I checked out Zopa's site
last Wednesday because I was interested in diversifying my P2P
lending business portfolio and I was disappointed by the business
model they chose. It's quite different from their UK operations,
which I would have invested in if I were a UK resident since they
are similar to lendingclubs. Their US structure has too many things
working against it for me to seriously consider investing in it:
Compared to lending club borrowers pay higher interest, lenders get
significantly lower returns, and the "help" system is a conflict of
interest when a person is aggressively pursuing higher returns. As
a philanthropic venture it is an excellent way to feel good about
how you save your money, but the most I would ever invest in it is
my short term savings reserve.
I just got turned down for a loan at Zopa and I have no clue as to
why as of yet. I thought Zopa was a P2P model, but it looks like a
bank just reviewed my application and turned it down in less than a
couple of hours. This just leaves me to think - what the heck is
Zopa? Why didn't I just apply at the bank? I figured at least
getting people to "bid" on the loan would help to reduce the risk
to the bank, thus increasing the chances for it being funded. Dang
- yet another possible good idea neutralized by some weird business
concept.
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