I'm pleased to share the news that Lending Club has officially reached half a billion dollars in loan demand. This means that people have applied for over $500 million dollars in loans at LendingClub.com. Given our selective credit criteria, we've approved only a portion of those loans, a little over $50 million, and have issued over $45 million in loans to date to creditworthy individuals.
As always, our focus is on offering better rates for creditworthy borrowers and better returns for investors because Lending Club eliminates the high cost and complexity of traditional banks. Many thanks to our growing member base--our financial community is fulfilling its mission, and growing bigger and better every day.
Another company in our space, Prosper.com, recently completed its SEC registration. As you know, we were the first in the category to do this back in 2008. We made that decision proactively because we understood the importance of transparency and compliance. We would now like to congratulate our friends at Prosper.com on completing their own registration. We are pleased that others are taking the same steps as Lending Club, and believe full transparency and disclosure benefit both consumers and the industry overall.
Dear Lending Club Members,
As more of you are saying “no” to credit cards and are choosing the path of responsible credit, and as more investors look for higher returns after last year’s devastating stock market performance, our financial community is showing better results than ever.
This week we are releasing new data showing strong growth among both Lending Club investors and loan originations:
- From January 1st to May 31st 2009:
- 60% growth in total loans issued by Lending Club, from $25M to $40M
- 70% growth in total Lending Club membership from 82,000 to 140,000
- 72% growth in loan applications, from $212M to $365M
- The average net annualized return earned by Lending Club investors since June 2007 grew from 9.05% as of December 18, 2008 (as reported by analyst firm Javelin Research at that time) to 9.90% as of today.
These excellent results demonstrate the responsible behavior of our community of investors and borrowers and show that in the long run, sound underwriting and cautious investment beat the most aggressive strategies.
Better Rates, Together.
Renaud
On Tuesday evening, we made a set of scheduled enhancements to our Web site like we do every month. On Wednesday, the combination of the site enhancements and record-setting levels of activity on certain pages, led to issues that prevented some pages from loading for part of the day.
We know that some customers visiting our Web site on Wednesday either could not access their account or had difficulties with certain areas of the site. We immediately focused our efforts on addressing the issues and believe we have resolved them. I just want to note that our Web site and customer data have remained fully secure and all account details for both borrowers and investors were fully updated on schedule.
As the popularity of Lending Club continues to grow, I want you to know that we are completely focused on giving consistent, anytime access to the lending platform and your account information.
If you were affected by this issue yesterday, I would like to sincerely apologize. Thank you for your continued support.
Best,
Renaud
Today, we’re happy to announce that our securities filing has been cleared by the great Commonwealth of Virginia, a.k.a. the “Old Dominion” and the “Mother of Presidents”. We’re excited to kick the week off with this full opening of our social lending platform to investors in the 12th largest state in the Union, with a population of 7.7M.
The map is filling in…
Onward and upward!
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